Amid the more general bewildered head-scratching about the future of everything, does anyone have any thoughts about how UK language policy might be affected by departure from the EU? I’ve copied this to a range of email lists hopefully bringing together people interested in language policy across the UK. I hesitate to offer to organise anything (summer schedule absolutely groaning) but perhaps we could have a semi-formal meeting of minds, to scratch heads and think through the implications?

Topics could include (!)….
– the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and other relevant European agreements;
– recognition of ‘European languages’ in different contexts (schools, service translation, etc.)
– participation of UK researchers in European language policy research networks
– continued relations with European minority language organisations like Mercator and EBLUL;
– border policy and asylum regimes in relation to language;
– Scottish independence and/or UK federalism in relation to minority languages;
– in the other nations not so vocal about independence, does this severing of European links nevertheless divert attention inwards and perhaps spur on independence movements – re-linking language and nationalism as resources and planning becomes more localised? (Recall this is all happening during a wholesale devolution of governance towards local authorities in the UK since 2011.)
– European ‘autochthonous’ and ‘allochthonous’ languages, e.g. might this have some benefits for languages in the UK hitherto less well supported due to being ‘non-native’ in the EU, and do the UK’s hitherto ‘native European minority languages’ now become ‘allochthonous’?

I have lots of questions, basically. Anyone want to meet up for some sort of roundtable thing? Maybe in late August or early September. We could make it formal enough to justify claiming travel funding, but informal enough not to require primary research. I don’t see that as disingenuous! It would just be a genuine exploratory meeting of perplexed language policy specialists thinking through how this might all pan out. If you’re up for this kind of dizzied collective blithering and group hug, get in touch! Also feel free to volunteer to lead on the organisation!

Actually, to save my inbox… I’ll do what I usually do in this sort of situation and make a Google spreadsheet for everyone to add their details and we can start up a group email discussion once everyone has added their details there: https://goo.gl/8lCo43.

Font: Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132. Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk  dave.sayers(arrova)cantab(punt)net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers