Context

The Mannheim Colloquium is part of a series of international conferences on methodological and theoretical questions of urban sociolinguistics. Its institutional context is a developing research network which includes Dutch, Chinese, and German colleagues from various institutions. The collaboration started some years ago and got major inspirations during three conferences and seminars in Nanjing University. In this beginning tradition, the Mannheim Conference corresponds to the 4th Urban Language Survey Seminar (cf. http://www.iias.nl/ilci/, and http://www.iccsl3.com)

Topics and aims of the Mannheim Conference

The Mannheim Conference will focus on methodological questions of urban sociolinguistics. It aims at comparing different sociolinguistic approaches - European developments inspired by dialectology, variationist studies and interactual perspectives on the one hand and recent Chinese approaches to urban speech communities and the social and linguistic dynamics of actual developments on the other side. Methodological approaches such as survey methodology, unobtrusive measurement, ethnographic participant observation combined with discourse studies, and matched guise studies, will be the topic of discussion.

The purpose of studying the Chinese transient urban situation is a contribution to a better understanding of the industrialization and urbanization processes and their consequences for language matters. Chinese data provide information on the direction and strength of accommodation processes that must have taken place in Europe during industrialization, but there, by necessity, went by unnoticed, even though some of these can be (partly) reconstructed (Labov 1972; Trudgill 1974). It is expected that the Chinese data and the China-Europe confrontation will provide new insights for general theories of language, which can be further specified as theories of language use (Clarke 1996), language contact (van Coetsem 1988); 1992; 2002; Trudgill 1986), language spread (Cooper 1982), language formation (Le Page/Tabouret-Keller 1985; Yang 1995), language maintenance and decay (Fishman 1972; 1989; Yang 2002), as well as to proposals for the formation of sociolinguistic / ethnolinguistic identities (Giles / Johnson 1987; van den Berg 1988; 1991; 2002; Gumperz ; Kallmeyer et al. 1994/1995). It is expected that the proposed cooperation will allow the reformulation and integration of theses various theories and thereby contribute to a better understanding of the role of language in processes of urbanization and industrialization, both for the Chinese situation and for similar processes that took place or are taking place in Europe.

In what way do Chinese urban environments resemble European settings, and how can one best proceed in analysing the various urban settings? We expect to compare Chinese data with those available from German as well as Dutch sociolinguistic and socio-dialectological projects.

Immigration and the ensuing language contact forces the following research questions:

• What is the functional adjustment taking place between the local dialect(s), immigrant dialects, and the spreading standard language?
• What are the structural consequences for the local dialect(s), the immigrant dialects, and the standard language following from this?
• What changes in attitudinal orientation can be observed among bilingual or multilingual speakers?
• Can we observe the development of new city dialects in urban areas, and if so, what kind of accommodation processes between speakers takes place in such areas?
• If the (newly established) language of the urban centre spreads toward other city districts and the countryside, what kinds of adjustment processes are involved?
• If one adopts a broader socio-stylistic perspective on people's linguistic practice and its relevance for their construction of social identities what is the impact of such a view on our conceptions of attitudinal changes, accommodation processes and the dy-namics of language change?

The contributions to the colloquium will be published in an edited book in English and in a parallel Chinese version.

Program of "Urban Language Studies - Methodogical Questions"