Serdecznie zapraszamy na seminarium pt. Language attitudes: What they are, why they matter, and how knowledge about them can be leveraged to promote social justice, które poprowadzi
Ruth Kircher z European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
w ramach projektu Next Generation PhDs – Innowacje, NAWA STER – Umiędzynarodowienie szkół doktorskich
Seminarium odbędzie się 11 marca 2025 r. o godzinie 10.00 w Instytucie Historii PAN (Rynek St. Miasta 31, Sala Kościuszkowska)
Description: All of us have language attitudes – and all our interactions are affected by our own language attitudes as well as those of the people around us. For instance, language attitudes influence the grades we receive at school, the jobs we get, and our housing opportunities. Language attitudes are thus intricately connected with key issues relating to social justice. In this lecture, you will learn what exactly language attitudes are, what determines them, and how wide-reaching their consequences really are for our lives. You will hear about three case studies: (1) social media representations of attitudes towards Spanish as a heritage language in the U.S. state of Florida, (2) adolescents’ attitudes towards French and English in the Canadian province of Quebec, and (3) parents’ attitudes towards childhood multilingualism in North America and the German district of Nordfriesland. These case studies will illustrate different facets of language attitudes, different ways of investigating them – and different ways in which knowledge about them can be leveraged to promote social justice. We will discuss how the promotion of social justice is linked not only to decisions at the macro-level (such as institutional or state-wide language policies) but also to actions at the micro-level (including our own interactions with others).
Bio: Ruth Kircher holds MA degrees from the University of Heidelberg and the University of Durham, as well as a PhD from the University of London. After completing a fellowship at McGill University in Montreal and working in British academia for several years, she decided to pursue a more research-focused career. She is now Principal Researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg and Affiliated Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research focuses on minority language communities in multilingual societies — with a particular interest in language attitudes and ideologies, language policy and planning at the societal level, as well as family language policies and intergenerational transmission.
Institution: ECMI sees human diversity as a European heritage and cultural pluralism as a great asset. Aiming to facilitate respect for diversity in all aspects of society, ECMI is committed to work for the improvement of the situation of Europe’s minorities through heightened awareness of minority rights and minority issues among all relevant actors. Realizing the immense scope of societal and global challenges of the 21st Century, ECMI’s specific purpose is to provide actors with new knowledge and tool-kits that empower and equip them to mitigate differences and exchange views through constructive dialogue about how to build a peaceful and diverse Europe.
Seminarium będzie prowadzone w języku angielskim.
