Against the background of recent language policy literature that stresses the multi-sited nature of language policy, WG9 intends to shed light on the state of the art of research on the role of different sorts of actors (authorities, stakeholders), horizontally or vertically aligned, in language policy activities that involve new speakers in different geographical, social and political spaces. WG9 brings together a heterogeneous group of scholars working on a different range of topics and areas, including but not limited to: historical and immigrant language minority settings; migrant groups in diverse populations; language matters at the workplace; settings involving sign language users; virtual language environments. The research activities of WG9 members aim at critically analyzing and reflecting on methodological and theoretical concepts that may illuminate the role and the interaction of actors in the cyclical process of language policy in specific language policy regimes involving new speakers.

Jeroen Darquennes (WG Leader)

 

 

Working Group 9 Members

Carla Bagna

Affiliation: Università per Stranieri di Siena

Graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures (French language four-year, three-year Russian address language language teaching) in 1998 at the University of Pavia. She received in 2002 the PhD in Teaching Italian to Foreigners at the University for Foreigners of Siena. PhD Thesis: The prepositions in near native speakers of Italian L2. Uses and functions of an evolving system: theoretical and educational implications. Researcher in the same University (1st June 2006 – 1st May 2014) Director of the Language Centre of the University for Foreigners in Siena from october 2010. May 2014: Associate Professor in Educational Linguistics at the University for Foreigners of Siena (Italy)

Research interests: plurilingualism, superdiversity, second language learning/teaching, immigration

Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin

Affiliation: University of Limerick

Research interests: I research within the broad tripartite language policy paradigm composed of language practices, ideologies and beliefs about language, and the intentional or unintentional intervention in these processes by agents of change. I conduct long-term ethnographic research in the Irish Gaeltacht and other extended projects in the Isle of Man and Brittany, as well as contemporary studies of the sociolinguistics of Wales, Scotland, Nova Scotia and minority language policy in Europe. In conducting this research I work collaboratively with local speaker communities, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students and with colleagues in international networks.

Massimiliano Spotti

Affiliation: Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

1) asylum 2.0 and the implication of the internet for the process of asylum seeking practices and the politics of suspicion 

2) the institutional responses to super-diversity in urban and non-urban spaces across Europe with a specific focus on regular primary school classrooms and classrooms for the reception of young third country nationals.

3) e-citizenship apprenticeship, e-inclusion/exclusion and the process of enregisterment - through CEFR based language testing ? of newly arrived migrants in discourses of morality and national belonging.

Research interests: sociolinguistic ethnographic studies in Dutch as L2 classrooms, L2 policing for low literate migrants, superdiversity and language based citizenship testing

Josep Soler

Affiliation: Department of English, Stockholm University

Research interests: Language policy, linguistic ideologies, ethnography, discourse studies

Colin Williams

Formerly Research Professor in Sociolinguistics, now an Honorary Professor, in the School of Welsh, Cardiff University. Currently he is a Visiting Fellow, St Edmund's College, the University of Cambridge, UK.

Affiliation: Cardiff University / Cambridge University

Research interests: New Speakers in Official Language Strategies

Natalie Tarr

Affiliation: Center for African Studies CASB, University of Basel, Switzerland 

Research interests: interpretation, plurilingualism, bureaucratisation, language and power, language ideology

Caroline Kerfoot

Affiliation: Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm UniversityThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Research interests: multilingualism, identities, epistemic access, mobility, migration

Constadina Charalambous

Affiliation: European University Cyprus

Research interests: language education policy, language policy and conflict, language policy and security, language & superdiversity 

Kristian Lewis

Affiliation: Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics

Research interests: multilingualism, minority languages, language policies, language planning

Urko Ikardo

Affiliation: Bortzirietako Euskara Mankomunitatea; Université Libre de Bruxelles

Research interests: New speakers and Basque language policy.

Gwennan Elin Higham

Affiliation: Department of Welsh, Swansea University

Research interests: Migration, new speakers of Welsh, language policy, citizenship, social cohesion, mulitculuralism

Steve Morris

Affiliation: Department of Welsh, Swansea University

Research interests: New speakers of Welsh and social spaces, language planning (especially corpus planning), sociolinguistics, language acquisition

Florence Bonacina-Pugh

Affiliation: University of Edinburgh

Research interests: Language-in-education policies in migratory contexts, Language Policy and Practice, 1+2 Language Strategy in Scotland

Anna Augustyniak

Anik Nandi

Ermina Ramadanovic

Ibon Manterola

Graham Turner

Guzman Mancho-Barés

Heiko F. Marten

Facundo Reyna Muniain

Jeroen Darquennes

Jone Goirigolzarri Garaizar

Julia Sallabank

Karen Corrigan

Kathryn Jones

Luisa Martín Rojo

Maite Puigdevall Serralvo

Minna Suni

Montserrat Casacuberta

Sanita Lazdiņa

Sjaak Kroon

Teresa Galarza

Wilson McLeod

Language policy regimes, regimentation and governmentality in “new speaker” contexts

News

New signers and the vitality of sign language communities

Maartje De Meulder, post-doc researcher at the University of Namur, is carrying out a research project on ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ signers in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, and their relationship to the vitality of sign language communities. The starting point of the research are current numerical disparities observed in sign language communities (also found in the context of some of Europe’s minority languages): a decreasing number of deaf traditional signers, an increasing number of deaf new signers; more hearing than deaf adults knowing a national sign language and those hearing new signers outnumbering deaf traditional and new signers; and in the youngest age groups, more hearing than deaf children who sign.

The research includes 15 participants (deaf and hearing new and traditional signers) and draws on a sociolinguistic ethnographic methodology, using interviews, language use diaries, language portraits and participant observation. It aims to gain a better understanding of the language trajectories, attitudes, motivations, and spaces for language learning and socialisation of deaf and hearing traditional and new signers, and how they see themselves as playing a role in vitality. This will be instrumental to inform future sign language policy and planning efforts.

 

COMBI in Coimbra: Erasmus+ project on teaching minority languages to migrants

The COMBI project is a three-year Erasmus+ project, funded by the European Commission, on teaching minority languages to migrants in bilingual workplaces. The partners involved are Wales, the Basque Country, the Nertherlands, Finland and Sicily. The Mercator Research Centre is responisble for coordinating the project. Working group 9 members, Jeroen Darquennes, Kathryn Jones and Gwennan Higham are involved in the project. Basque representavive of the COMBI project, Petra Elser, was present at the recent New Speakers Whole Action Conference in Coimbra, Portugal. Petra explained her work as founder of the Basque language centre for migrants and how the COMBI project will provide new pedagogical resources for teaching Basque to migrants as well as influence language policy from the bottom up. See the COMBI project website for more information: http://combiproject.eu

 

New Speakers' Final Whole Action Conference

 

 

Working group 9 organised a stakeholder panel at the Coimbra conference, 14-16 September 2017, including stakeholders from Wales, the Basque Country and Latvia. The aim of the panel was to consider how language policy is and could be reinvented from the 'bottom up' of society. In this regard, working group 9 members discussed their academic research looking at how ethnographic work amongst new speakers can inform language policy. Stakeholders discussed how their work 'on the ground' has impacted language policy in various ways. The discussion therefore was aimed at considering how to use academic findings and stakeholder experiences' to bring about impact in language policy on local levels using innovative methods.

Participants

• Steven Morris, Swansea University
• Gwennan Higham, Swansea University
• Anna Augustyniak, Southampton University
• Kathryn Jones, IAITH: The Welsh Centre for Language Planning
• Heiko Marten, University of Latvia + Rezekne Academy of Technologies
• Nora Schleicher, BKF University of Applied Sciences
• Minna. Suni , University of Jyväskylä
• Bernadette O'Rourke, Heriot-Watt University
• Heini Gruffudd, Welsh language author and chairman of 'Dyfodol i'r Iaith', Welsh language pressure group
• Petra Elser, Director of Banaiz Bagara, Basque language centre for migrants
• Sanita Lazdiņa, Rezekne Academy of Technologies and Ministry of Education of the Republic of Latvia

 

Special Edition in Language Policy

WG9 members are currently working together towards publishling a special edition on language policy and new speakerness to be submitted to Language Policy. Members, who met in Namur University March 2017, are writing individual or joint articles which will be internally reviewed before sending to the journal editors.

Below are the articles to be included in the special issue:

Darquennes, Jeroen & Soler, Josep (to be submitted). 'New speakers' in applied linguistics and language policy research: prospects and limitations. Language Policy.

 

Augustyniak, Anna & Higham, Gwennan (to be submitted). Contesting sub-state integration policies: migrants as stakeholders in language policy. Language Policy.

 

Higham, Gwennan, Jones, Kathryn & Morris, Steve (to be submitted). Language policy, learning and citizenship in times of superdiversity: creating spaces for ‘new speakers’. Language Policy.

 

Kraft, Kamilla (to be submitted). Constructing, accommodating and de-selecting ‘new speakers’ through safety and language policies in the Norwegian building industry. Language Policy.

 

Schleicher, Nóra & Suni, Minna (to be submitted). To go or not to go? The role of language and language policies in the migration process of medical workers. Language Policy.

 

Spotti, Massimiliano, Li, Jinling, Kroon, Sjaak (to be submitted). Language policy oddities working toward the normalisation of ‘new speakers’ in the Netherlands. Language Policy.

 

Soler, Josep & Marten, Heiko (to be submitted). Resistance and adaptation to newspeakerness in a small nation state: two tales from Estonia. Language Policy.

 

O’Rourke, Bernadette & Nandi, Anik (to be submitted). New speakers of Galician as invisible language planners in contemporary Galicia. Language Policy.

 

Walsh, John (to be submitted). Activist ‘new speakers’ of Irish: motivations and ideological positioning. Language Policy.

 

Williams, Colin (to be submitted). New speakers and language policy. Commentary. Language Policy.

 

 

International Workshop

Language policy issues in ‘new speaker’ contexts – Critical ethnographic perspectives Namur, 16-17 March 2017

Fuelled by the work of Working Group 9 of the COST-Action on New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe this two-day workshop addresses the complex and multi-sited nature of language policy and planning processes in various ‘new speaker’ settings across Europe. During the workshop, the invited speakers will present papers from a range of different contexts (including historical minority languages, migration settings and transnational workplaces). Mainly rooted in critical ethnography the papers will help to clarify how language policy matters are dealt with by speakers ‘on the ground’ as well as by language policy and planning officers and other agents in managerial positions. The workshop will help the speakers to discuss and fine-tune the first draft of a paper for a special issue on language policy and new speakerness that will be submitted to Language Policy in the second half of 2017.

Organizers: Jeroen Darquennes (UNamur) & Josep Soler (Stockholm University)
Venue: UNamur Business & Learning Center, Room 03 (Rue Godefroid 5/7, B-5000 Namur)