Welcome to BAAHE 2024: (TRANS)PORTABLE: ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

We are delighted to invite you to the BAAHE 2024 conference, which will take place on 13 December 2024 at Hoek 38, 1000 Brussels.

Keynote Speakers:

Linguistics: Prof.  Dr. dr. h.c. Christian Mair (University of Freiburg)

Literary Studies: Prof. dr. Madhu Krishnan (University of Bristol)

Important dates:

• 7 June 2024: abstract submission deadline
• 15 August – 30 November 2024: registrations open
• 15 September 2024: registration deadline for presenters
• 13 December 2024: conference day

Call for Papers

The Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (BAAHE) unites scholars affiliated to Belgian higher education institutions from all fields within English Studies, ranging from cultural studies over linguistics and literary studies to translation, interpreting, and ELT studies.

The 2024 edition of BAAHE proposes to explore the portability, or transportability, of the English language and its historical and contemporary manifestations in a broad range of socio-political, literary, cultural and educational contexts. As (trans)portable good, it is both charged and charge, subject and object. Undeniably, the English language and the culture it references historically and in the present day is a composite object that has expanded through myriad additions and alterations, so that scholars have come to speak of 'Englishes' in the plural and accordingly have developed a pluralized conception of the 'cultures' and 'literatures' of the English-speaking world. The term ‘(trans)portable’ signals a range of dimensions: as transportable good, English has frequently become an instrument of large-scale expansionist projects and of political oppression; as portable entity it has served as convenience, as a home from home for the exile, as a welcome place of refuge, or as a vehicle of access. English has been im-ported and ex-ported, carried in a range of containers (textual, aural, multimedial) and by a multitude of individuals and groups. The flexibility and malleability gained through these acts of travelling is evidenced in a multitude of sociolects, regional variants, English-based Pidgins and Creoles, which are employed in everyday parlance as well as in canonized literary and dramatic works.

As colonial language beyond the heydays of the British Empire, as lingua franca and international globalized language, English continues to convey not only governmental and administrative structures in many places but also ideologies and epistemologies, thus raising questions about the ways in which it functions as a mobile scaffolding for certain ideas 'we live by' (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) or even serves as a framework for a 'whole way of life' (Williams 1960). Kenyan writer and language critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has eloquently drawn attention to the impact of language as a problematic carrier of concepts and knowledge that can be as liberating as it can be oppressive. Especially in postcolonial contexts in the latter half of the 20th century, claiming ownership of the language and the liberty to adapt it as 'nation language' became a powerful strategy in emancipatory movements (Brathwaite 1984), for politicians and literary creators alike. And yet, some writers have expressed ambivalence about the hegemonic status of the language that had to be mastered, loved even, for lack of access to a different, a lost, tongue (Derek Walcott, James Baldwin). Yet others, from Joseph Conrad to Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi or Petina Gappah, have creatively embraced English as a second language and some have invigorated it with their (m)other tongues, finding themselves in diverse states of translation while doing so (cf. Walkowitz 2015).

The ubiquity and dominance of English as the world's only 'hypercentral' language (De Swaan 2001) has profound repercussions on the way the language is learnt, used, taught, planned, experienced, and imagined across the globe. In the realm of language education, the (trans)portability of English prompts inquiries into issues of ownership, native-speakerism, and accuracy norms. It invites us to look at the creativity, adaptability, and negotiation of meaning among its multilingual learners/users. At the societal level, English language proficiency informs inclusion and exclusion at both ends of the global production chain, easing or complicating the process of acculturation and integration for international migrants. For if the (trans)portability of English disrupts conventional notions of language as foundational to the nation state, it also prompts questions about the language as a conduit for integration and sense of belonging within communities both real and imagined. Does the portability of the language render it culture-free, and as such resistant to emotional identification? Or does the global status and hegemony of English in our current postcolonial world make it an ideal canvas for learners/users onto which to project their desire for self-actualization (Kramsch 2009), creativity, and imagination? The resulting tensions between liberation and control must be navigated by English language learners, users, educators and translators alike.

The 2024 BAAHE conference encourages the scholarly exploration of attitudes to (trans)portable English across centuries, cultural contexts, and disciplines. We invite methodological and theoretical contributions as well as case studies on the (trans)portability of English within the broader scope of English Studies across its various subdisciplines.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:

• English as (trans)portable language in (higher) education and pedagogy, including curriculum-building, language norms, and learning outcomes.
• English as tool in the multilingual toolkit
• English in translation and interpreting as source and target language
• English across media (e.g. film language, subtitling/surtitling)
• World Englishes and ELF
• Language variation and language varieties in English
• Language contact and linguistic change
• Standardisation, prestige and accentism
• Linguistic hegemony, bias and AI systems
• Corporate English and other English-language jargons
• English as public, organisational and governmental language
• Communication in the public domain, the internet, service provision, institutions (e.g. the Commonwealth, the EU/Brussels)
• Internalised English: the language as a home or as refuge
• English / Anglophone literatures and exile, travel, migration
• English as a player in the field of world literature and as acquired literary language
• Representations of English, and its many dialects, in literature
• English as instrument of colonial rule and oppression, English as tool for emancipation and decolonization
• Multilingualism in Anglophone literatures

Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words for 20-minute papers and a biographical note of 150 words to baahe24@vub.be by 7 June 2024. Participation in the conference is free for BAAHE members; non-members pay a modest registration fee (lunch not included). Participants are invited to submit papers or proposals for a special issue to English Text Construction, BAAHE’s international peer-reviewed journal published with John Benjamins.