Call for Abstracts

French on the move and on the margin(s)

For its annual conference in 2025, the AFLS is pleased to be hosted by UCLouvain, on the Saint-Louis site in Brussels, in collaboration with the University of Antwerp. Given the unique linguistic and cultural situation of Belgium and Brussels, the conference will focus in particular on the diatopic variation of French – particularly on the margins of the Francophonie –, the contact between languages, the link between language and society and linguistic evolution.

Invited speakers:

• Mathieu Avanzi  (Université de Neuchâtel)
• Jean-Marie Klinkenberg (Université de Liège)
• Agnes Steuckhardt (Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3)

The following themes will be addressed:

• Documentation and description of varieties of French and regional dialects
• Diachronic, diatopic, diastratic, diaphasic variations
• Language policies, action on the status and corpus of French
• French in contexts of linguistic superdiversity
• Didactics and/or acquisition of French L2, bilingualism
• Aspects of Theoretical and Applied French Linguistics

Any contribution dealing with one or more of these themes as well as any aspect of the theoretical or applied linguistics of French is welcome.

You are invited to submit a paper proposal, in English or French, for:

• a communication (individual or group) (20 minutes and 10 minutes of discussion) or/and
• a panel on one of the themes proposed above (maximum of 4 speakers) or
• A round table around which Master's and PhD students are invited to present their work in progress.

Anonymised proposals for papers must be written in the language in which the paper will be presented, and submitted (deposits in the left-hand column) no later than 15 January 2025.

Proposals for individual papers are limited to 300 words + references.

Panel proposals are limited to 300 words + references per speaker. Please indicate the proposal of each speaker in this format: speaker 1, abstract, references; Speaker 2, summary, references, etc. A panel proposal will therefore include all the interventions.

An individual may submit several paper proposals, but only one submission individually. A participant in the conference will not be able to present several papers alone.

Timeline:

• November 1, 2024 - January 15, 2025: Submission of proposals
• March 1, 2025: Notification of acceptance/rejection
• March 1 - May 31, 2025: registration at a reduced rate
• From June 1st: full price registration