Towards a new Strategy for Language Maintenance

Wednesday 27 March 2019

A conference entitled 'Non-Standard And Minority Varieties as Community Languages in the UK: Towards a new Strategy for Language Maintenance' at the University of Westminster aims to design a new strategy for the maintenance of the UK’s community languages.

Community languages in diasporic settings reflect the diversity and, crucially, the power relations found in the countries of origin of their speakers. Standard and non-standard varieties and minority languages are originally transplanted by the first generation of migrants, are later transmitted to subsequent generations and ultimately amalgamated with their speakers’ experiences of multilingualism. Linguistic diversity is thus placed in a new context where all languages (standard, non-standard, minority) lose symbolic capital and are jointly put under pressure from the majority language. 

The event on 16 and 17 April 2019 will provide a forum in which academic and non-academic experts and stakeholders who work with and speak different community languages can critically engage with the similarities and differences in historical, social and linguistic contexts, language ideologies, and teaching, learning and inclusion practices of their respective communities.