Tag: King’s College London

Language, power, ethics and superdiversity (UK)

Language, power, ethics and superdiversity
Friday 13th May  2016, 10.30am – 5.15pm
Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication
King’s College London
Franklin-Wilkins Building Waterloo Bridge Wing Room G552

In an era characterised by increasingly dynamic population mobility, traditional presuppositions about the substance of individual and group identities, and about the social and political semiotics that shape them, seem inadequate. In superdiverse societies, the question of language poses a particularly difficult challenge, owing both to its identitarian and communicative dimensions. These new realities raise new questions, empirical and normative alike: in such circumstances, what constitutes a linguistic identity? How do linguistic identity and political agency interplay? Are all linguistic identities necessarily political, and, if so, are they of equal value? What forms of linguistic prioritisation, e.g. in civic life, education and the job market, may be considered legitimate? Are national governments justifiable in intervening in the linguistic repertoires, practices and identities of citizens and non-citizens? Are some notions of linguistic integration and citizenship more compatible with democratic principles than others? Could these notions be grounded in sufficiently common social and political semiotics? And what role is there for the state in a rapidly globalising world? These and similar questions unavoidably require principled interdisciplinary collaboration between linguists, philosophers, political scientists and public policy researchers.

Papers:
• Language ethics and the interdisciplinary challenge – Yael Peled, IHSP and Law, McGill University
• Pluricentric linguistic justice: a normative approach to the question of language ownership – Leigh Oakes, French and Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London
• The normative stakes of academic Anglicisation: language/power/knowledge/ethics – Daniel Weinstock, IHSP and Law, McGill University
• Language Revitalization and Social Transformation: Empirical and Normative Questions – Huw Lewis, International Politics, Aberystwyth

Attendance is free, though places are limited.  Book a place online.

 

Fellowships for Graduate Study at King’s College London

A range of post-graduate studentships (called graduate fellowships in US) are available for 2016-17 entry at the Centre for Language Discourse & Communication at King’s College London, offering supervision in text, discourse & narrative analysis, pragmatics, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, applied, educational, cognitive and corpus linguistics:
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentships (deadline: 29 January 2016).  These cover sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, interactional discourse analysis, linguistic ethnography, areas of applied linguistics, computational linguistics, educational linguistics and language & literacy education.  Candidates can apply either for a three year PhD Studentship or for a four year Studentship which involves a one year MA and a three year PhD.
• Arts & Humanities Research Council/London Arts & Humanities Partnership (AHRC/LAHP) Studentships (deadline: 29 January 2016).   This covers research on linguistic structure, history, theory and description, including stylistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, corpus studies, translation, and some areas of applied linguistics.  Studentships last three years.
• Studentships administered by the King’s College Graduate School.

To apply, you should have excellent qualifications, as well as clear research idea if you are applying for a three year PhD award.  It is important to identify and contact a potential supervisor as soon as possible, referring to our webpages, and you also need to submit an ordinary admissions application.

Studentship-intercultural and health

The development of intercultural competence among medical students
King’s College London

First supervisor: Shuangyu Li
Second supervisor: Ben Rampton
Division: Medical Education
Type of programme: 4 years
Project code: MELiS

Project description: There is growing recognition of the need to develop intercultural competence among medical students, and this is reflected in the GMC’s Tomorrow’s Doctors 2009 and DoH’s the Race Equality Action 2004. But research suggests that intercultural training lacks coherence in UK medical schools, and the situation of international students is also a source of concern. Within this problem-space, this studentship addresses 3 questions at the interface of medical education and linguistic ethnography:

– what kinds of contribution to intercultural competence development derive from which settings, taking into account the full range of formal and informal contexts in which medical students participate?

– how far and in what ways are the intercultural learning needs of home and international students complementary or divergent?

– what are the implications for training?

Objectives for each year:
Year 1: a. review training frameworks and facilities available in UK medical schools; b. develop research skills c. design research tools year
Year 2: a. conduct ethnographic investigation with medical students at KCL
Year 3: a. analysis data; b. consider publications in journals and conferences
Year 4: write up and disseminate results.

The studentship will draw on training provided both by the Centre for Language Discourse & Communication and the College’s ESRC Doctoral Training Centre, and it will be affiliated to the DTC’s Education, Mind and Society Theme.