Aims of the conference

To date there has not been a systematic documentation of non-dominant varieties and their status in relation to dominant and other non-dominant varieties of the same pluricentric language.

The first symposium of the working group on non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages is an opportunity to document these varieties in order to provide a foundation for the systematic study of non-dominant varieties.

The main objectives of this conference are to document the situation of the non-dominant varieties world–wide in order to identify common or diverging features and to draw conclusions for their codification, corpus and status planning. Furthermore the conference aims to bring together scholars already working on these varieties and to interest others to join the working group and contribute to its research objectives.

Topics:

the sociolinguistic/demographic situation of non-dominant varieties in general
the overall relationship between the non-dominant and the dominant variety (acceptance/non-acceptance of the pluricentricity of the language etc.)
specific language policies of non-dominating varieties in respect to the dominant varieties and vice versa
the attitudes (status, loyalty etc.) of speakers of non-dominant varieties towards their own variety and towards the dominant variety
the treatment of the norms of the non-dominant variety in education: is it taught explicitly
the situation of codification and corpus planning – codifying institutions, dictionaries, regulations governing codification, joint institutions that regulate the codification (e.g. orthography) across different varieties
the situation of status planning (is there any?)
the educational situation: treatment of the norms of the non-dominant variety in education: are they taught explicitly, implicitly or not at all?
the treatment of pronunciation features and lexical items of the non-dominant variety in dictionaries and in orthography (adapted/not adapted)
the influence of the dominant variety/ies on the non-dominant variety (lexicon, pronunciation, grammar, phraseology, pragmatics etc.) and vice versa
prominent linguistic and pragmatic features of one particular non-dominant variety on all levels