AILA 2020 Groningen. Symposium S077 “Language immersion as linguistic ideology“

The term ‘immersion’ was coined in the mid-1960s in Quebec, Canada, when English-speaking parents requested the schooling of their children in French. Since then, language immersion – which entails the exposure of language learners to social environments where the target language is spoken – has come to be viewed as the most efficient language learning method in schools where various forms of language immersion are being implemented and enforced, in the language teaching industry where immersion is often highlighted as a central feature of language learning programs, and among enterprises in the experience economy where activities based on ‘immersion-experiences’ are being designed and marketed.

By viewing ‘immersion’ as linguistic ideology, this symposium aims to critically engage with the discourses, practices and subjectivities that are animated by the concept, and to ask how these relate to social structures and processes of power, inequality and (neoliberal) governance. It explores how social actors in the various contexts where ‘immersion’ has been adapted, imagine, resignify and challenge the concept, and what the educational, social and political-economic consequences are for them.

Organizers:

Beatriz P. Lorente (Universities of Bern and Fribourg, Switzerland)
Larissa S. Schedel (University of Bonn, Germany)

Featured speaker:

Eva Codó (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Shuang Gao (University of Liverpool, UK)
Ruanni F. Tupas (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Deadline:

September 16, 2019