16-18 October 2019, Ghent, Belgium
The Ghent research group on Afrikaans and the study of South Africa organises an annual colloquium on the linguistics and literature of Afrikaans. The overall theme of the linguistic component of this year’s edition is ‘Language Variation in Afrikaans’, broadly construed (i.e. including geographical, social, stylistic, etc. variation in present-day Afrikaans as well as diachronic variation). The plenary speaker is Gerald Stell (The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong), who will present new research on Namibian Afrikaans.
The conference languages are Afrikaans and Dutch.
Call for Papers:
We invite abstracts for original research papers on any aspect of language variation in Afrikaans, past or present. Possible topics include — but are definitely not limited to:
– the relations between Standard Afrikaans and other varieties of the language;
– the status, use and linguistic characteristics of Cape Afrikaans;
– the restandardisation debate;
– the emergence of new sociolects;
– the use of Afrikaans outside South Africa and the properties of expat Afrikaans;
– the use of Afrikaans in specific text types or contexts.
In addition, we also welcome papers dealing with variation along geographical, social, ethnic, stylistic, etc. lines in the use or properties of specific lexical or grammatical items or phenomena, as well as papers which shed new light on the diachrony of Afrikaans in general or of specific linguistic phenomena.
Please send your anonymous abstract as an attachment in pdf- and doc(x)-format to afrikaans@UGent.be by April 15 and include name(s) and affiliation(s) in the body of the abstract. The maximal length is 500 words, including examples and references. Abstracts are preferably in Afrikaans or Dutch. Abstracts in English are welcome, too, but please note that speakers will be expected to give the actual presentation in Afrikaans or Dutch.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by mid-May.
