Linguistic Colloquium on Mixed Languages: Call for Papers

Linguistic Colloquium on Mixed Languages

University of Bremen

September 28-29, 2017

Call for Papers

Mixed languages have fascinated scholars for decades (e.g. Bakker & Mous 1994, Auer 1999, Matras & Bakker 2003, Meakins 2013) because they present an intriguing type of language contact. They arise in bilingual settings, often as markers of identity or as secret languages, and they combine parts from different language families or branches, showing unique splits that often challenge theories of genetic classification and contact-induced change.

The aim of this colloquium is to examine the current state of the theoretical and empirical debate on mixed languages. We welcome contributions that deal with any aspect of mixed language varieties, for example:
- descriptive and documentation approaches to mixed languages
- theoretical discussions on mixed languages, their origin, and development
- mixed languages in comparison to creoles and pidgins
- different types of language mixing practices

Invited speakers:
Peter Bakker (Aarhus University)
Katja Hannß (University of Cologne)
Yaron Matras (University of Manchester)
Marten Mous (Leiden University)

Please submit your abstracts by May 5, 2017 by email to mazzoli@uni-bremen.de. Please provide the title of the paper, name(s) of the author(s), academic title, and affiliation in the abstract. The abstracts should not exceed 500 words. Notification of acceptance can be expected by June 5, 2017. Papers will be given in English, and they should not exceed 30 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time.

The meeting is organized by the Postcolonial Language Studies research group as part of the Linguistic Colloquium series at the Institute for General and Applied Linguistics (IAAS), University of Bremen.

Important dates:
Submission deadline: May 5, 2017
Announcement of acceptance: June 5, 2017
Conference: September 28-29, 2017

Contact:
Maria Mazzoli mazzoli@uni-bremen.de
Eeva Sippola sippola@uni-bremen.de

Maria Mazzoli's fieldwork in Canada

Very soon Maria Mazzoli will leave Bremen for her field research in Canada in the context of her postdoctoral Bremen TRAC project. She will spend five months in Winnipeg and join the University of Manitoba - Institute for the Humanities as a research affiliate.

In collaboration with her host Dr. Nicole Rosen, Maria will work with Michif speakers on the structure of complex Michif stems: she will investigate verbal derivation and compositionality in the verb stem, and also productivity of derivational suffixes.

Michif is a Plains Cree - Metis French mixed language. It is spoken today by few people in some traditional Metis communities within the Metis homeland, which is a vast territory spanning from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes, including the three Canadian prairies provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) and parts of the Northwest Territories, plus the northern prairies of North Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota in the US.

While an affiliate at the University of Manitoba, Maria aims to combine the work with Metis Elders, fluent Michif speakers, with young Metis interested in deepen their knowledge of the language.

Figure. Distribution of Michif speakers and Michif varieties (source Statistics of Canada 2011).

Maria Mazzoli's participation in a workshop in Stockholm

Maria Mazzoli was invited to participate in the workshop Integration, Inclusion, Assimilation and Ghettoisation in a framework of Mobility at the University of Stockholm, on February 9-10.

She presented on her previous work about the linguistic needs of Portuguese migrants in Andorra, and language ideologies in Andorra.

The workshop was organized by Gabriele Iannàccaro and the Department of Romance and Classical Studies, as part of the European project MIME (Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe).

Workshop poster and program

 

Workshop participants

 

Language landscapes - Andorra

New publication by Kerstin Knopf

A new journal contribution by Kerstin Knopf (Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies) is now available!

Knopf, Kerstin. "Jindabyne and the Apology: Intercultural Relations, Violence, Ethics, and the Precarious State of Reconciliation in Australian Cinema." Zeitschrift für Australienstudien / Australian Studies Journal. 30 (2016): 61-88

The Australian Studies Journal is accessible online: click here.

New publication by Joanna Chojnicka

LGBTQs, Media and Culture in Europe 
Edited by Alexander Dhoest, Lukasz Szulc, Bart Eeckhout
Routledge, 2017

Including Joanna's chapter: "9. Contesting Hegemonic Gender and Sexuality Discourses on the Web: A Semiotic Analysis of Latvian and Polish LGBTQ and Feminist Blogs"

About the Book
Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the ‘global gay’, what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as blogs, social media and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality.

Review
"This collection addresses the Anglo-American bias in much LGBTQ media research and offers the reader a series of snapshots, both past and present, that detail how European LGBTQ people have used, and continue to engage with, media technologies, texts and practices. A must-read for anyone who is interested in work in this area." - Sharif Mowlabocus, University of Sussex

https://www.routledge.com/LGBTQs-Media-and-Culture-in-Europe/Dhoest-Szulc-Eeckhout-Dyer/p/book/9781138649477

Guest lecture: Dr. Nicole Perry, "Adventure on the South Seas: Christian Kracht's 'Imperium' and the Real August Engelhardt"

 English version below

Zeit und Ort: 17.01.2017 um 16:15 Uhr im GW2, Raum B3010

Titel des Gastvortrags: "Adventure on the South Seas: Christian Kracht's 'Imperium' and the Real August Engelhardt"

Christian Kracht’s 2012 blockbuster Imperium highlights Germany’s imperial legacy in the South Pacific and has awakened a new interest in the former German colonies of the South Pacific. His protagonist, the delicate but driven August Engelhardt, a character one could only believe to be a creation of fiction, is based on the founder of the ‘Coconut Cult’.

Kracht writes of a Germany driven by excess and greed, which he juxtaposes with Engelhardt and his desire for an alternative lifestyle. This presentation examines Kracht’s imperial critique and introduces the real August Engelhardt, writer of A Carefree Future (1898), advocate of a coconut diet and sun worship, whose lifestyle and person was in stark contrast to that of the Wilhelminian German of the late 19th Century.

Vortragende: Dr. Nicole Perry, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Nicole Perry is a Lecturer in German at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is also co-director of the Research Centre for Germanic Connections in New Zealand and the South Pacific. After completing her PhD at the University of Toronto in Germanic Languages and Literatures, Nicole was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna. She is currently a Lise Meitner Programme fellowship holder based at the University of Vienna for her project  ‘Performing Germanness, Reclaiming Aboriginality’, which discusses North American Indigenous reexaminations of the German ‘Indianer’ image. 

_______________________________________________________________

Where and when: January, 17th 2017 at 04:15 p.m. in GW2, B3010

Title of the Guest lecture: "Adventure on the South Seas: Christian Kracht's 'Imperium' and the Real August Engelhardt"

Christian Kracht’s 2012 blockbuster Imperium highlights Germany’s imperial legacy in the South Pacific and has awakened a new interest in the former German colonies of the South Pacific. His protagonist, the delicate but driven August Engelhardt, a character one could only believe to be a creation of fiction, is based on the founder of the ‘Coconut Cult’.

Kracht writes of a Germany driven by excess and greed, which he juxtaposes with Engelhardt and his desire for an alternative lifestyle. This presentation examines Kracht’s imperial critique and introduces the real August Engelhardt, writer of A Carefree Future (1898), advocate of a coconut diet and sun worship, whose lifestyle and person was in stark contrast to that of the Wilhelminian German of the late 19th Century.

Biographical brief Dr Nicole Perry, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Nicole Perry is a Lecturer in German at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is also co-director of the Research Centre for Germanic Connections in New Zealand and the South Pacific. After completing her PhD at the University of Toronto in Germanic Languages and Literatures, Nicole was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna. She is currently a Lise Meitner Programme fellowship holder based at the University of Vienna for her project  ‘Performing Germanness, Reclaiming Aboriginality’, which discusses North American Indigenous reexaminations of the German ‘Indianer’ image. 

New publication co-edited by Eeva Sippola with a contribution by Maria Mazzoli

Language Ideologies in Music – Emergent Socialities in the Age of Transnationalism
Edited by Eeva Sippola, Britta Schneider and Carsten Levisen
Language & Communication 52: 1-116. (January 2017)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309/52

This special issue, edited by Eeva Sippola (University of Bremen, Postcolonial Language Studies), Britta Schneider (FU Berlin) and Carten Levisen (Roskilde U), brings together researchers studying language ideologies in musical practices. The articles in the special issue explore how language, music, and social ties are co-construed in the age of transnationalism and examine globally distributed strands of music in diverse linguistic settings. Maria Mazzoli’s (University of Bremen, Postcolonial Language Studies) article about reggae and Nigerian Pidgin in Lagos, Nigeria, is to be found next to studies of reggae in Vanuatu, music in Jamaica, rap in the Nordic countries, pop in Russia, global country music, and choral singing in Trinidad. The results shed new light on local appropriations of music and language in transnational cultural spheres and the discursive processes that shape them.