The call for papers has been officially opened for one of the largest international conferences in Applied Linguistics to be held down under.  For the fifth year, this huge event is being sponsored by the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand (ALTAANZ), the University of Auckland, and the Applied Linguistics Association of New Zealand (ALANZ). Scheduled for the 27th to the 29th of November 2017, the theme for this year’s conference is “Applied Linguistics in the New Millennium: Multiple Theories, Pathways, and Practices.”  The formal call for papers as well as directions for abstract submissions may be found here. Abstract submission closes Monday 01 May, 2017.

The University of Sheffield will be holding a conference on historical onomastics on the 5th of September 2017.  In preparation for this event, a formal call for papers has been issued. The specific thematic focus of the conference is the use of names as historical sources. Interested researchers are encouraged to send in 300 word abstract proposals for 20 minute scientific presentations to James Chetwood [namesandhistory AT gmail.com].  The deadline for receipt of abstracts is the 25th of June 2017.

Names are a feature of all societies in all periods of history. We name people, places, pets, personal objects, planets, planes and political movements – any number of other things. The study of names has often focussed on their linguistic properties or their etymological origins. But names, and the way in which they are used, offer a great opportunity to find out about the society, culture and historical period to which they belong. They also allow us a glimpse into the everyday lives of the people who bore, chose and used them.

This conference will focus on names as historical sources. It will give scholars the chance to reflect on current approaches to how we study names and their use as a means of discovering more about the past.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

• Personal names, nicknames and bynames
• Place-names
• Name changes and pseudonyms
• Animal names
• Names in literature, film and television
• Names of ‘things’, such as personal objects, houses and products
• Names of groups, such as clans, ethnic groups and associations

Proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes are invited for any topic related to names as historical sources from any period.

From the 8th to the 9th of June 2017 in Mannheim, Germany, a special conference devoted to grammatical terminology in German will be held at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim.  Entitled “Ars Grammatica 2017”, this scientific gathering welcomes researchers from the branches of computational linguistics, theoretical linguistics, syntax, and lexicography.  The deadline for abstract submissions is the 15th of April 2017. More on this German language event can be found at the conference website.

Under the title “Grammatical terminology – content and methods”, paper should deal with the characteristics and properties of grammatical technical terms in the field, and the tension between content and methodological application:

• From a substantive point of view, it is important to conceive and use as exact definitions as possible of specialized terminology in order to be able to express linguistic phenomena and explanations precisely. This suggests, in particular, such scientific disciplines as challenges in which varying theories of theory, cognitive interests or subjective authors’ decisions lead to a non-uniform terminological inventory, which is even contradictory in individual cases.
• From a methodological point of view, it is necessary to develop sufficiently powerful and sustainable structures for the coding of domain-specific terminological systems. The spectrum ranges from methodically oriented specialized vocabularies, thesauri to knowledge networks and ontologies with appropriately modeled concepts and attributes.

An international comparative studies conference entitled “Language and Culture: Dirty, Repulsive, Unwanted” will be held from the 18th to the 19th of September in Poznan, Poland.  The conference is being conjointly sponsored by the Department of Comparative Culture Studies and the Institute of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University.  The purpose of the conference is to provide researchers an opportunity to present and discuss recent insights into the nexus between language, literature, and culture studies with regards to forbidden language and the language of the forbidden, the unwanted in lexicography and other spheres of communication, as well as taboo language in general.  The deadline for submission of an abstract proposal (max. 400 words) is May 31, 2017. The call for papers (in English) is here. More on this event can be found at this website.

From the 18th to the 19th of September 2017, an international conference on toponymy entitled “Toponyme – eine Standortbestimmung” will be held in Mainz, Germany, at the Academy of Sciences and Literature.  Scientific abstracts are currently being accepted on any area of toponymic research.  Paper proposals are especially welcome in one of the following areas: unofficial place names; the grammar of place names; strategies for (re)naming place names; the compilation and use of large toponymic datasets; the visualization and digitalization of place name data; the relationship between place names and cartography.  The deadline for abstracts is the 30th of April 2017. More information on this event can be found here.

The focus of the conference is to open up new perspectives for toponomic research, which are to flank the necessary traditional names lexography. In particular, new subjects, questions, perspectives and methods are to be developed and interfaces to post-biodiversity are to be explored, which can lead to further research projects. The conference is therefore aimed not only at representatives of linguistic name research but also for other linguistic disciplines (eg dialectology), historical and historical auxiliary sciences, archival and bibliology, geography, archeology.

An international conference on the history of Ibero-Romance languages will be held from the 19th to the 20th of October 2017 in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. “Coloquio Internacional sobre la Historia de los Lenguajes Iberorrománicos de Especialidad” or CIHLIE provides a scientific platform for researchers working within the areas of Discourse Analysis, Historical Linguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics, and Lexicography. The languages of scientific interest at this conference are Aragonese; Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Galician; Leonese; Occitan; Portuguese; Spanish. The call for abstracts ends on the 30th of April 2017. More on this event, including submission requirements, can be found at the CIHILE website.

The specific objectives of the Colloquium will be:

• Describe the dialogue as a way of transmitting knowledge between disciplines and subdisciplines, traditions and schools, scientists and lay people from a diachronic and synchronic perspective
• To discover, describe and investigate the dialogical genres that functioned as reference texts and determine the importance of these genres for the development of specialty languages
• Encourage diachronic research as an instrument for discovering and describing forms of oral imprinting related to the transmission of knowledge and the implantation of models and traditions of scientific exposition based on dialogue
• To investigate the history of the reception of certain theoretical treatises, of the specialized languages, the discursive traditions and textual models linked to them both by the scientists of the same language and culture as by the scientific community of other languages ​​and cultures
• Promote interest in specialized translation, as well as the problems that translators have encountered throughout the history of this activity and in the translation of texts of specialty of the past.
• To inquire into the paths taken by texts, models and terms – for example through translation, adaptation, etc. – and how they were adapted or modified when discussing specialized languages ​​in other languages ​​or in other scientific fields.