Language,
cultural policy and nation formation under
Willem I (1814-1830)
Royal
Flemish Academy of Belgium, Brussels, January 21, 2010
Organised bij
the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Universiteit Antwerpen,
with
support of the FWO-Vlaanderen, the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium
and the Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms.
Main organisers: Rik Vosters and Janneke Weijermars
This colloquium reunited scholars of linguistics, literature and
history from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg working on aspects
of 'United Kingdom of the Netherlands'. This event was the first
public meeting of the 'Werkgroep
Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden' aimed at interdisciplinary
collaboration (and exchange of knowledge) on the Low Countries between
1814 and 1830.
This colloquium was held in honour of Prof. dr. Roland Willemyns to
celebrate his 40-year career at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Colleagues from Belgium and abroad discussed case studies and
theoretical aspects of language contact, language change, language
history and language planning, always relating back to Willemyns's own
research and publications.
The plenary speakers were:
Hugo Baetens-Beardsmore (Brussel)
Jeroen Darquennes (Namur)
Jetje De Groof(Brussel)
Ana Deumert (Cape Town)
Joachim Gessinger(Potsdam)
Andrew Linn (Sheffield)
Klaus Mattheier (Heidelberg)
Miriam Meyerhoff (Edinburgh)
Gijsbert Rutten (Leiden)
Evie Tops (Brussel)
Jeanine Treffers-Daller (UWE Bristol)
Hans Van de Velde (Utrecht)
Wim Vandenbussche (Brussel)
Eline Vanhecke (Brussel)
Rik Vosters (Brussel)
Richard Watts (Bern)
This wis the third summer school organised by the Historical
Sociolinguistics
Network (HiSoN). It offered classes by:
Peter Trudgill (Agder, Norway) Language contact and
linguistic change in early post-Roman Britain: sociolinguistic insights
Laura Wright (Cambridge, UK) Historical
sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics: 18th c. printed ephemera
and the London upper working-class sociolect
Jeroen Darquennes (Namur, Belgium) Contact and Conflict along the Germanic-Romance language
border Ernst Håkon Jahr (Agder, Norway) The Arctic Pidgin Russenorsk
Nils Langer (Bristol, UK) Prescriptive Grammars and Linguistic Purism
Mark Janse (Gent, Belgium) Asia Minor Greek: borrowing, interference, and the mixed
language
debate
Gro-Renee Rambø (Agder, Norway) Scandinavian - Low German contact in the late Middle Ages
The interplay
between language planning and language variation in present-day Europe
is widely acknowledged. There is no shortage of case-studies that
compare national language policies or discuss the impact of European
language policy on the individual (both national and minority)
languages. When it comes to studying (and comparing) the historical
background of the current linguistic diversity in Europe, however, we
face a relatively barren field. Exceptions like Braunmüller
& Ferraresi 2004 or Rindler Schjerve & Vetter 2003 did
bring together a series of individual case studies on multilingualism
in European history, but as far as the search for common
characteristics, major shared trends across the continent and the
interaction between national language policies are concerned, much work
remains to be done.
Yet, we firmly believe that a sound understanding of the present-day
language -political debates in Europe can greatly benefit from a
solid 'historical-sociolinguistic' study, comparing language policies
in individual European states during a specific period in the past.
For the present workshop, we propose 5 papers on 5 different language
contact areas that underwent intense language planning during the
so-called 'long 19th century' (roughly 1794-1914), a time at which
Europe was no less than a language planning laboratory with a
great variety of language planning policies. All papers will be
structured along similar research questions, in order to allow for
maximal comparison. Issues to be addressed include:
ideological moitivations behind language planning measures, the
interplay of nationalism and language policy, the main actors, the main
policy measures and the domains of society affected, the short- and
long term effects of the policy measures, the 'legacy' of the 19th
century measures in present-day Europe. The convenors will edit
the contributions prior to the conference and add cross-references to
ensure the complementary character of the papers.
Contributors:
Wim Vandenbussche (Brussels) on Belgium.
Melanie Wagner (Luxembourg) on Luxembourg.
Stefaniya Ptashnyk (Tübingen) on Galicia and the Habsburg
Empire.
Andrew Linn (Sheffield) on Norway.
Jeroen Darquennes (Namur) on South Tirol.
Conference 'Language and
History,
Linguistics and Historiography'
School
of Modern Languages, University of Bristol, UK - April 2-4, 2009 Organised
by the University of Bristol and HiSoN, with support of the Arts and
Humanities
Research Council (AHRC).
This international conference explored the communalities and
differences
between the academic disciplines of social history and historical
sociolinguistics,
and explicitly aimed at stimulating interdisciplinary research.
Plenary speakers were:
Robert Evans (University of Oxford, UK)
Peter Trudgill (Agder University, Norway)
Tomasz Kamusella (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Juan Hernandez-Campoy (University of Murcia, Spain)
Brian Joseph (Ohio State University, USA)
More details are still available on the conference homepage.
2nd
HiSoN
Summer School on Historical Sociolinguistics
School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol, UK -
August
7-13, 2008
Co-organised
with the
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the University of Bristol
and
HiSoN. Main organiser: Dr. Nils Langer, University of
Bristol
The summer school aimed at exploring a number of issues relating to the
different
methods, intellectual premises, and disciplinary frameworks of pure
historians
and historical sociolinguists working on a range of European languages
and
historical periods.
It offered classes by both social historians interested in language
issues
and by historical sociolinguists, including:
Stephan Elspaß (Augsburg, Germany) Martin Klimke
(Washington,
USA / Heidelberg, Germany) Stephen Milner
(Manchester,
UK) Derek Offord
(Bristol,
UK) Mair Parry
(Bristol,
UK) Ian Press (St
Andrews,
UK)
Joseph Salmons (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA) Thomas Sokoll
(Hagen,
Germany) Joachim
Scharloth
(Zürich, Switzerland) Wim Vandenbussche
(Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
David Willis (Cambridge, UK)
This was the first summer school organised by the Historical
Sociolinguistics
Network (HISON). It offered classes by leading experts on modern and
historical sociolinguists, including:
Peter Trudgill
(Fribourg,
Switzerland)
Dennis Preston (Michigan, USA)
Ernst Håkon Jahr (Agder, Norway)
Kristine Horner (Leeds, UK)
Stephan Elspaß (Augsburg, Germany)
Kristin Killie (Tromsø, Norway)
Eleni Karantzola (Rhodes, Greece)
Agnete Nesse (Bodø / Bergen, Norway)
Workshop home
page: http://www.ichl2007.uqam.ca/en/ateliers.asp#15
This session on historical sociolinguistics focused on language use
from
a group that is traditionally underrepresented (or ignored) in
mainstream
studies and conferences on language history: those writers at the very
bottom
of the social ladder. In recent years, however, there has been an
increasing
interest among language historians of the (late) 18th and 19th century
in
the study of documents from the lower social classes, paupers and
working
class emigrants.
It is striking that these unschooled writers present us with a picture
of
language use that defeats many traditional accounts of standard
languages
at the time. Across language borders, it appears that this group had a
relationship
to language norms that was different from the small upper class layer
whose
language use has traditionally been the main basis for language
histories.
This session brought together original contributions on lower class
writing
from different languages and tried to convey a view on 18th and 19th
century
language history 'from below' (socially speaking). Recurring themes
included
the study of literacy, schooling practices and the evolving role of
language
norms for the creation of a specific social identity.
It consisted of the following papers:
France Martineau, University of Ottawa
Mind the gap : non standard use in French documents of the 18th and
19th
centuries.
Taru Nordlund, University of Helsinki
'The Common People.' Writing, and the Process of Literary Attainment in
Nineteenth-Century
Finland.
Lukas Pietsch, University of Hamburg
Back-waters of standardisation: Letter writing as a channel of
language
contact and change in Ireland
Wim
Vandenbussche,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Lower Class Writing from 19th Century Bruges.
Seminar
series
'Language contact, planning and change'
Queen Mary, University of London, March 2007
Funded by The School of Modern
Languages,
Queen Mary, University of London, the Centre for Linguistics of the
Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, and the QM Graduate School in the Humanities and
Social
Sciences
In these lectures specialists dealt with various
aspects
of language planning in 6 different regions: Flanders (Wim
Vandenbussche),
Norway (Andrew Linn), the Italian Dolomites (Jeroen Darquennes), Sweden
(Tommaso
Milani), Luxembourg (Kristine Horner) and Ireland (Hellen Kelly Holmes). All details can be found in this flyer.
Colloquium
'The Future of Historical Sociolinguistics'
Crowne Plaza Bruges, December 1-2, 2006
Funded by the
Vrije
Universiteit Brussel and the Research Foundation - Flanders
(FWO-Vlaanderen) Co-organised
with HiSoN,
the Research Centre on Multilingualism of the Katholieke Universiteit
Brussel
and the Dutch Department of the Universiteit Gent.
Conference home page: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~wvdbussc/conferences/hshome.html
At this one-day meeting on 'The Future of Historical
Sociolinguistics',
leading scholars in the domain shared their thoughts on possible future
prospects
for the discipline. Drawing on their personal research
experience,
all speakers addressed key research issues for the years to come.
The invited scholars were:
Prof. Dr. Terttu Nevalainen (Helsinki)
Prof. Dr. Rosita Rindler Schjerve (Wien)
Prof. Dr. Suzanne Romaine (Oxford)
Prof. Dr. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Leiden)
Prof. Dr. Peter Burke (Cambridge)
Prof. Dr. Ernst Håkon Jahr (Kristiansand)
Prof. Dr. Klaus Mattheier (Heidelberg)
Prof. Dr. Richard Watts (Bern) Top of page
Workshop
'Innovative approaches to the history of language planning and language
policy
in Europe'
Sociolinguistics Symposium 15
University of Limerick, July 8, 2006
Co-organised
with HiSoN
Workshop home
page: http://www.ul.ie/ss16/WS15.html
This workshop addressed the topics of language planning (both corpus
and
status planning) and language policy in various European locations
(Flanders,
East-Galicia, Gorizia-Gradisca, Lombardy ) during the 19th century, on
the
basis of original data-driven research. The contributions
focussed
on the matter of language choice and language prescription in the
official
domain (chanceries, law, administration, education), comparing language
legislation
with actual language use in archive documents. Ample attention
was
devoted to the methodological aspects of this type of research
(especially
concerning discourse analytical approaches) and to possible future
research
in this domain.
It consisted of the following papers:
Eline Vanhecke, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Written proof. Reviewing language policy and language choice in
19th-century
Flanders .
Stefaniya Ptashnyk, University of Heidelberg
Language policy of the Habsburg Empire and multilingualism in
East-Galicia
in the late 19th century
Sabine Archan, University of Vienna
Language and Power: Discourse practice in elementary education in
trilingual
Gorizia-Gradisca in the 19th century
Petra Hütter, University of Vienna
Aspects of the resistance in Habsburg Lombardy after the Vienna
Congress
– a critical study of discourse
Eva Vetter, University of Vienna
Analysing historical discourse –chances and risks of applying modern
approaches
to historical data
Rosita Rindler Schjerve, Eva Vetter, University of Vienna Diglossia and power –
and
beyond Top of page
Conference
'Language History from Below'
Linguistic variation in the Germanic Languages 1700-2000
University of Bristol, April 6-9, 2005
Conference home
page: http://www.bris.ac.uk/german/events/conferences/langconf.html
This conference dealt with alternative perspectives on the
historiography
of the Germanic languages in the last 300 years. Instead of
focussing
on standard or prestige varieties, it highlighted the importance of
non-prestigious
varieties and writers and of data which were largely ignored or
neglected
in language historiography, so far. A selection of articles from
the conference appeared in an edited volume with de Gruyter as Germanic language histories 'from below'
(1700-2000). Top of page
16. Tagung
des
Arbeitskreises 'Historische Stadtsprachenforschung'
Brugs Universitair Centrum, Bruges, October 8-11, 1998
Co-organised
with Roland
Willemyns
This annual meeting of
the
international 'Arbeitskreis Historische Stadtsprachenforschung' brought together some 50 scholars
working
on historical language variation in town contexts from all over
Europe.
The proceedings of the meeting were published as
Bister-Broosen, H. (ed.). 1999. Beiträge
zur historischen Stadtsprachenforschung. Wien: Praesens. Top of page
Prof. dr. Wim Vandenbussche
Vrije Universiteit Brussel | Centrum voor linguïstiek | Pleinlaan
2
| B-1050 Brussel | Belgium
Tel.: +32 (0)2 629.26.59 | Fax: +32 (0)2 629.36.84 | wvdbussc@vub.ac.be