8. Internationale Konferenz für maltesische Linguistik
Vom 18. - 20. September 2023 findet an der Universität Bremen die 8. Tagung der Internationalen Vereinigung für Maltesische Linguistik (L-Għaqda Internazzjonali tal-Lingwistika Maltija, GĦILM) statt. Sie wird gemeinsam von beiden Zweigen des Malta-Zentrums organisiert. Nach Konferenzen in Malta, Lyon, Turin, Bratislava und Krakau, ist es bereits das dritte Mal, dass die Konferenz in Bremen stattfindet. Die Konferenz stellt die größte Konferenz zur maltesischen Sprachwissenschaft dar und bringt Forschende aus aller Welt zusammen, die sich mit der maltesischen Sprache beschäftigen.
Die Tagung wird in der Regel alle zwei Jahre veranstaltet und befasst sich dieses Mal mit dem Thema „The next century of Maltese linguistics“. Die Teilnehmer:innen werden drei Tage lang über Vorträge zu aktuellen Themen aus allen Teildisziplinen der maltesischen Sprachwissenschaft diskutieren. Die eingeladenen Gastredner sind in diesem Jahr Andrei Avram (Bukarest) und Dominique Caubet (Paris).

‎“Although we may not all be as creative as the poets, each of us is a poet in his or her own right – ‎that is, we are all capable of exploiting the language system creatively” (Munat 2015: 92).‎

Since the beginning of the 17th century, new varieties of English have emerged all around the ‎world. The lexicon of these varieties has been influenced and shaped by the languages that they ‎have come into contact with and by speakers who use them. This course explores the different ‎word-formation processes that speakers exploit creatively to coin and manipulate lexical items and ‎expressions to adapt, expand, and change the lexicon of the different varieties of English. ‎

Students will carry out empirical research projects in which they examine selected ‎aspects of lexical creativity in World Englishes.‎ The results will also be presented at the 4th Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics at the end of the semester.

As a result of colonisation, English was transplanted to Africa and has spread over the entire African continent. It has become an official language in approximately one third of all African nations. The degree to which English is spoken as a first or second language variety in the various African countries depends mostly on the colonial history, linguistic situation, language policy and language planning programs of these countries.

In this seminar, we will investigate the historical and socio-political developments that have determined the formation of African varieties of English and we will also study the functions English serves in various African countries and speaker's attitudes towards this language.
Moreover, we will survey recent corpus-linguistic research on Africa Englishes that has provided detailed descriptions of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of particular varieties.
Depending on the assessment needed for their study program and module, students can opt for oral presentations based on extensive reading or corpus-based research projects on selected African Englishes.

Basic introductory reading:
Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

In this course empirical methods for the analysis of varied media will be introduced and then developed specifically in the context of selected audiovisual, visual and verbal media. A specific focus will be placed on examining to what extent such media products 'tell stories', either deliberately or by accident, and the consequences of such stories for their reception by audiences. One particular area of concern will be narratives that (either intentionally or unintentionally) 'disinform' their audiences by setting up narrative expectations of various kinds. These kinds of uses will be addressed empirically in concrete analysis. The course meshes broadly with an ongoing research project on 'fake narratives', whose progress can be followed at: https://fakenarratives.github.io/ Participants will be encouraged to engage with the method of analysis being developed in this project and so receive firsthand experience in research methods. The qualitative and quantitative methods introduced are, however, generally applicable to many research questions and media. Dedicated sessions will introduce several of the empirical quantitative methods that can be employed for improving the reliability and generalisability of qualitative studies regardless of research question.

In this course empirical methods for the analysis of varied media will be introduced and then developed specifically in the context of selected audiovisual, visual and verbal media. A specific focus will be placed on examining to what extent such media products 'tell stories', either deliberately or by accident, and the consequences of such stories for their reception by audiences. One particular area of concern will be narratives that (either intentionally or unintentionally) 'disinform' their audiences by setting up narrative expectations of various kinds. These kinds of uses will be addressed empirically in concrete analysis. The course meshes broadly with an ongoing research project on 'fake narratives', whose progress can be followed at: https://fakenarratives.github.io/ Participants will be encouraged to engage with the method of analysis being developed in this project and so receive firsthand experience in research methods. The qualitative and quantitative methods introduced are, however, generally applicable to many research questions and media. Dedicated sessions will introduce several of the empirical quantitative methods that can be employed for improving the reliability and generalisability of qualitative studies regardless of research question.