EAST LANSING, Mich. - Sociolinguists from around the world will gather Oct. 5-8 at Michigan State University's Kellogg Center to explore trends and implications in language and society, including such applied areas as language and education.
The conference will feature some of the more prominent individuals in the study of language, including: William Lobov, University of Pennsylvania, a leading researcher in language variation and change; John Baugh and John Rickford, Stanford University, researchers in African American English; Debbie Shiffrin, Georgetown University, an authority on conversational interaction; and Gregory Guy, York University, Toronto, a specialist in phonological variation in language.
"This will be a dynamic gathering of people who care about language variation," says Dennis Preston, conference host and professor of linguistics at MSU.
The conference theme is "The Future of the Art." It will address many aspects of how language and culture and society are related all over the world. Topics include "Linguistic diversity in the workplace: How regional accent affects employment decisions," "From Poetry to Rap: Rhetorical Discourse Analyses of Tupac Shakur's Lyrics," "Having It All In Acadian French," "Are Hungarian Men More Standard Than Women?" and others.
NWAV, according to Preston, is an unorganized, locally hosted gathering of sociolinguists. The group has met annually for the past 29 years. It was first organized by Roger Shuy, Georgetown University, to offer researchers in the field opportunities to showcase their work, explore new avenues of research and develop research collaborations.
NWAV participants have been especially active in responding to such linguistically engaging public issues as "Ebonics," and they have set new standards for the investigation of language change. Linguistics researchers connected with NWAV have explored language changes in the ancient past, and they continue to investigate the dynamics of social factors such as age, gender, region and status in on-going linguistic change.
"We get together each year to research and discuss the relationships between linguistic and social facts," adds Preston. What makes it exciting is that "these folks are some of the world's most prestigious linguists and language researchers. It will be a blast."
For more information, contact Dennis Preston at (517) 353-0740.