International Conference, Languages, urbanisation and mobilities: What questions for Sociolinguistics today?

The University of Cyprus welcomes you to the International conference Languages, urbanisation and mobilities: What questions for Sociolinguistics today?, jointly organised by the University of Cyprus, the University Paris-Cité and the Libanese University and with researchers from the Universities of Jean Monnet-Saint Etienne and Aix-Marseille, which is dedicated to the French sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet.

This scientific meeting comes as a continuation of three conferences devoted to the relationship between languages and cities, that took place in Dakar and Libreville between 1995 and 2000, and contributed to creating and establishing the field of urban sociolinguistics. Twenty years after the last of these events, the question arises on how to (re)think the city from a linguistic point of view (Calvet, 2021), in the wider context of the urbanization of the world as it has been affected by globalisation, the progress of digital communication, and political, economic, ecological and sanitary upheavals of the past two decades.

This conference will also be an occasion to appraise Louis-Jean Calvet’s contribution to and influence on sociolinguistics, a field of research that he helped initiate and establish. From the concept of “glottophagie” first introduced in Linguistique et colonialism to his semiotic approaches in Jeu du signe, through his studies on La chanson, bande-son de notre histoire and up to Mediterranée, mer de nos langues, we can now see and appreciate the extent of his scholarly curiosity and the multiple ideas driving his research and objects of study. This diversity coheres in a logical universe that revolves around such key concepts as plurilingualism, south vs north, migration, the city, colonialism, signs, language policies, glottophagy —all concepts that are useful for understanding human societies in their linguistic aspects.