Dr David Hornsby and Jonathan Kasstan from the Department of English Language & Linguistics within SECL are co-organising the annual conference of the Association for French Language Studies (AFLS) to be held at the University of Kent, on the 25-27 June 2014.
The theme of the conference is ‘Que le français se nomme diversité….’ At a time when many scholars are asking whether it is the relative homogeneity of European French, at least at the diatopic level, which renders it ‘exceptional’, this conference will explore ways in which diversity continues throughout the francophone world, or is emerging in new guises. How are differences at all levels, be they stylistic, sociolinguistic, syntactic, or semantic, manifested in the modern language, and what form did they take in the past? The conference will examine other ‘diversities’, too: for example, in theoretical descriptive frameworks as applied to French, in pedagogical methods and outcomes, and in the experience of French bilinguals.
They welcome abstract submissions on these and any other areas of French linguistics and French language teaching in Higher Education. Conference papers are welcome in either French or English, and abstracts should be written in the language of the presentation. Speakers will be given 30 minutes for oral papers (20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions).
Please send all queries to: colloqueAFLS@kent.ac.uk
For more information on the conference (including a French version of the call for papers), please see the conference website:
http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/colloque-afls-2014/