Keynote Speech - Keeping a Language Alive

Near and Middle East Department

SOAS

University of London

Armenian Studies at SOAS

Keynote Speech

Keeping a Language Alive in a Global Diaspora: Challenges and Initiatives for Armenian in the World

Professor Anne Pauwels

Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures

SOAS

Chair: Professor Ian Brown

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

SOAS

Globalisation, displacement and migration are among the major forces dispersing speech communities around the world. Moving into a new environment poses significant linguistic challenges for migrants, refugees and other sojourners, not only in terms of learning a new language but also maintaining the pre-migration language. Drawing upon her work in Australia Professor Anne Pauwels shall discuss some major challenges for language maintenance and outline some strategies as well as initiatives to assist communities in keeping their languages alive.

(Professor Anne Pauwels is Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures and Professor of Sociolinguistics at SOAS. She has been involved in research on multilingualism and language maintenance for over thirty years. One of her recent books focuses on language maintenance in the diaspora: Maintaining Minority Languages in a Transnational Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Venue: Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre

Date: Friday 29 October

Time: 7pm

Reception will follow