Friday, 9 February 2018, 9:15am – 6:30pm
William Mong Hall, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
A one-day international conference on the subject of multilingualism among Polish communities in the United Kingdom and in broader contexts. The conference took place as part of Cambridge’s ‘Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies’ (MEITS) research project under the AHRC Open World Research Initiative.
Please click here to view a selection of photographs from the conference.
Polish is now the second most commonly spoken language, after English, in England and Wales. Over a million Poles live in the United Kingdom, and the vast majority of them are multilingual and live in multilingual environments. In this conference, we aim to present a broad view of multilingualism in a range of different contexts connected with Poles, Polish communities, and the Polish language in Britain. We will put a diverse set of different approaches into dialogue, including perspectives from applied and theoretical linguistics, psychology, literary studies, language teaching, education, and community activism.
The conference connected the question of multilingualism with broader issues of migration and multicultural society. Papers examined multilingualism among Poles, but also the phenomena of non-Poles learning Polish and of multilingualism among Ukrainian migrants in Poland.
The conference was convened by Stanley Bill, Lecturer in Polish Studies at Cambridge, and Edyta Nowosielska, Lector in Polish at Cambridge.
Speakers included distinguished specialists from a wide variety of fields and institutional backgrounds:
Thomas Bak, University of Edinburgh
Jan Fellerer, University of Oxford
Elwira Grossman, University of Glasgow
Myroslava Keryk, Fundacja ‘Nasz Wybór’, Warsaw
Kinga Kozminska, Birkbeck, University of London
Jakub Krupa, Polish Press Agency, London
Elżbieta Kwiatkowska, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw
Anna Martowicz, Association for the Promotion of Polish Language Abroad
Yaron Matras, University of Manchester
Lisa-Maria Müller, University of Cambridge
Krystyna Olliffe, Polish Educational Society
Anna Seretny, Jagiellonian University in Kraków
Anne White, University College London
Zofia Wodniecka, Jagiellonian University in Kraków
Katarzyna Zechenter, University College London
PROGRAMME
8:45am – 9:15am: Coffee and Registration
9:15am – 9:30am: Introduction: Stanley Bill and Edyta Nowosielska
9:30am – 11:00am: Session 1 (Chair: Wendy Ayres-Bennett)
Elwira Grossman The Art of Trans/languaging: Teaching and Learning Polish in Multilingual Settings.
Anna Seretny Polish as a heritage language - an ‘in between’ phenomenon.
Yaron Matras Polish in the context of Manchester's language diversity: Data accessibility, provisions, and public engagement.
11:00am – 11:30am: Coffee
11:30am – 1:00pm: Session 2 (Chair: Aleksandra Gocławska)
Thomas Bak Cognitive effects of bilingualism: a new dimension in the old debate, whether to teach your language to your children.
Zofia Wodniecka Language and neurocognitive processes in bilingual speakers of Polish – a psycholinguistic perspective.
Lisa-Maria Müller Investigating typical English-Polish Bilingual Development and Developmental Language Disorder in a Longitudinal Twin Case Study.
1:00pm – 2:00pm: Lunch Break
2:00pm – 3:30pm: Session 3 (Chair: Rory Finnin)
Katarzyna Zechenter Bilingualism in UK and US: A Comparison.
Myroslava Keryk Language practices of Ukrainian migrants in Poland.
Elżbieta Kwiatkowska Ukrainians and Byelorussians in Poland - communication, social and professional contexts.
3:30pm – 4:00pm: Coffee
4:00pm – 5:30pm: Session 4 (Chair: Edyta Nowosielska)
Kinga Kozminska New speaking styles?: demystifying homogeneity of Polish-speaking migrants.
Anna Martowicz Self-reflection on language and identity in children in Polish diaspora – some findings and their implications.
Jan Fellerer Language Mixing: Notes on ‘Ponglish’.
5:30pm – 6:30pm: Final Discussion (Chair: Stanley Bill):
Jakub Krupa, Krystyna Olliffe, Anne White.
6:30pm: Finish and Wine Reception
MEITS is a major interdisciplinary research project funded under the AHRC Open World Research Initiative. Linguistic competence in more than one language – being multilingual – sits at the heart of the study of modern languages and literatures, distinguishing it from cognate disciplines. Through six interlocking research strands we investigate how the insights gained from stepping outside a single language, culture and mode of thought are vital to individuals and societies.
