KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Embedded Files
Dr. Karina Firkavičiūtė is Head of the Lithuanian Karaim Association of Culture and a civil servant of the EU Research Executive Agency. Karina is an associate professor in Humanities, musicologist, a member of the Lithuanian Composers' Union, and a master of Interdisciplinary European Studies. In 1995-1996 studied in Germany on a DAAD scholarship. She taught at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, Vilnius and Pedagogical Universities, was Director of the Lithuanian Institute, Education and Science Attaché at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Lithuania to the EU in Brussels, and was an employee of the European Commission's Directorate for Research. She speaks 8 languages and is one of only 30 people in the world who still speak her native Karaim language.
Her research interests include the musical cultures of the Eastern world, the world of national minorities, and especially everything related to the Karaim culture, music, history, religion and heritage. She is the author and compiler of several books on the Karaim music and cultural heritage, the author of numerous articles, the initiator, author and implementer of many projects aimed at preserving and promoting Karaim cultural heritage and especially the language, and the translator of the Karaim literary heritage from Karaim into other languages.
She edited, translated and compiled the anthology of Karaim poetry “Čypčychlej Učma Trochka.” Lietuva karajlarnyn jyrlary (1997, J. Savičius Prize), compiled and published the Karaim Calendar 2001-2051 (2001); co-editor of the publications “wentieth Century Music in the View of Musicology" (2001) and “Bir kiuń ėdi” (2015). Author of the book “Życie w pieśni karaimskiej = Life in Karaim songs = Tirlik karaj jyrlarynda” (2016), compiler of the e-publication “Karaim language in use”. Together with Halina Kobeckaite, she translated Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince” into Karaim language (“Kiči Bijčiek”, published by Edition Tintenfass 2018).
For her contribution to the promotion of Karaim culture, she has received the awards from the Department of National Minorities (2016, 2019), the Municipal Association's Krivūle (2022), and the State award - the Order of Merit for Lithuania medal (2022).
Karina Firkavičiūtė. Karaim language. Challenges to survive (abstract)
Karaim is a Turkic West Kipchak group language that reached Lithuania together with the Karaim community in the 14th century and ever since was preserved, used by the Karaims and still is spoken today exclusively in Lithuania by approximately 30 people in the community of about 200 persons. The native speakers are aging (the youngest is 25 now), and so all kind of questions arise – what is next? What can be done about it? Is a feeling of worry productive enough for now or for later?
The paper is offering an overview of the Karaim language’ state-of-the-art, its research, and reflects on it from its usage perspectives in a context of the general history of Karaim community in Lithuania. Activities for the language retention will also be presented here, as well as examples of Karaim language in various formats (speaking, writing, singing). Karaims in Lithuania themselves have always been very conscious about their native language and its challenges, and have greatly contributed to preserving the language for future generations.
Even if the Karaim language is listed on the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger and is actually on the verge of extinction, the author is confident there is still hope for Karaim to survive and continue to be used in its various, written and oral, forms. As the Karaim proverb says – ‘Az ajtma, kieriakli kylma’ (Talking is not enough, action is needed).
Dr. Jūratė Ruzaitė is Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, Literary and Translation Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Bergen, Norway. She has rich experience in (inter)national research projects, including a national project (Semantika-2, 2018-2019), which developed software for automatic detection of offensive online comments in Lithuanian. She is also an associate editor of the Lithuanian Applied Linguistics Journal, a board member of the Lithuanian Association of Applied Linguistics, and a member of several associations, including the International Language and Law Association. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language and ideology, hate speech, propaganda and disinformation.
Jūratė Ruzaitė. These are not just words: Hate speech, propaganda, and novel words for old prejudices (abstract)
As internet discourse becomes increasingly global, understanding how foreign language resources contribute to offensive language and discriminatory discourses can help in understanding the dynamic interplay between language, culture, and social attitudes towards minority groups. This talk explores a rarely studied intersection: the role of neologisms formed from foreign language elements in online abusive content, local discriminatory practices, and the global influence of propaganda.
The presentation focuses on how linguistic diversity – often viewed as a marker of inclusivity and cultural exchange – can be weaponized to reinforce intolerance. By examining neologisms made from foreign language elements, this study reveals how language evolves in response to societal changes and how it perpetuates power structures through new linguistic forms. It uncovers how foreign-language borrowings are used in xenophobic, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory narratives, intensifying the impact of discriminatory narratives in online discourse.
Drawing on a corpus of internet comments from Lithuanian news platforms, this talk analyses how neologisms are coined using foreign language resources, which foreign languages are used, and how these forms are integrated into hostile discourses targeting groups protected under Lithuanian hate speech laws. It explores how such novel forms serve as rhetorical strategies to increase emotional or derogatory impact, invoke stereotypes tied to specific sociocultural backgrounds, and reinforce group solidarity among commenters, beyond simply conveying aggression.
It is argued that pejorative neologisms reveal underlying societal tensions regarding minority groups. Novel terms such as ‘gayropa’ are not only linguistic innovations but also cultural markers of resistance against marginalised groups, delegitimizing their identities and reflecting reactionary attitudes towards human rights movements in Europe.
Johan Sandberg McGuinne is a South Saami and Scottish Gaelic poet, traditional yoik singer, writer, literary scholar and language activist. He works as a teacher and translator in Lïkssjuo (Lycksele), Swedish Sápmi, where he is also based. He is currently serving as the president of Tjállegoahte, the Saami Writers' Centre in Sweden, and as the Regional Representative for Sápmi in the Swedish Writers’ Union. In addition, he is a member of the Swedish Library Council, which serves as an expert body and advisor to the board of the Swedish Writers’ Union on library matters.
Johan Sandberg McGuinne. From Stoere Vaerie to Ubmejen jiännuo - Traditional Yoiking as a Tool in Saami Language Revitalisation (abstract)
This presentation will give a brief introduction into Saami culture, and the Saami people, before moving on to talking primarily about Saami traditional singing, known as yoiking. Yoiking constitutes the oldest musical tradition in all of Europe and was described by the first Saami writer Juhan Tuuri as an "embodied way of remembering". In addition, yoiks continue to preserve both Saami epistemologies, as well as to strengthen the language in our communities as well as our classrooms and have thus come to be seen as one of the most important methods for language and culture revitalisation.
In this presentation, I posit that the use of yoiking can function both as a uniting, decolonial force for young and old Saami alike, as well as a powerful tool in the ongoing language revitalisation process within the Saami homelands. I aim to show this by drawing on examples from both the classroom and the contemporary music scene in Sápmi.
Dr. John W. Schwieter is professor of psychology, linguistics, and Spanish at Wilfrid Laurier University and adjunct professor of linguistics at McMaster University, both in Canada. He is the director of the Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Cognition research lab and Bilingualism Matters @ Laurier. He has held invited appointments at the University of Greenwich and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dr. Schwieter’s research interests include cognitive and neuroscientific approaches to multilingualism and language acquisition; translation, interpreting, and cognition; and second language teaching and learning. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters. Among the 23 books he has authored or edited are: Understanding multilingualism: An introduction (Wiley); The cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism (CUP); and The Cambridge handbook of working memory and language (CUP).
Dr. Schwieter is currently Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Ampersand: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Sciencesand Bilingualism, Editor of Cambridge Elements in Second Language Acquisition, and Executive Editor of John Benjamin’s Bilingual Processing and Acquisition book series.
He is currently working on research examining how bilinguals mentally control their languages and whether this ability affects other cognitive domains and skills.
John W. Schwieter. The bilingual mental lexicon, language switching, and cognitive effects (abstract)
In this talk, we first explore how bilinguals manage their mental lexicon—a dynamic network encompassing words, meanings, and their grammatical properties. Because bilinguals can often name an object in more than one language (e.g., a Spanish-Czech speaker may call a cat either a gato or kočka), this multiple-word-to-one-concept mapping, along with the consistent finding that bilinguals’ languages are constantly mentally active, appear to have important implications for cognition and the brain. We will then look at how “managing” the bilingual mental lexicon relies on executive functions (EFs), i.e., the set of mental processes (e.g., working memory, cognitive flexibility, attention, and inhibition control) that help to regulate thoughts, behaviors, actions, and goals. Language control is an EF which helps bilinguals to choose the right word in the right language, to organize linguistic processes, and to switch between their languages.
We then transition to the notion that because of the parallel activation and ongoing mental competition between languages, bilinguals may demonstrate advantages in some EFs that are not observed among monolinguals. However, other studies fail to find advantages. Although the debate is ongoing, it is clear that the spectrum of individual differences, bilingual experiences, language practices, among other factors, make it challenging to have a full understanding. As a case in point, we will look at some recent behavioral, EEG, and fMRI studies by colleagues and I which reveal how language switching, emotional priming, and genetic markers influence two specific EFs in bilinguals: cognitive control and decision-making. In all, the talk offers insights into how bilingualism and the unique language practice of switching between languages has implications that extend into other cognitive domains.
Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann (DPhil Oxford; PhD Cambridge, titular) is listed among Australia's top 30 'living legends of research' by The Australian newspaper (2024). He received the Rubinlicht Prize for his outstanding contribution to Yiddish scholarship in 2023. He is the Chair of the Jury for the Jeonju International Awards for Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage. He is the author of Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2020), the seminal bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli – A Beautiful Language; Am Oved, 2008), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 多源造词研究 (A Study of Multisourced Neologization; East China Normal University Press, 2021), three chapters of the Israeli Tingo (Keren, 2011) and Engaging – A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property (2015). He is a co-author of the first online Dictionary of the Barngarla Aboriginal Language (2018), and the Barngarla trilogy: (1) Barngarlidhi Manoo ('Speaking Barngarla Together'): Barngarla Alphabet & Picture Book, 2019; (2) Mangiri Yarda ('Healthy Country'): Barngarla Wellbeing and Nature, 2021; and (3) Wardlada Mardinidhi ('Bush Healing'): Barngarla Plant Medicines, 2023. He is the editor of Burning Issues in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (2012), Jewish Language Contact (2014), a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and the co-editor of Endangered Words, Signs of Revival (2014).
Professor Zuckermann was elected fellow of the Academy of Oriental Scholars (Shanghai) in 2011 and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in 2014. He was President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies in 2017-2023, President of AustraLex in 2013-2015, Chief Investigator in an NHMRC research project assessing language revival and mental health in 2017-2021, Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in 2007–2011, and Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College Cambridge in 2000-2004. He has been an elected board member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL). He has been Consultant and Expert Witness in (forensic) linguistics, (corpus) lexicography and trademarks in court cases all over the globe. Professor Zuckermann is the founder of Revivalistics, a new global, comparative, trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration. On 14 September 2011 he launched, with the Barngarla Aboriginal communities of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, the reclamation of the Barngarla language. He has been closely involved with many other language revivals in Australia (e.g. Bayoongoo, Western Australia, and Nharangga, South Australia) and all over the globe.
Zuckermann is Professor (Level E) at Flinders University (Adelaide), Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University (Sydney) and Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Vermont, USA) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). He has taught at the University of Adelaide (2011-2024), University of Queensland (2006-2011), University of Cambridge, National University of Singapore, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, East China Normal University, Shanghai International Studies University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Miami. He has been Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University; Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center, Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Institute for Advanced Study, La Trobe University (Melbourne); Mahidol University (Bangkok); and Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo). He has been Denise Skinner Scholar at St Hugh’s College Oxford, Scatcherd European Scholar at the University of Oxford, and scholar at the United World College of the Adriatic (Italy). His MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Language Revival: Securing the Future of Endangered Languages, has attracted 20,000 learners from 190 countries (speakers of hundreds of distinct languages):
https://www.edx.org/course/language-revival-securing-future-adelaidex-lang101x
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann. Language Reclamation and Cross-Fertilization: The Emergence of a "Revival Language" called Israeli (abstract)
Hebrew was spoken after the conquest of Canaan (c. thirteenth century BC) and was the language of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah during in c.1200-586 BC. It was a continuation of Canaanite, a Northwest Semitic language. The oldest documented Canaanite Sentence, found on an elephant ivory comb, in Lachish, Israel, is from 3,700 years ago: יתש חט ז לקמל שער וזקת (cf. שיסלק שנהב זה את-כיני השיער והזקן), i.e. "May this ivory get rid of the lice of the hair and beard!".
Following a gradual decline (for example, Jesus was a native speaker of Aramaic rather than Hebrew), Hebrew ceased to be spoken by the second century AD. The Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in Judaea in AD 132-5 marks the symbolic end of the period of spoken Hebrew. For more than 1700 years thereafter, Hebrew was a sleeping beauty. It served as a liturgical and literary language, and occasionally a lingua franca for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a mother tongue.
The formation of the "Revival Language" known as "Modern Hebrew" (henceforth "Israeli") was facilitated at the end of the nineteenth century by native Yiddish speaker Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), born in Luzhki in the Vilna Governorate (Russian Empire, now Vitebsk Oblast, Belarus) toYehuda Leib and Tzipora Perlman, who were Chabad hasidim. Ben-Yehuda, school teachers, authors and other intellectuals understood the "trinity" of modern nation-statehood (langue-land-lens, i.e. language, territory, heritage) and sought to further the Zionist cause. Earlier, during the Haskalah (enlightenment) period of the 1770s-1880s, writers such as Méndele Móykher-Sfórim (originally Shalom Abramowitsch) produced works and neologisms which eventually contributed to Israeli. However, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the language was first spoken.
Israeli is currently the only de jure official language of the State of Israel (established in 1948), with Arabic being recognized as having a special status and with English as de facto in langscape (linguistic landscape). Israeli is spoken to varying degrees of fluency by approximately 10 million Israeli citizens; it is a mother tongue for most Israeli Jews (whose total number is over 7 million), and a second language for Israeli Muslims (Arabic-speakers), Christians (e.g. Russian and Arabic-speakers) and Druze (Arabic-speakers).
This accessible keynote will focus on the survival of Yiddish, the revivalists' mother tongue, beneath Israeli. It will argue that Israeli is a phoenicuckoo cross: on the one hand it is a phoenix, rising triumphant from the ashes (i.e. Hebrew revival) but on the other hand it is a cuckoo, laying its eggs in the nest of another bird (Yiddish), tricking it into the role of foster parent at the expense of the original offspring (i.e. Yiddish survival).
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse