From language learners to New Speakers and their role in language revitalization.

Increasing and sustaining the number of users is part and parcel to language revitalization efforts. While making sure that children may acquire a minoritized language and develop their competence throughout childhood and adolescence, recruitment of users who learn it as a second, third or even fourth language may represent a fundamental asset to increased language vitality. It is however no small task for the individual to transgress from being a learner of a minoritized language to becoming a productive and secure user of it, a so-called New Speaker. 

At this roundtable we will discuss challenges and affordances associated with New Speakers. The panellists will address issues concerning the learning process and the maintenance of productive skills, including the role of teachers, the language community and language technology, and the roundtable will not the least highlight the contribution of New Speakers to local communities, the workplace, to education, to politics and civil life etc., which in sum represents no modest input to the vitality of minoritized languages. The panellists will showcase these issues by examples mainly from regional minority languages of the High North, notably Sámi and Kven, but also from Celtic languages on the British Isles. The insights and discussions will bear on other regional minority languages throughout Europe and beyond. The following panellists have confirmed their participation: 

Speaker 1:          Pia Lane (University of Oslo)

Speaker 2:          Annika Pasanen (Sámi University College)

Speaker 3:          Fiona O’Hanlon (University of Edinburgh)

Speaker 4:          David Kroik (Nord University)

Speaker 5:          Lene Antonsen (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

Discussant:        Bernadette O’Rourke (University of Glasgow)

The roundtable will be moderated by Hilde Sollid and Øystein A. Vangsnes from UiT The Arctic University of Norway. 

The roundtable will happen on Wednesday 25 June in the afternoon. The specific time will be announced in the program.