New Speakers

This COST Action focuses on the dynamics involved in becoming a “new speaker” of a language in the context of a multilingual Europe.

Globalization, increased mobility and transnational networking transform the linguistic ecologies of contemporary societies.

In this Action, the aim is to bring multilinguals into the focus by investigating the challenges and opportunities involved in acquiring, using and being understood as a “new speaker” of a language in the context of a multilingual Europe.

From this perspective, new speakers are multilingual citizens who, by engaging with languages other than their “native” or “national” language(s), need to cross existing social boundaries, re-evaluate their own levels of linguistic competence and creatively (re)structure their social practices to adapt to new and overlapping linguistic spaces.

The network facilitates structured dialogue and collaboration amongst researchers from three different multilingual strands:

• Regional minorities
• Immigrants
• Transnational workers

Beit Berl College Faculty: Prof. Anat Stavans (MC) 2013-2017, stavansa@beitberl.ac.il.

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