Keynote speakers
Joana Duarte
is professor for educational research at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences of the University of Groningen with a special interest in multilingualism, diversity and inclusive education. Her research focusses on teachers’ professional development towards diversity and inclusion, language attitudes and didactics, global citizenship and multilingualism in education. For a detailed profile and publications see here.
Language-based inequity in education? – Affordances and challenges of translanguaging-based approaches
Due to the monolingual self-understanding of most modern nation-states, migration- and minority-induced multilingualism and the fluid language practices it triggers are not usually acknowledged as resources for learning within educational systems. This reinforces existing educational inequities. The term translanguaging (García, 2009) has been put forward as both a way of describing the flexible ways in which multilingual speakers draw upon their multiple languages to enhance their communicative potential and a pedagogical approach in which teachers and pupils use these practices for learning. More recently, Cenoz & Gorter (2021) have further developed the term “pedagogical translanguaging” to refer to a teaching and learning approach that strategically integrates students' diverse linguistic repertoires in the educational process. However, less research has been conducted on how translanguaging-based approaches can be used in mainstream education to enhance students’ learning, foster their socio-emotional development and potentially close the educational gap between monolingual and multilingual pupils. In addition, teachers often perceive translanguaging-based approaches to be too vague and idealistic (Ticheloven et al. 2021), so to what extent can these be successfully implemented? The talk will present recent research on the affordances and challenges of translanguaging-based approaches, focusing on interactional aspects (Dekker et al., 2023; Nap et al., 2023), attitudinal aspects (Dekker et al., 2021), policy-based aspects (Duarte, 2022) and on teachers’ professional development (Robinson-Jones & Duarte, 2023). Conclusions will be drawn on the affordances and challenges of translanguaging-based approaches in addressing educational inequity.
Viorica Marian
is a psycholinguist and cognitive scientist at Northwestern University in the USA, where she is the Sundin Endowed Professor of the Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Research Lab. Her research centers on the relationship between language and mind, with a focus on multilingualism and its consequences. Dr. Marian received her PhD in Psychology from Cornell University and previously served as Chair of the National Institutes of Health Study Section on Language and Communication and as Chair of the Northwestern University Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She is the recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2024 John P. McGovern Award, the Clarence Simon Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring, the University of Alaska Alumni of Achievement Award, and the Editor’s Award for best paper from JSLHR. Marian is the author of over 200 articles and her new popular science book “The Power of Language” is being translated into 12 languages and counting.
The Power of Language: How the Codes We Use to Think, Speak, and Live Transform Our Minds
Multilingualism has profound consequences for individuals and societies. Learning multiple languages changes not only how we use language, but also how we perceive the world, what we remember, how we learn, our creativity, decision making, and identity. I will present eye-tracking, mouse-tracking, and neuroimaging evidence showing that multiple languages continuously interact in the mind. I will conclude with a call for placing the study of language-mind interaction and multilingualism among the core areas of scientific investigation if we are to gain an accurate understanding of humanity’s potential.
Ad Backus
is Professor of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University. He works on multiculturalism, more specifically, on how it affects people's communication habits and their language use. He teaches about these topics in the BA and MA programs Online Culture and in the Research MA that Tilburg shares with Radboud University Nijmegen on Language and Communication. He is also one of the coordinators of that program. In his research, he works together with PhD students and colleagues in Tilburg and abroad, and is the editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism. His main scientific interest is in how to combine the many different academic disciplines that, often independently, contribute insights about multiculturalism, and how to translate that into his teaching.
Cognition and Sociality Shape Language Use: A Usage-Based Perspective on Contact Linguistics
Up to a point, we can probably say that nobody who studies multilingualism ever completely loses sight of both the social and the cognitive determinants of language use. Yet, the disciplines we work in govern choices of research questions, theoretical frameworks, and research designs that encourage us to focus on either social, cognitive or structural dimensions, with relative backgrounding of the other dimensions. As a result, we have complementary paradigms that each describe and explain aspects of multilingualism and that may well be complementary to each other, but an overarching abstract combination of theoretical insights is not so common; However, a usage-based perspective all but requires this combination. Empirically building on a range of studies I have been involved in over the past decades, on codeswitching, heritage languages, contact-induced change, multilingual acquisition, and multilingual identity, I will use this talk to sketch how such an overarching perspective could help shed light on what the different disciplinary and paradigmatic research traditions can do for each other. The prize would be the development of a more general account of multilingualism that does justice to both the cognitive and the social dimensions of language use at the same time. Structure, in this perspective, is the logical outcome of language use thus determined. In the end, I hope to contribute to a future research agenda for our field.