28 Oct 2005

Why does language change? - Workshop on Linguistic Diversity at UCC, 4-5 November

---

Linguistic diversity is the theme of a workshop taking place in UCC on 4-5 November next. At a time when the Statistical Yearbook of the Central Statistics Office has shown that people of some 50 different nationalities are resident in Ireland, diversity of languages is more and more a feature of everyday life. Increasing numbers of pupils are native speakers of languages other than English or Irish and children of all nationalities now have the opportunity to learn new languages in primary school. 

The 'Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative' is one of the topics to be discussed at the workshop, where John Harris and Denise O'Leary of Trinity College Dublin will present the results of an independent evaluation of this programme. Another presentation, to be made by Fiona Lyddy of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, will explore how language contact can affect reading skills.

The workshop is a joint venture of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and its parallel body in France, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).  Linguistics is strongly represented in CNRS laboratories in the human sciences and a number of leading researchers from CNRS centres will present papers at the event, which is the first of its kind and which will be followed by other meetings in France and in Ireland on a range of research issues. The programme includes papers on the following topics:

• theoretical models for understanding linguistic diversity
• language diversity and the expression of space
• diversity as a feature of talk-in-interaction
• linguistic variation in minority and dominant speech communities
• variation and structure in French phonology
• competing linguistic ideologies in Ireland

Professor Patrick O'Donovan, who is co-organizer of the workshop with Professor Jacques Durand of the Université de Toulouse, comments that many nationals of other countries now living in Ireland will themselves be forces of change, in that their use of English will gradually modify what we take to be standard ways of speaking. 'Change is the only constant in language and the diversity we encounter today on our streets simply makes us more aware of that', says Professor O'Donovan. 'And because this diversity is all around us, we need events like this to help us understand its potential impact.'

The workshop on Linguistic Diversity will take place in University College Cork on 4 and 5 November. Six papers will be presented by researchers based in France, and six by researchers working in Irish universities, including National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Cork (members of UCC staff participating in the conference include Aidan Doyle (Department of Modern Irish), Martin Howard and Grace Neville (Department of French)). The full programme is available online: http://www.irchss.ie/cnrs/cnrs.html. To register for the workshop, please contact Catherine MacGillycuddy (c.macgillycuddy@ucc.ie).

137MMcS



« Back to 2005 Press Releases