DiscourseNet DN 27: Language Ideologies and Political Discourse

Call for Papers

Ideologies regarding the social value of languages and discourses are contested, especially in times of political polarisation. Whether it be political rhetoric valorising certain languages over others in social media messages of populist leaders, activism promoting the revitalisation of minoritised languages or the hegemony of colonial languages in academic publishing, we can observe how language ideologies are constructed, and how they permeate every public domain. With this conference, we aim to explore the intersections between language ideology and political discourse, understanding both notions in their broadest terms, and to find tactical solutions to prevent a language ideological meltdown of political discourse; i.e. a politicisation of essential understandings of language as belonging to specific people and not to others. The conference thus aims to open up a critical space in which we can explore ideological discourses that make the indexical links between language and politics meaningful, aiming, ultimately, to reposition ourselves and our research within the very same political discourse that we investigate. 

You will find the conference webpages here: https://discourseanalysis.net/en/language-ideologies-and-political-discourse Please use this link to submit your 200-word abstract and up to five keywords by 11 April 2021.

Themes

We invite contributions that critically engage with one or more of the following themes:

• Populism and language ideology
• Colonial languages in the academy 
• Selling English (accents)
• English as a lingua franca
• Teaching global languages 
• Ethnonational linguistic purification 
• Language ideology and nation building
• Monolingual ideologies in the alt-right
• Linguistic revival movements 
• The quest for pre-colonial languages
• Decolonising language ideologies
• Neoliberal pressures on language learning
• Superdiversity and hypersubjectivity 
• Love and affect as political concepts
• National and local language policies
• Family language policies
• Language ideology and religion
• Minoritised languages
• Ethnolinguistic vitality 
• Raciolinguistics
• Language rights and essentialisation
• Linguistic citizenship
• Linguistic justice
• Scales
• Ethics of ethnography
• Metapragmatic reflexivity

Invited speakers

• Nishaant Choksi, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India
• Kara Fleming, KIMEP University, Kazakhstan
• Korina Giaxoglou, Open University, United Kingdom
• Kristina Hultgren, Open University, United Kingdom 
• Isabelle Léglise, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
• Mie Hiramoto, National University of Singapore
• Adriana Patiño-Santos, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
• Santiago Sanchez Moreano, Open University, United Kingdom 
• Maria Secova, Open University, United Kingdom
• Quentin Williams, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Format 

DN27 will be held as a virtual conference. However, we do not want to simply emulate an offline conferencing experience, so we have decided to experiment with alternative formats. We hope that our ideas will facilitate discussion and interaction among you and help you engage with each other’s work in mutually productive and non-hierarchical ways. 

Pre-recorded presentations by 1 June 2021

In order to give you more control over the way you want to present your work, and to accommodate participants from all time-zones, we invite all presenters to pre-record their presentations and upload them to our virtual platform by 1 June 2021. We will assign each presentation to a thematic panel of four and publish them on our website in mid-June 2021, one month ahead of the conference. In this way, all participants will be able to view all pre-recorded presentations in a time convenient to them. 

During the conference on 12, 13 and 14 July 2021

During the conference days, we meet to discuss your presentations. We will invite each presenter to become a respondent to another presentation and deliver a five-minute commentary on your colleague’s work. We will then open up a question-and-answer session with all panel audiences. Invited speakers and other scholars will act as discussants for each panel. 

Fees and DN membership 

To register for DN27, you must be a fee-paying member of the DiscourseNet Association. The annual membership fee is 30€. Please send an email to membership@discourseanalysis.net to become a member and organise payment. The conference fee for regular participants is ￡60 (which includes membership fees). Participants who are already members pay ￡30.