18th World Congress of Applied Linguistics: Epistemological Challenges in Applied Linguistics, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 23-28 2017

From the 23rd to the 28th of July 2017, the 18th World Congress of Applied Linguistics will be held in the 5-start Windsor Barra Hotel Convention Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The scientific theme for this year’s conference is “Innovation and epistemological challenges in applied linguistics”.  Details regarding the registration, travel, grants, accommodation, and the program can be found here. Check their Facebook page for program updates.

Call for Papers: Applied Linguistics in the New Millennium: Multiple Theories, Pathways, and Practices, Auckland, New Zealand, November 27-29 2017

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.

Oxonmoot 2017: Tolkien Society Annual Gathering, St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK, Sept. 21-24 2017

Each year, the Tolkien Society hosts a special gathering for Tolkien fans and scholars to meet and discuss the works of their favorite author.  Called Oxonmoot, this event has become a fixed institution amongst Tolkien enthusiasts since 1974.  This year, the gathering has been scheduled for the 21st to the 24th of September.  The site for the event is St. Antony’s College in Oxford, England.  If you are interested in taking part, follow this link for details regarding the program schedule and registration. Proposals for talks and papers are being accepted!

The program for this year is a work in progress, but it typically includes talks, quizzes, lectures, a silent auction, an art show, workshops, performances, papers, discussions, sales, singing, slideshows, costuming, gaming and celebrating. All of this is supplemented by continual eating, drinking and chatting! The weekend concludes with a visit to Tolkien’s grave on Sunday morning – a beautiful and moving end to the event.

Call for Panel Proposals: 2018 ANS Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, January 4-7 2018

Building on the great success of such events as our 2016 organized session on “Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and Horror” and the 2017 panel entitled “Onomastics Beyond Academia”, the ANS-EC is inviting proposals for new panels to be held during the 2018 annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

All ANS members are encouraged to submit proposals for a panel of papers on a specialized theme. The panel themes may address any area of onomastic research, theory, and/or application. Panels may contain between three to six original papers addressing a single theme. However, particular preference will be given to themes which address issues that have joint appeal to both names specialists and enthusiasts alike.

All proposals must include the following information:

  • The title of the panel
  • A summary abstract (max 500 words, not including references) describing the subject matter and the potential contribution of the proposed panel
  • The full name, affiliation, email address, and a professional biographical sketch (max. 50 words per person) for the Panel Coordinator, Panel Moderator, and Panel Presenters
  • The title and abstract (max. 200 words, not including references) for each paper to be presented in the panel

The official deadline for panel proposals is the 1st of June 2017. Please send panel proposals either as a PDF file or Word doc to ANS President, Dr. I. M. Nick (mavi.yaz AT web.de). For organizational purposes, be sure to include the codeword “ANS2018 PANEL” in the subject line of the email.

Panel Coordinators will be notified about possible acceptance on or about the 1st of July 2017. Panels that have been accepted for presentation will be required to submit a finalized description of their event for inclusion in the ANS and LSA Handbook in early October 2017.

Call For Papers: In the Name of History: The Name as a Historical Source, University of Sheffield, UK, Sept. 5 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.

Webinar: LinkedIn for Linguists (and Onomasticians!)

The LSA’s “Linguistics Beyond Academia” Special Interest Group invites you to join us for a professional development webinar focused on LinkedIn.

Friday, April 28, 1:00 – 2:00 PM US Eastern Time

Register for the webinar here.

Those of you who attended the “Onomastics Beyond Academia” panel at the ANS 2017 meeting will find this webinar very useful!

Linguists at all levels of training and all careers – undergraduates, graduate students, PhDs, postdocs, faculty, and professional linguists working in any field – are welcome. You do not need to be a member of the LSA or the SIG to attend, although members of the LSA will be given first priority in registration. Attendance will be capped at 100 attendees, so please sign up early!

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform and has become one of the most important ways to connect with past, current and potential colleagues, collaborators, employees, employers, mentors, subject matter experts and clients. Thus, the communication which takes place on LinkedIn is tremendously valuable for all linguists. However, many people misunderstand or underestimate LinkedIn as a tool, and it remains underused in the linguistics community. In this webinar, we bring a linguistic lens to the site and we convene expert linguists to talk about their experiences in using it!!

You will learn why and how to “join the conversation.”

The webinar will begin with a brief presentation from Anna Marie Trester (Career Linguist) with an overview of interactional practices such as sharing, connecting, referring, “following,” endorsing and discussing. We will then turn to focused discussion from linguists who are active users of the site: Alex Botti (WNYC) and Christopher Phipps (IBM) will share their insights and experiences. The conversation will be facilitated by Anastasia Nylund (Georgetown University).

Note: we will focus primarily on individual use of the site (not organizational or group pages), and use of features like JYMBE (jobs you may be interested in), the newsfeed, and search.

Come prepared with questions, or just listen and observe, but come prepared to think creatively about how to join the conversation!

Call for Papers: Ars Grammatica 2017, Mannheim, Germany, June 8-9 2017

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.

Call for Papers: 2nd International Conference on Language and Culture: Dirty, Repulsive, Unwanted, Poznan, Poland, September 18-19 2017

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.

CSSN: Canadian Society for the Study of Names, Toronto, Canada, May 27-28 2017

3061957824_c2b77fac23_mThe Canadian Society for the Study of Names (CSSN) / Société canadienne d’onomastique (SCO) will hold its annual meeting as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, May 27 and 28, 2017. The theme of the 2017 congress is: “The Next 150, On Indigenous Lands”.

Have you ever thought about the names of the places where you live? Or the first names of your neighbours? Or the names of things that you eat? The conference takes place over two days. About 15 papers are normally presented, 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion. Topics concern any aspects of names and naming. Presenters are normally from the fields of Linguistics, Geography, History, Anthropology, and other areas.

The preliminary program can be found here.