The symposium will be gathering experts in Bilingual Acquisition, Sociolinguistics and Speech Processing Systems who will be presenting their most recent work and will be conducting a Panel Discussion relating to each other’s fields.
Rakesh M. Bhatt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Caliban’s creative chaos: Contemporary dynamics of English in Indian multilingualism. Abstract
Prof. Rakesh M. Bhatt received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois. He is now Professor of Linguistics and SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education) as well as the Associate Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois. He is a former director of the Program in SLATE and associate director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois. He specializes in sociolinguistics of language contact, in particular, issues of migration, minorities and multilingualism, code-switching, language ideology and world Englishes. The empirical focus of his work has been on South Assian languages; particularly Kashmiri, Hindi and Indian English.
Nik Coupland (Cardiff University) (CANCELLED)
The (in)authentic bilingual. Abstract
Prof. Coupland is a sociolinguist with a focus on the interaction between language and processes of globalization. His work in bilingualism has been noteworthy – particularly within the developing interdisciplinary field of linguisticlandscapes. He has contributed significantly to the field of sociolinguistics through research, as well as the editing of a number of significant works including Wiley-Blackwell’s The Handbook of Language and Globalization, winner of the British Association for Applied Linguistics book prize in 2010.
Erika Hoff (Florida Atlantic University)
Bilingual Environments and Bilingual Development: Studies of Children in South Florida. Abstract
Prof. Hoff’s research focuses on early language development in typical monolingual and bilingual children. Professor Hoff is the director of the Language Development Lab at Florida Atlantic University. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the Spencer Foundation. The current NICHD-funded longitudinal study of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children investigates the relationship between early language development, early dual language experience, and preliteracy outcomes. Her work benefits the growing bilingual population in the nation and informs interdisciplinary perspectives on language development, education, and public policy.
Tanja Schultz (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Prof. Schultz is the 2013-2014 president of ISCA (International Speech Communication Association), the largest association of speech scientists worldwide. Prof. Schultz along with Christoph Amma received the Google Research Award for their research on the Airwriting system, which recognizes text from hand gestures. The Google Faculty Research Award is endowed with $81000 for supporting research in Computer Science, Engineering, and related disciplines. She is a recipient of the “Research Award for Technical Communication” from the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation recognizing her research on Silent Speech Interfaces.