Workshop on multilingualism in conflict zones

In the third millennium, issues related to conflict zones and ensuring their security are increasingly important for the whole world. In many of the contemporary conflict situations issues connected to identities are central. More specifically, conflicting arguments pivot around culture, religion, and ethnicity, all of which are organically related to and expressed through language.

This British Academy-funded workshop, which is organised by the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics (University of Reading), aims to explore the nature of communication in real-life case studies of conflict from a wide range of geographical locations and different scales of engagement.

It will offer a forum for discussion which will unite early career researchers (including PGR) and established academics with overlapping interests in the field. Scholars from different disciplines are invited to disseminate findings from original research and discuss theoretical and methodological challenges when conducting research in conflict or post-conflict zones from an applied linguistic/sociolinguistic perspective. We endeavour that this workshop will highlight the importance of language in promoting peace, social cohesion, collaboration, and trust in conflict-ridden communities.

The objectives of this workshop are:

• To share empirical research on multilingualism in conflict and post-conflict zones.
• To share methodological and practical challenges in studying multilingualism in conflict and post-conflict zones and discuss possible ways of overcoming these.
• To raise awareness about various social, educational, linguistic, psychological, and political issues that are faced by the people who live in communities affected by conflict.
• To offer a supportive forum where issues in relation to language and conflict can be openly discussed.
• To encourage scholars to come together, get to know each other and interact in positive and constructive ways.
• To come up with creative initiatives that can help build trust and promote peace in conflict and post-conflict zones.

The workshop envisions a critical space for stimulating dialogue among scholars working on all aspects of multilingualism and conflict, including (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Language and identity
• Language policy and planning
• Hate speech
• Media and social media
• Language choice
• Linguistic vitality, language maintenance and language shift
• Linguistic landscapes
• Language attitudes
• Language ideologies
• Education and language learning
• Migration and citizenship
• Linguistic rights
• Minority languages

Each paper will last for 30 minutes: 20 minutes for presentation; 10 minutes for discussion. The language of the conference is English.