International symposium on Minority Languages and Language Policies in the Nordic Countries

Section of Finnish Studies and Section of Scandinavian Studies of the Department of Germanic Studies at CU FA organize international symposium Minority Languages and Language Policies in the Nordic Countries, which will be held at CU FA on 25–26 April 2024. The official language of the symposium is English, but other languages are also used during the international symposium with eight invited speakers from four Nordic countries.

The pre-registration form is here or you can access it through the QR code in the poster.
Programme and the list of invited speakers are available at the symposium webpages.

Annotation

Multilingualism is a wide topic concerning all the Nordic societies – and, evidently, not only the Nordic ones – at many levels. Usage of different languages is part of the everyday life, and, therefore, multilingualism has been taken into account when designing language policies and their practical implementations. All this implies that multilingualism and parallel usage of languages are also topics of linguistic research. In the Nordic countries research on multilingual topics has been done for a long time. The field also involves other crucial matters: language teaching, and language awareness at all the levels of the societies, among others.

In addition, one of our objectives is to remind the audience that natural languages are not only spoken, they are also signed. Furthermore, there have lately been awakenings regarding the statuses of the national languages in the Nordic countries: how to endorse their usage in certain contexts (instead of English), for example in certain academic fields. Offering a glimpse on the Nordic societies – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden included in our project – from these points of view for the Czech audience is primordial in order for them to understand deeper how the Nordic societies work – sometimes well and, sometimes, not so well.