Plenary speakers

Annick De Houwer
Harmonious Bilingualism Network

Supporting bilinguals’ well-being: A wish list for applied linguistics research in today’s diverse world

This presentation is firmly rooted in a social justice perspective and goes on the assumption that applied linguists ultimately have a moral obligation to serve that perspective. In today’s world, with so many people on the move, needing to learn and use several languages is of utmost concern and importance to many. Both emergent and expert bilingualism are thus very frequent, and need to be studied even more than they already are, not only in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, but also in applied linguistics, including second language acquisition studies. Specifically, because they are very under-represented groups in any kind of applied linguistics research, we need an increased focus on the communicative needs and well-being of (1) bilingual and emergent bilingual preschoolers and (2) newly arrived immigrants, including returnees.

https://www.habilnet.org/members/?accordion=1&item=1

Marcus Callies
University of Bremen

Teaching World Englishes at the interface of linguistics, language education and classroom practice

The worldwide spread and diversification of the English language, and the large number of people who learn and speak English as a second or foreign language, has implications for the adequate coverage and integration of language variation in the curriculum for future English language teachers. Despite the persistent, exclusive exonormative orientation towards standard British and American English in EFL teaching contexts, monolingual, inner-circle native speakers (and the corresponding cultural norms) are no longer the (only) adequate target interlocutors for today’s learners. The linguistic plurality of the varieties and functions of English should be reflected in English-language curricula, teaching materials and classrooms if students are to be educated for successful global communication.

While we are witnessing the first signs of a paradigm shift towards Global Englishes Language Teaching (Rose & Galloway 2019) and Teaching English as an International Language (Rose et al. 2020, Callies et al. 2022), the pedagogical implications of the globalization of English are rarely implemented in the curricula for the teaching of English linguistics. Moreover, students in teacher training programs often report a perceived fragmentation of disciplines and disciplinary knowledge. They tend to question the relevance of specific disciplinary content knowledge for their teaching career and their actual teaching practice. This also applies to English linguistics.

In this talk I report on an innovative teaching model at the interface of English linguistics, language education and classroom practice that introduces the linguistics of World Englishes into the curriculum for future teachers of English at a university in the northwest of Germany. During the course of one semester, teacher students learn about World Englishes and develop small teaching projects on selected varieties of English for the classroom which are then implemented in a subsequent practical phase at local schools. The teaching model aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice and promotes an awareness of the diversity of Englishes, increases exposure to such diversity, and helps future teachers to develop an awareness of the pedagogical implications of global spread of English to make informed classroom decisions.

I will also argue that the specific needs and issues that the teaching model addresses are to a large extent relevant for other pluricentric languages such as Spanish that are taught as school subjects in secondary education.

References

Callies, M., Hehner, S., Meer, P. & Westphal, M. (Eds.). (2022). Glocalising Teaching English as an International Language: New perspectives for teaching and teacher education in Germany. London und New York: Routledge.

Rose, H. & Galloway, N. (2019). Global Englishes for Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, H., Syrbe, M., Montakantiwong, A. & Funada, N. (2020). Global TESOL for the 21st Century: Teaching English in a Changing World. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

https://www.callies.uni-bremen.de/

Victoria Guillén Nieto
University of Alicante

Hate speech: from the rally to the social media platform

An overview of the new legal and linguistic problems raised by digital hate

The dissemination of hateful messages had long existed before the internet, especially in the shape of posters, pamphlets and hate speech rallies. Some well-known cases in US jurisprudence involving hate speech rallies are, for instance, Terminiello v Chicago (1949), Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), National Socialist party v Skokie (1977) and Virginia v Black (2003). With the advent of new technologies, hate advocators have new powerful tools – for example, websites and social media platforms (Banaji & Bhat 2022) – to disseminate, advocate, promote and incite hatred towards members of protected groups on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation and disability. As a result, digital hate (Udupa, Gagliardone & Hervik 2021) has raised new legal and linguistic problems related to the dissemination of hateful messages and incitement to hatred. This talk offers an overview of the new legal and linguistic problems raised by the digital medium compared to the non-digital medium, among them the transnational nature of hate speech, the questioned authorship of digital hate, the discontinuity of hateful messages spread through the internet, the illocutionary-perlocutionary link in digital hate, and the controversy surrounding the ῾immediacy testʼ (Brandenburg v Ohio 1969) in US law. The discussion is illustrated through actual cases of non-digital and digital hate.

References

Banaji, Shakuntala & Ramnath Bhat. (2022). Social media and hate. Routledge.

Udupa Sahana, Iginio Gagliardone & Peter Hervik (Eds.). (2021). Digital hate. The global conjuncture of extreme speech. Indiana University Press.

https://cvnet.cpd.ua.es/curriculum-breve/en/guillen-nieto-victoria/5340