E10 Research Strand 3: “Identities in Urban Contexts: the European multilingual city” – London 2016

E10 Research Strand 3: “Identities in Urban Contexts: the European multilingual city” – London 2016

Meeting and seminar, London 8-9 September 2016

STATE OF THE ART

A first full draft was circulated and discussed. It was agreed that the scope of the bibliography would be extended to include the period covered by the LUCIDE publication. Further work was decided on policy and a revision of the existing text to be carried out by January.

Q RESEARCH

A presentation was made of the methodology adopted and of certain problems relating to the validity of some results. Overall, however, some interesting outcomes were being reported.

An overview of research in SOFIA, DUBLIN, KRAKOW and THESSALONIKI produced 2-3 relatively clear discourses in each city and a range of attitudes which were given working titles (Traditional, nationalist; Global, Cosmopolitan). There was also some interesting cross over particularly in terms of Pragmatic attitudes to languages.

SEMINARS

Two seminars took place – one with students and former students who participated in discussion on the Q statements.

A second seminar involved UK experts on sociology and languages.  They responded to the 4 research reports with a range of questions and challenges –

  • the need for some background information about participants
  • more information about theoretical perspectives
  • how to compare across cities.
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