Welcome

Aims of the Seminar

In very recent years, it has become apparent that a considerable number of scholars working in disparate areas of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics have been identifying identity as a factor in their research, e.g. into community/heritage language maintenance and use, endangered language maintenance, language choice in multilingual situations, dialect levelling, and first and second language education. By opening the discussion to a wider range of researchers through the BAAL/CUP Seminar series, we hope to gain more in-depth insights and further research ideas.

Objectives

1. To share issues and methodologies in language and identity across the spectrum of applied linguistics, including sociolinguistics.
   
   
2. To bring together researchers working on language and identity in order to increase understanding of how these factors interact and their practical applications.
   
   
3. To promote cross-disciplinary communication by comparing research on language and identity in different strands of Applied Linguistics, such as: second/foreign language and mother tongue education, language use in multilingual settings, language variation and change, language contact, discourse analysis, language and gender, linguistic ethnography, and communication studies. To this end, presenters are encouraged to make their papers as relevant as possible to researchers working in other disciplines.
   
   
4. Discussions will include both research methodology and findings.
   
   
5. Presenters and discussants will be encouraged to focus on practical outcomes, for example, the educational achievement of minority children or heritage/community language maintenance.

* Please Note *
We can no longer accept registration forms as enough delegates have been registered.

Questions which we hope to address include:

1. How is identity constructed, and (how) does language play a role?
   
   
2. To what extent is identity linked to language, and vice versa? Are there correlations and/or causal relationships?
   
   
3. How does identity relate to other factors such as language/dialect status, social networks, attitudes, ideologies?
   
   
4. (How) does identity affect language/dialect choice and maintenance?
   
   
5. (How) does identity affect outcomes in language learning and the educational achievement of minorities?
   
   
6. How do various facets of identity affect language use (e.g. gender, ethnicity, class, profession, etc.)?
   
   
7. What research methodologies are most appropriate for identifying and measuring identity and its influences?

Keynote speakers

Roxy Harris (King's College, London)
The linguistic embodiment of identity: links between cultural studies and sociolinguistics

Jennifer Jenkins (King's College, London)
Identity and second language learners' pronunciation of English

Carmen Llamas (University of Aberdeen)
Language and the Construction of Identity

Tope Omoniyi (Roehampton Institute)
Hierarchy of Identities: A theoretical framework

Organising committee

Paul Kerswill, Julia Sallabank, Arfaan Khan