The world is ever ‘on the move’. The opportunities and challenges of both real and virtual travel are very much at the heart of the emergent interdisciplinary field of ‘mobilities’, which deals with the movement of peoples, objects, capital, information and cultures across an increasingly globalised and apparently borderless world. In the practices, processes and performances of moving – whether for voluntary leisure, forced migration or economic pragmatism – we are faced with the negotiation and re-negotiation of identities and meaning relating to places and pasts.
Within the increasing complexities of global flows and encounters, intercultural skills and competencies are being challenged and re-imagined. The vital role of languages and the intricacies of intercultural dialogue have largely remained implicit in the discourses surrounding mobilities. This Conference seeks to interrogate the role of intercultural communication and of languages in the inevitable moments of encounter which arise from all forms of ‘motion’.
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are pleased to receive 20–minute research papers or descriptions of pedagogical practice which address or go beyond the following themes:
* Moving languages - continuities and change;
* Real and virtual border crossings;
* Tourist encounters and communicating with the ‘other’;
* Tourism’s role in inter-cultural dialogue;
* The languages of diasporas and diasporic languages;
* Dealing with dialects and the evolution/dissolution of communities;
* Hospitality and languages of welcome;
* Learning the languages of migration;
* Lingusitic boundaries and socio-cultural inclusions and exclusions;
* ‘Located’ and ‘dislocated’ languages and identities;
* Practices and performances of translation.