You're kindly invited to our next virtual Plurilingual Lab Speaker Series event with Dr. Joseph Lo Bianco, University of Melbourne, Australia:
Language Rights and Peace Building: New Directions for Multilingualism and Language Policy
This talk will focus on a subset of global conflicts in which language questions have been directly implicated in fostering tension and even communal violence. A key part of the presentation will be on Southeast Asia in relation to states’ responses to the demands for ‘mother tongue’ education rights. I will report on the process of multilogue facilitated deliberations implemented there to mitigate conflict (Lo Bianco, 2016), build shared understanding of language problems and allow voice to marginalised populations’ demands for recognition (Lo Bianco, 2019; 2023). I will describe this as a radical reworking of one of the points of criticism levelled against language policy as conceived in Global North settings and which formed the basis of the academic discipline of Language Policy Studies and offer a reinvigorated notion of how a new paradigm of collaborative language policy formulation can operated.
References
Lo Bianco, J., (2023), Debating Linguistic Human Rights in Militarised Myanmar: Political Agitation and Policy Deliberation, pp 127-142 in The Handbook of Linguistic Human Rights, edited by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, Wiley-Blackwell.
Lo Bianco, J. (2019). Uncompromising talk, linguistic grievance, and language policy: Thailand’s Deep South conflict zone. In M. Kelly, H. Footitt & M. Salama-Carr (Eds.), Handbook on Languages at War (pp295-331). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lo Bianco, J. (2016). Conflict, Language Rights, and Education: Building Peace by Solving Language Problems in Southeast Asia. Language Policy Research Network, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. USA. Reprinted 2021 in Brazil, pp 157-174 in Linguas Extrangeras.
Dr. Joseph (Joe) Lo Bianco is is professor emeritus in language and literacy at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a language policy specialist combining academic research and hands-on policy engagement. His theoretical and analytical studies of language problems and policy solutions have been conducted in many parts of the world especially in South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, North America, Europe and in some African countries (Ethiopia, South Africa and Tunisia). He has led multicounty language problem solving teams in Southeast Asia.
When: September 26, 2024 (Thursday)
Time: 5pm-6:30pm (EST, Montreal)
Mode of delivery: synchronous via Zoom
Registration required. Please click .
This is a public event and all are welcome. This Speaker Series is sponsored by Concordia University's , and co-organized by the Research Group and Ã山ǿ¼é's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE).
A recording will be made available on the .
