Fall has been an exceptionally busy and productive time for everyone at MultiLing, and we are delighted to share with you some of our many events and achievements these last few months. We kicked off the semester with an honorary doctoral lecture by MultiLing’s long-time collaborator and friend, Professor Hirut Woldemariam. We are very proud of Hirut, and we would like once more to congratulate her with her University of Oslo’s honorary doctorate! MultiLing also organized the annual Einar Haugen lecture, which for the first time since the pandemic, was a physical (as well as online) event. As part of our PhD summer school, we hosted students from our INTPART partnership institutions in South Africa and the U.S. Furthermore, we organized the colloquium A workshop “What’s in a name” on labelling concepts and languages. MultiLing researchers have been very active, finalizing publications and presenting their research at international conferences.
This semester we were also excited to welcome the first batch of students in the international master’s program in multilingualism, from many different places and backgrounds. This MA has been in the making for years, so to finally see students on campus participating in various MultiLing events and lectures, is truly rewarding. However, everyone at MultiLing is concerned about the recent signals from the Norwegian government regarding the lack of financial support for basic research and international student exchange. The proposal of introducing tuition fees at Norwegian universities for international students outside of the EU and Switzerland, the lack of funding for research projects and Centers of Excellence, are very worrisome for all of us who every day see the benefits of research across borders. Therefore, MultiLing will continue to underscore the importance of funding for basic and applied research and international student exchanges, and we hope you will, too!
Happy reading! With our best regards, Unn Røyneland, Ingebjørg Tonne, and Anne Charlotte Lindblom-Rosén
MultiLing Leadership Team |
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| Linguistic Landscapes in South-East Asia: The Politics of Language and Public Signage. Edited by Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi. |
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| The Routledge Handbook of Language and the Global South/s.
Edited by Sinfree Makoni, Anna Kaiper-Marquez, Lorato Mokwena. Includes a chapter by Rafael Lomeu Gomes and Elizabeth Lanza. |
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| Children’s acquisition of negation in L1 Afrikaans.
Michelle Jennifer White, Frenette Southwood, and Kate Huddlestone. |
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| Production of Sentential Negation in German and Italian Non-fluent Aphasia. Valantis Fyndanis, Gabriele Miceli, Rita Capasso, Helene Killmer, Sonia Malefaki and Kleanthes K. Grohmann |
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Einar Haugen Lecture 2022 Marianne Gullberg
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We were very pleased to organize the first in-person Einar Haugen Lecture since the pandemic started. This year, Marianne Gullberg (Lund University Humanities Lab) gave a lecture entitled "More than just hand-waving: Gestures and meaning in multilingual language use" with the topic of gestures of multilingual speakers and what they mean. Marianne presented how the gestures speakers produce can be used as a tool to understand the speakers intended meanings, and how gestures can open a new window on to truly understand the nature of multilingualism. This hybrid lecture was attended by more than a hundred people and prompted a lively and interesting discussion at the end.
View the abstract of the lecture → |
Doctor Honoris Causa
Hirut Woldemariam
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On September 2, our dear friend and longtime collaborator of MultiLing, Professor Hirut Woldemariam (University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), was awarded the University of Oslo’s honorary doctorate. While in Oslo, Hirut gave her honorary doctoral lecture “Decolonizing and Reforming Higher Education in Ethiopia” at the venerable “Gamle festsal” lecture hall on September 1. More than a hundred people attended the lecture. She also gave a round table talk at MultiLing on language policies in Ethiopia.
Read more → |
Workshop
Language Development and role of input in less-studied languages |
In September, MultiLing's BABYLEARN project hosted a workshop on children’s language development in less-studied languages. Invited keynote speakers were Alex Cristia (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, ENS, CNRS) and Roger Mundry (Leibniz-ScienceCampus). The workshop covered topics such as Learning Urban Norwegian, dialectal Norwegian, and learning Norwegian as a second-language, and also children’s language development in Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, South America, pacific islands, Spanish heritage speakers in the US and the Netherlands. Not only did the workshop participants learn about how culture, policies, ideologies and traditions can shape parent-child interactions, but also how children might interact differently with the environment across languages and cultures and the role that environment beyond the nuclear family might have on child’s language development. We need to be aware that the tools, the measures and the assumptions reported on language development in so-called WEIRD societies might not apply to other cultures/languages/countries. We need to take a more holistic approach and be aware about the differences. And so, more research is needed in this area.
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MultiLing Summer School 2022 Communication and environmental justice: Sociocultural linguistic approaches |
From 12-16 September, MultiLing organized the Ph.D. Summer School on the topic of 'Communication and Environmental Justice: Sociocultural Linguistic Approaches.' The course brought together lecturers and Ph.D. students from around the world to explore how sociocultural linguists working in diverse areas are contributing a better understanding of how language and communication research can promote healthier and more just living and working environments in time of climate change. Over the course of an idea-packed week, participants and invited lecturers shared and discussed their research together to examine the connections between language, environment and social justice. Invited lecturers included Alastair Pennycook (MultiLing), Leonie Cornips (Maastricht University, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and Ana Deumert (University of Cape Town). Thank you to all who participated to make this yet another fantastic Ph.D. school at MultiLing!
Program and lecturers→ |
Colloquium A
“What’s in a name?” Labelling concepts and languages 2.0: Expanding the scenery |
On October 13-14 MultiLing held its annual colloquium A which was intended as a continuation of a workshop from November 2021. In this year's workshop, speakers discussed various issues of terminology and labeling and adressed questions such as To what extent do new labels/terminology refer to new theoretical concepts, to what extent do they overlap, and to what extent are they in tension with one another?, What does it take for a terminological or conceptual innovation to be theoretically useful?, and What does theoretical usefulness actually amount to? The workshop yielded thought provoking and fruitful discussions.
Program and speakers (in English) → |
Colloquium B Research ethics: traditional tracks and new technologies |
The aim of this Colloquium B workshop is to reflect on challenges – and solutions – related to researcher positionality and research ethics in previous and ongoing research. We wish to scrutinize the specific experiences and challenges associated with research on multilingualism from a cross-thematic angle. The main body of participants are researchers actively or previously involved in the Center’s research. Two keynote speakers are invited to shed light on specific aspects of research ethics; from our Scientific Advisory Board, Professor Sari Pietikäinen (University of Jyväskylä) and Professor Emeritus Charles Ess (Media Department, University of Oslo).
Program and speakers (in English) → |
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