We are happy to announce the International workshop ‘Advancing code-switching research’, which will take place on 6-7 October 2022 at the University of Vigo.
The conference is organised by members of the Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (LVTC) research group at the University of Vigo.
A fascinating human capacity is code-switching: the ability of multilinguals to integrate elements from the languages they speak into a conversation or into a single utterance. There is a wealth of literature on code-switching from different disciplines, from (socio)linguistics to cognitive neuroscience. However, there is an urgency for genuine interdisciplinary work that brings together the insights from different approaches (e.g. language documentation, sociolinguistics, phonetics, morphosyntax, psycho/neuro-linguistics) to identify which aspects of code-switching can be addressed systematically as a tendency across communities and individuals, and which aspects are specific to certain multilingual ecologies. The characterization of the complexity of the multilingual language experience has been missing from most of the literature until recently. Thus, the field is currently at a critical juncture at which meaningful interdisciplinary work can be carried out to shed light on code-switching and the multilingual mind, while allowing cross-fertilization from different disciplines. This workshop will be a unique opportunity to start discussing the steps that must be taken to reach a unified framework.
Workshop structure
The workshop has two parts. In the mornings, we will have a series of lectures addressed to graduate students, although registration is open to anyone who may be interested. In the afternoon, we will have two forum discussion sessions on two key topics in multilingualism / code switching research.
Sponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vicerreitoría de Investigación e Transferencia, the Consello Social, the Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (LVTC) research group, the Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa, Francesa e Alemá (FIFA) and the PhD programme in Advanced English Studies (IDAES).
