International conference on “Becoming a World Language: the growth of Chinese, English and Spanish”

We would like to invite you to cover the following event:

Over the past few decades, the English language has been expanding as the need grows for a common form of communication to facilitate trade and cultural exchange. But other languages, notably Chinese and Spanish, have also been moving in the same direction, albeit from very different starting points.

The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (HCLS) of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is holding an international conference on “Becoming a World Language: the growth of Chinese, English and Spanish” from 5 to 7 December.

The conference explores the significance of a language transforming into a world language. Linguistics experts from all over the world will assemble to address some of the little-known effects of this phenomenon on the world’s speakers, speech communities and language systems.

Professor M.A.K. Halliday, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and adviser to HCLS of CityU, will give a plenary address on the topic “Some Social-semiotic Reflections on Language Growth”. Speaking at the opening ceremony will be CityU’s Professor David Tong Shuk-yin, Deputy President, Professor Martin Painter, Acting Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor Jonathan Webster, Head of Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics.

Among the myriad topics under discussion will be:

• differences and similarities in the three patterns of growth displayed by English, Chinese and Spanish;
• the different roles of language pedagogy, the media, the economy, and so on in contributing to growth of a language into a world language;
• the place of other international languages, such as Arabic, Hindi/Urdu, Russian, Malay/Indonesian, French;
• how much mixing does the language undergo in becoming a world language?
• how does a world language impact on local identities, whether ethnic, national, or socio-economic?
• is the pattern of emergence to this status the same in the case of English, Chinese and Spanish, or do they have different trajectories?

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For media enquiries, please contact Craig Francis, Communications Office, City University of Hong Kong, on 3442 6802 or mobile phone 9028 2758.