The University of Turku will organize an international Winter School of Multilingualism, European Languages and Societies, on 13–17 March, 2023. The Winter School will discuss topics related to multilingualism and European language communities. The working languages of the Winter School are English, French, and German. The organizers welcome applications from undergraduate and PhD students at the EC2U partner universities.
The first decades of the 21st century have been characterised by increasing urbanization and migration. The new, multilingual realities raise issues concerning sustainability, linguistic and cultural identities and linguistic policies that deal with new challenges in the social and lingual environment.
“The present Winter School will examine multilingualism and language contact in the European context and beyond. It will focus on less taught languages, multilingual language practices, local multilingualism, multilingualism in organizations, and multilingual spaces as well as language policies. However, the range of topics may also cover other aspects of multilingual language use, such as urbanization, migration and transnational language practices,” says project coordinator Tiina Tuominiemi.
The Winter School is based on the ideas of the French linguist Louis-Jean Calvet about the global linguistic context, which he, in his book La marché aux langues. Les effets linguistiques de la mondialisation (2002), describes as the “language market”.
“According to Calvet, the metaphor reveals the unstable and changing 'value' that different languages have as 'currencies' in different social contexts. However, the evolution of our lingual environment should not be considered as straightforward dependency on stable power relations, but also as development guided by multiple political, ideologic and social interventions,” says Tuominiemi, explaining Calvet’s ideas.
In the Winter School, the focus will be on these interventions.
Register for the Winter School by 25 January, 2023.
The Winter School is part of University of Turku’s EC2U collaboration. The University of Turku’s partners in the Winter School are the universities of Poitiers and Salamanca. Teachers, researchers and students from the universities of Coimbra, Jena, Pavia, Poitiers and Salamanca will also participate. The Winter School is an excellent opportunity to network with researchers and students in your field.
The Winter School is open to Finnish and foreign undergraduate and PhD students conducting their studies related to multilingualism at the EC2U partner universities. The presentations and the workshops at the Winter School aim to give the participants an understanding of these phenomena as well as concrete methods and ideas for carrying out individual research projects. It is possible to receive 5 ECTS by completing the Winter School.
The Winter School consists of:
- Common sessions (in English) and parallel sessions with presentations (in French and German)
- Workshops: the participants will have a chance to receive comments on their research papers (max. 10 pages) which will be discussed at workshop sessions. The paper can be a first version of a chapter for a master’s thesis or an article to be published. You can also propose a specific theme for a workshop. Deadline for sending a paper is January 31.
- A hands-on session on linguistic landscapes: a guided walk during which we pay close attention to specific linguistic features visible or audible in the city of Turku.
- A panel discussion
- Virtual sessions before and after the Winter School that will give the participants a clear idea of what to expect and a possibility to reflect upon what they have learned.
- Preparatory reading: distributed in Moodle for the accepted students.The call for the Winter School is ongoing, ending on January 25.
The application form is a short Webropol questionnaire:
https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/E94BA52BC0608717
In the Webropol questionnaire, please indicate whether
- you wish to give a presentation (give a preliminary title of your presentation) or whether
- you wish to participate in the workshop (submitting a paper; indicate the length of your paper and its’ title).
- You can also indicate if you have other wishes (for example if you wish to discuss a research idea).
The accepted students will receive a letter of acceptance and further information immediately after the application period closes.
If you wish to submit a paper for the workshop, please send it to Tiina Tuominiemi (timtuom@utu.fi) by January 31.
