Welcome to the annual Autumn Symposium of the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics (AFinLA), to be held in Tampere, Finland, on November 11-12, 2016! The theme of the symposium is “Language awareness in an increasingly unequal society”.
The theme encourages symposium participants to reflect on the significance of language awareness and of language use in different contexts. For example, what are the characteristics of schools that encourage (multilingual) language awareness? What types of language awareness are necessary in various work communities? Above all, we would like to raise for discussion the relationship between language awareness and growing societal inequality. Can raised language awareness work as a balancing force against increasing inequality? Or does inequality increase hand-in-hand with language awareness?
It is our hope that the theme of the symposium stimulates a lively discussion on language awareness and its significance in various contexts of language use. We welcome presentations from all areas of applied linguistics.
The symposium consists of individual presentations, thematic colloquia, PechaKucha colloquia, and poster sessions. Proposals for presentations and colloquia must be submitted by September 2, 2016.
The symposium programme includes three plenary presentations by the keynote speakers:
Professor Christine Hélot (University of Strasbourg, France)
Professor Steven Thorne (Portland State University, USA)
Senior Specialist Ulla Tiililä (Institute for the Languages of Finland)
On Thursday, November 10, the day before the actual symposium, we will arrange two workshops open to everyone, chaired by keynote speakers Christine Hélot and Steven Thorne.
For more information, see the symposium website at http://www.uta.fi/ltl/plural/afinla2016/english/index.html.
We look forward to seeing you in Tampere!
Organising committee: Niina Lilja (chair), Suvi Honkanen, Marja Kivilehto, Sirkku Latomaa, Emilia Luukka, Olga Nenonen and Laura Pihkala-Posti.