IN THIS ISSUE (No.10)

 

CONFERENCES

 

Past

The 1999 meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages (SPCL) took place in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) meeting in Los Angeles, 8-9 January. For the first time special sessions were held on Applied Creolistics. The following papers were delivered:

Creoles as medium of instruction (Malcolm A. Finney)
Using a stigmatized variety to teach the standard: Interference or separation? (Jeff Siegel)
A Creole English reading experiment (Ron Kephart)
Applied creolistics in court: Linguistics, methodological and ethical dimensions of expert testimony (Peter L. Patrick)
The case of Aboriginal English in the Australian legal system (Diana Eades)
The hegemony of English: Hau kam yu wen kawl wat ai spik ingglish wen yu no no waz? (Kent Sakoda & Ermile Hargrove)
Policies of teaching in a multilingual context: The case of creole languages in French Guiana (Laurence Goury)

 

Wat, bada yu? Voices Heard and Voices Unheard: Pidgin, Local Identities and Strategies for Multicultural Learning was a special conference on Hawai‘i Creole English (locally known as “Pidgin”), held at the University of Hawai‘i 6-10 April, organized by the Office for Women’s Research. The program included panel discussions and presentations on the following topics:

• Pidgin in the 21st century: Deconstructing the hegemony of standard English
• Language discrimination: Creole English(es) and the courts
• Pidgin in the schools: Educational policies, learning environments and teaching strategies

There was also a session with readings in Pidgin by nine well-known creative writers, and performances in Pidgin by the local personality Joe Balaz and the Kumu Kahua Theater.


Le 9e Colloque International des Etudes Créoles was held in Aix-en-Provence, France, 24-29 June 1999. There were two round tables relevant to PACE:

Orthographe: entre mythe et réalité?
Enseignement des langues maternelle et seconde en milieu franco-créolophone : problématique, enjeux, défis et perspective

The following presentations were also of interest:

Complexion créole et complexe créole dans les pages des écrivains mauriciens (Shakuntala Boolell)
Language for education and standardization, as factors in language attitude ratings: Survey findings from urban, southern Nigeria on anglo-Nigerian Pidgin (Charles Mann)
Le créole à l'épreuve de l'école antillaise. Fantasmes identitaires et expériences glottopolitiques (Lambert-Félix Prudent)
Enseigner pour instruire (Roger E. Savain)
Créole et école: de l'expérience seychelloise aux défis à venir (Rada Tirvassen)

Issues in “non-standard” dialect research was a special symposium held at the 1999 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society at the University of Western Australia in Perth, 30 September - 1 October. The following presentations were made:

Non-standard dialect research issues in legal contexts (Diana Eades)
Non-standard dialect research issues in educational contexts: New technologies in multilingual classrooms (Viv Edwards)
Stigmatized and standardized varieties in the classroom: Interference or separation? (Jeff Siegel)
Non-standard dialect research issues in community contexts (Ian Malcolm & Glenys Collard)
Non-standard dialect research issues in workplace contexts (Janet Holmes)
Work in progress: The ABC project, “Two way bidialectal education of speakers of Aboriginal English” (Ian Malcolm, Alison Hill, Patricia Königsberg, Glenys Collard & Rosemary Cahill)
Program for Bidialectal Development in a USA school district (Kelli Harris-Wright)
A study in progress: Teacher perceptions of student speech (Yvonne Haig)
Work in progress: Socio-cultural dimensions of the English of Western Australian primary school children (Graham McKay, Rhonda Oliver & Judith Rochecouste)

The symposium also included a discussion and response on the first five presentations by Susan Kaldor, and a panel discussion on Models of bidialectal education, with Glenys Collard, Kelli Harris-Wright, Patricia Königsberg and Jeff Siegel.

Upcoming

The Fifth International Creole Language Workshop will be held at Florida International University 30 March - 1 April, 2000. For further information contact:

Dr Tometro Hopkins
Linguistics Program, Dept of English
Florida International University
Miami, FL 33199 USA
Phone: (305) 348-3096
Fax: (305) 348-3878
hopkinst@fiu.edu

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