Call for papers: GURT 2022 Dialect Contact

Call for papers open for GURT 2022, March 10-13, online. Abstracts due Dec. 1 via Oxford Abstracts. Reach out with questions by email and Twitter!

Dialect contact occurs whenever speakers of mutually intelligible varieties interact. Many kinds of linguists are interested in the outcome of such contact — how it leads people and languages to vary and change, and what such patterns can reveal about language, mind, and society. Dialect contact can thus be approached as an individual-level or a community-level phenomenon; a cognitive process or a social one. GURT 2022 will provide a unique opportunity for the wide range of scholars working on different aspects of dialect contact to come together and share methodologies, findings, theoretical approaches, and avenues for future research.

The Organizing Committee of GURT 2022 invites abstract and proposal submissions for the conference, which will be held from March 10-13, 2022 as a virtual meeting. Papers and special sessions may address any topic related to the conference theme of Dialect Contact, though we especially encourage submissions on the following topics:

• experimental approaches to dialect learning/accommodation
• mobility and dialect change over the lifespan 
• multicultural youth vernaculars and other urban varieties emerging from dialect contact
• dialect contact in the Arabic-speaking world
• dialect contact in Latin America

For the non-plenary sessions, we envision a balanced mix of traditional conference talks and more discussion-based sessions.

To that end, we invite submissions for two types of activities:

1. Regular conference-style papers (20 mins synchronous online presentation + 10 mins discussion) 
2. Special sessions: synchronous, discussion-forward sessions of various kinds. Possible formats include:

• Panel discussions: in which a panel organizer (or organizers) presents a topic for discussion and some key questions relating to that topic, opens discussion to a number of invited participants with expertise on that topic, and moderates that discussion
• Pecha Kucha/”Lightning” paper sessions: in which several scholars each present a very short (~7 min) overview of work on some topic, preceding a synthesizing discussion led by the session’s organizer
• Workshops: in which organizers share a tool or set of tools relevant for the study of Dialect Contact, with appropriate demo data

Whatever the format (choose the one that best suits the goals of your session; you can also pitch us alternative formats), each special session should fit into a 90 minute parallel session slot, or, at most, two 90 minute sessions. 

Scholars who would like to present a regular conference paper should submit a typical conference paper abstract (If you are not familiar with this genre of academic writing, helpful advice can be found on the LSA website (new window) and in this document by Maggie Tallerman (new window)). Abstracts should be at most 500 words; up to 250 additional words may be used for references, glosses and/or transcribed examples, and images.

Special Session organizers should submit a proposal describing what kind of session they would like to hold, the motivation for the session, the anticipated contribution of the session, who will participate, and how the time will be used. Additional participants should be listed as co-authors on the submission form. Proposals should be at most 500 words; up to 250 additional words may be used for references, glosses and/or transcribed examples, and images. 

Any person may submit at most one single-author regular paper abstract. There is no limit on the number of co-authored abstracts (for papers) or proposals (for special sessions) one may submit, nor is there a limit to the number of special sessions an individual may participate in. 

All abstracts are due by December 1, 2021, with notification of acceptance or rejection by January 14, 2022.  Submit abstracts via Oxford Abstracts here (new window)  (If you have not used this platform before, you will need to register your email).

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at gurt@georgetown.edu (new window) or via Twitter @GURoundtable, or visit https://gurt.georgetown.edu (new window)!