CFP: Conference on Multilingualism and Multiculturalism

Georgetown University Graduate Student Conference

Date: February 27 - 28, 2015 Georgetown University

Heidi Byrnes, Georgetown University

Anna De Fina, Georgetown University

With the publication of the Modern Language Association's 2007 Report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World", the terms multilingualism and multiculturalism have received heightened attention and been expanded to include the ideas of translingual and transcultural competence. While many scholars have defined multilingualism as the ability to communicate in more than one language (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2003; Li, 2008), other conceptualizations, particularly those influenced by third language acquisition studies and functional definitions of language, reconceive multilingualism as the ability to use multiple languages as “resources” contingent upon communicative needs and social contexts (Cenoz, 2013). 

Even as definitions of multilingualism expand, as seen in scholarly contributions to the "Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33, (2013)", it is still refracted most typically through the lens of monolingualism and conceptualized through nation-state-centered perspectives (Yildiz, 2012). To address this concern, scholarly work is now exploring such concepts as transculturalism and -lingualism, which are being defined as the studies of power relationships/formations and meaning-making in language throughout history as one acknowledges the multiplicity of one's identity and position in the nation state (Cuccioletta, 2002; Lewis, 2002).  Within this field, scholars (e.g., Appadurai, 1996; Bhaba, 1990; Mani, 2007; Seyhan, 2001) explore aesthetics, political claims, and such phenomena as cosmopolitan citizenship that unsettle concepts of home, belonging, and culture, which can redress the ruptures in history, collective memory, and language. In light of widespread globalization, we are interested in definitions of multi/translingualism, multi/transculturalism, and related terms that move away from essentialized and idealized notions of the nation-state (Cook, 1992; Kramsch, 2014). We are also interested in exploring the critical relationships between how multilingualism/multiculturalism is acquired in educational and other contexts, reflected upon and portrayed in artistic-literary-social media, and acknowledged, valued, or rejected in political and institutional action.

Keeping these foci and associated challenges in mind, our conference engages multilingualism and multiculturalism with an explicitly critical orientation in order to refine these terms in light of research and practice in literary and visual cultural criticism, history, linguistics, anthropology, and second/third/foreign language teaching and learning.

Possible topics for 20-minute presentations include but are not limited to:

Please submit abstracts of 250--300 words (including paper title, institutional affiliation and contact details) by 17 October 2014 to GUGradConference@gmail.com. Notification of acceptances will be sent by 1 November 2014. The conference will begin 27 Feb. at 3:00pm and end 28 Feb. at 7:00pm. 

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