Aims of the workshop

The main objectives of this workshop are:

The description of pluricentric languages and the theoretical reflections on this concept have made considerable progress in the current decade, in no small part due to the deliberations at the meetings of the “International Working Group on Non-dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages” (WGNDV) since 2010. In particular, the group applied the criteria of dominance and non-dominance to distinguish major categories of pluricentric varieties.
In this workshop we seek to encourage scholars to present papers on these well-established criteria, but also to think beyond them - in particular by considering different theoretical concepts of pluricentric languages and the consequences of the standard language ideology in the dominance and non-dominance of pluricentric languages.
We also consider it to be particularly fruitful to consider languages whose status as pluricentric languages is far from certain. Examples that spring to mind in this regard are, amongst others, Scots, Saami, Karelian Finnish, Ruthenian and Kashubian, Tadczik, Frisian as well as diverse American and African languages (Aymara, Bamabara, Fulfulde, Lingala, Malinke, Soninke, Tuareg, Xhosa etc.).
We also welcome abstracts focusing on any systemic or sociolinguistic angle of such or similar languages.