MIC Symposium 2024

Multiple Perspectives on Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication

October 17, 2024- October 18, 2024

Featuring

Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow), Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh), Guofang Li (University of British Columbia), & Michael Newman (Queens College)

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Format

The event consists of a lecture in the morning and two lectures following in the afternoon, featuring Alison Phipps (Loredana Polezzi, chair), Guofang Li (Yi Wang, chair), and Antonella Sorace (Jiwon Hwang, chair), respectively on Thursday, Oct. 17. On the next day, Friday, Oct. 18, the event involves one lecture featuring Michael Newman (Joy Janzen, chair).

For each of the presentations, there is a chair/discussant, who will introduce the speaker, provide a brief response after the presentation, and moderate audience Q&A. Each lecture is allocated 45-50 minutes and is followed by a 15-minute discussion period.

Time & Location

Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, 9:30 am-5:00 pm

Talk	Presenter	Chair/Discussant	Time	Location	Watch Video
Talk I	Alison Phipps	Loredana Polezzi	9:45am-11:00am	Wang Lecture Hall #2	Watch Video
Talk II	Guofang Li	Yi Wang	2:00pm-3:15pm	Wang Lecture Hall #2	Watch Video
Talk III	Antonella Sorace	Jiwon Hwang	3:45pm-5:00pm	Wang Lecture Hall #2	Watch Video

Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, 11:00 am-12:15 pm

Talk	Presenter	Chair/Discussant	Time	Location	Watch Video
Talk IV	Michael Newman	Joy Janzen	11:00am-12:15pm	Wang Center Room 301	Watch Video

If you need special accommodation, please contact chikako.nakamura@stonybrook.edu

Alison Phipps

University of Glasgow

Alison Phipps is UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow and Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies. She was De Carle Distinguished Visiting Professor at Otago University, Aotearoa New Zealand 2019-2020, Thinker in Residence at the EU Hawke Centre, University of South Australia in 2016, Visiting Professor at Auckland University of Technology, and Principal Investigator for AHRC Large Grant ‘Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the body, law, and the state’; for Cultures of Sustainable Peace, and is now co-Director of the Global Challenge Research Fund South-South Migration Hub. She is an Ambassador for the Scottish Refugee Council. She received an OBE in 2012 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2023. She is an academic, activist, educator and published poet and a member of the Iona Community.

Enabling Environments, Fugitive Spaces, and Restorative Practices for Intercultural Dialogue and Linguistic Justice:

The macro conditions for intercultural dialogue and peace building worldwide are not favourable. The processes and structures for cultural diplomacy, for sustaining cultural and linguistic rights are eroded and the institutions proposing global goals (Sustainable development goals) are reporting the failure to make progress in the wake of escalating violence, genocidal conditions in some regions and the Covid 19 pandemic. For institutions which aim to sustain intercultural dialogue and peace, and to protect Human Rights these are difficult times. How to live and how to language in such circumstances when the macro, meso and micro structures seem inadequate at best?

In this lecture I will consider the macro conditions and introduce the work I have undertaken in 2020-2023 with UNESCO and UNCHR and with UNRISD on re-thinking what makes for enabling environments for intercultural dialogue, and for languages as critical constituent parts of these dialogues.

I will then turn to the level of context and bring forward work undertaken to create enabling environments with migrant in the global south, both considering the embodiment of resilience and refuge and also the work with fragile, meso-level institutions from Morocco to Mexico; Ghana to Gaza; Zimbabwe to Aotearoa in order to sustain and protect cultural and linguistic rights.

In so doing I will offer up methodological approaches, including affective methods, which have used multilingualism as an enabler of intercultural dialogue and as conflict transformational research methodology. Practice-led approaches which are restorative, as opposed to extractive are at the core of my work, internationally as academic, activist and also as artist and I’ll offer some examples of how these work.

Finally, I’ll speak of what it takes, to live with war, loss and grief, and to ‘stay’ as Haraway says, with the trouble. This lecture will use story and some drama to enact the ways in which restorative realities can be strengthened and en-joy-ed.

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Antonella Sorace

University of Edinburgh

Antonella Sorace is Professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at University College London. She is internationally known and has published widely on gradience in natural language and bilingualism across the lifespan, where she brings together methods from linguistics, experimental psychology, and cognitive science. She is also committed to bringing research on bilingualism to people in different sectors of society: she is the founding director of Bilingualism Matters (www.bilingualism-matters.org), a non-profit public engagement organisation which currently has a large international network in four different continents.

The ecology of L2 learning and L1 change in bilingualism:

Recent research on the phenomenon of first-generation ‘attrition’ has shown that a speaker’s first language (L1) changes in selective ways as a result of learning a second language (L2). The question is whether there is a relationship between openness of the L1 to change and level of L2 attainment, as research shows that the aspects of L1 grammar affected by change are the ones that remain variable even in highly proficient L2 speakers of the same language. Four provisional generalisations are possible at this stage: first, we should treat L1 grammatical changes as a natural and predictable consequence of language contact, in the bilingual brain and then in multilingual communities; second, understanding the big picture requires serious consideration of individual differences and of variation in the bilingual experience; third, we need to discontinue the use of ‘native monolingual speakers’ as a point of reference, both in research and in society; fourth, we need more interdisciplinary research on different aspects of child and adult bilingualism that combines the insights of linguistic, cognitive and social models.

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Guofang Li

University of British Columbia

Dr. Guofang Li is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth, University of British Columbia. Her research interests span longitudinal studies of bilingualism, new literacies and technology-enhanced language teaching, language teacher education, and language and educational policies in globalized contexts. Li’s recent works include Handbook on Promoting Equity in Education for Inclusive Systems and Societies (2024, Routledge), Superdiversity and Teacher Education (2021, Routledge), Languages, Identities, Power and Cross-Cultural Pedagogies in Transnational Literacy Education (2019, SFLEP), and Educating Chinese-heritage Students in the Global-Local Nexus: Identities, Challenges, and Opportunities (2017, Routledge).

Monolingual Habitus Reproduction and Multilingual Children’s Monolingual Becoming:

How do multilingual learners become monolingual in multilingual societies? In this presentation, I will first illustrate the complex workings of monolingual reproduction by highlighting the power of language ideologies and habitus in the context of globalization and superdiversity. I will then use data from several mixed-methods studies on mainstream teachers, afterschool reading programs, and multilingual families’ language ideologies and practices to illustrate how the overlooked and invisible monolingual habitus operates across multiple home, school, and afterschool program spaces and shapes multilingual students’ monolingual becoming in superdiverse schools and communities. I conclude with implications for teacher, parent, and community education and call for concerted efforts to dismantle the cycle of monolingual reproduction for a socially and linguistically just future for multilingual learners.

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Michael Newman

Queens College

Michael Newman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders at Queens College/CUNY. His research focuses on the sociolinguistics of immigration in New York and Barcelona. He is the author of articles in Language Variation and Change, Language in Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics, American Speech, and other journals as well as three books including New York City English, part of the DeGruyter’s English Dialects series.

Language accent and race in the history of New York City English:

When in contact languages exchange features and “mutations” accelerate with new language acquisition (Mufwene’s 2001). For New York City English (NYCE) changing forms of racialization and other intercommunal relationships have historically structured those contacts. In the colonial period, NYCE formed with limited Lenape and Dutch features due to conflicts with the two conquered peoples, one racialized and eliminated, the other eventually absorbed. Much later, less extreme racialization of Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants permitted entry of systemic exogenous features but fomented dialect-wide linguistic stigma (Bonfiglio 2002). By the mid 20th century even endogenous features came to represent deficient Americanness through New Yorkers’ perceived insufficient Whiteness. More recent multiracial immigration occurs under new and contradictory racialization schemes. Features brought by African Americans and immigrants— particularly Latinos—have created hierarchies of covert and overt prestige that mirror this complexity. With rising cosmopolitanism, stigma has largely vanished, yet traditional NYCE features are receding.

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Events

See pagesinterviews
See pagessymposia
- MIC Symposium 2024
- MIC@10 - Faculty Research Forum
See pagesworkshops

Events

See pagesinterviews
See pagessymposia
- MIC Symposium 2024
- MIC@10 - Faculty Research Forum
See pagesworkshops