by Nicola Bermingham

This year, Heriot-Watt will be holding the 7^th International Conference of Hispanic Linguistics (27^th – 29^th March 2015). The title for this year’s conference is Spanish in Contact – new times, new spaces and new speakers.

The conference will bring together scholars from around the world who are working with Spanish and languages in contact with Spanish such as Catalan, Galician and Basque as well as other language situations such as Latinos in the US where Spanish comes into contact with English and as such is in a subordinate position, migrant communities in other parts of the world where Spanish comes into contact with the host language, hybridized forms that emerge from such contact, issues around Spanish as a global language, and other indigenous languages in contact with Spanish such as Quechua.

Over the three days of the conference we will be exploring how cultural and linguistic changes brought about by globalisation and a changing political and economic landscape have impacted the ways in which we conceptualise the relationship between language and society in the twenty-first century. A new communicative order has emerged in which we find new types of speakers, new forms of language and new modes of communication. The conference theme addresses the challenges and opportunities that this new communicative order presents to researchers working with Spanish and situations of Spanish in contact in the twenty-first century.

Our three esteemed keynote speakers are Professor David Block (ICREA/Universitat de Lleida), Dr Jaine Beswick (University of Southampton) and Dr Joan Pujolar (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). Professor Block has published extensively on a variety of topics including globalization, migration, multiculturalism, multilingualism, identity, narrative research and second language teaching and learning. Dr Beswick specialises in Spanish, Galician and Portuguese phonetic and phonological variation and change and migration studies. Dr Pujolar’s research focuses on how language use is mobilized in the construction of identities and its implications for access to symbolic and economic resources.

We welcome abstracts of no more than 300 words in length by no later that February 15^th 2015. Abstracts should be sent to sis2015edinburgh@gmail.com as a word attachment containing the title of the paper and description of the proposed talk, including: the aims, methodology and main findings of the study upon which it is based, as well as a list of bibliographical references (Harvard system). Contact details (name, affiliation and postal / electronic address) should be included only in the body of the email, together with the title of the paper.  Notification of acceptance will by 1^st March 2015.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!