Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics (Volume II)
Editor: Franks Boers, Jeroen Darquennes, Koen Kerremans and Rita Temmerman
Date Of Publication: Sep 2008
Isbn13: 9781847186706
Isbn: 1-84718-670-X
In February 2006 the first international conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics (MACL) was held in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the MACL conference was to bring together scholars from various branches of applied linguistics with a shared interest in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. The conference thus fostered an exchange of knowledge and expertise among researchers from various disciplines, including educational linguistics, cultural linguistics, terminography, translation studies and studies of specialised languages.

The present book is the second of two volumes containing a selection from the approximately 120 papers that were presented at that three-day event. The book comprises five chapters, reflecting different research perspectives on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. The first chapter covers research articles on metaphors and planned languages. The second chapter comprises articles dealing with language attitudes, language proficiency and language practices in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, communicative contexts. Chapter three features articles in the field of discourse-analysis research. In the fourth chapter research is presented that pertains to terminology and specialised languages. Finally, chapter five deals with translation studies.

Frank Boers teaches EFL and applied linguistics at the Erasmus University College Brussels, Belgium. He obtained a PhD in the area of lexicology in 1994 and has broadened the scope of his interests to the disciplines of psycholinguistics, cultural linguistics and applied linguistics. His work has appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching Research and System, and in various collective volumes. He has recently also co-edited Cognitive Linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (2008) for Mouton de Gruyter.

Jeroen Darquennes; main research interests lie in the domain of sociolinguistics and contact linguistics. His work (for example on the status of German in Belgium) has appeared in several collective volumes and journals. He currently is assistant professor at the University of Namur where he teaches German and general linguistics and is affiliated to the Fryske Akademy/Mercator Research Centre in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden (the Netherlands).

Koen Kerremans is a PhD researcher at the Centrum voor Vaktaal en Communicatie, a research centre at the Erasmus University College Brussels (Department of Applied Linguistics). His main research interests range from ontologies and knowledge management to translation, special languages and terminology. His work has appeared in journals such as Terminology and Linguistica Antverpiensia.

Rita Temmerman teaches translation studies and terminology theory at the Erasmus University College Brussels, where she co-ordinates the Centrum voor Vaktaal en Communicatie, a research centre in applied sociocognitive terminology. Her wider research interests include translation, terminology, knowledge management, multilingualism and cross-cultural communication. She has published a monograph with John Benjamins and multiple articles in collective volumes and journals such as Terminology.

"For those readers interested in applied comparative linguistics this volume offers an updated, varied landscape of suggestive contributions which will undoubtedly become a reference to further studies. This collection addresses some burning issues in the applied linguistics field both from a theoretical and practical point of view, such as universality and cross-cultural communication; bilingualism, trilingualism and language proficiency; discourse analysis in cross cultural communication research; terminology and specialized languages and translation studies. The international authorship adds up to a comprehensive and globalized perspective on the problems studied without any lessening of its overall coherence, and confirming the vitality in this field and the richness of approaches."

—Dr. Guadalupe Aguado de Cea, Senior lecturer, Department of Applied Linguistics for science and technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

“The international conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics was held on multilingual ground, where people fiercly defend their own language while happily speaking their neighbour’s. This second volume of the conference proceedings fuels – or so it seems – the linguist’s mythical image: a language juggler and a breaker of borders, dealing in turn with politics, sentiment, education, artificial intelligence, corporate communication… Even going so far as to scrutinise the excellent work put forth by his fellow journalists and translators! Upon reading these presentations, the reader will certainly discover the self-effacement of a field that, beyond its flaws and its jargon, focuses all its attention on homo loquens, the speaking man. Linguistics, even applied, remain first and foremost a form of humanism.”

—Marc Van Campenhoudt, professor, Termisti research centre, Institut supérieur de traducteurs et interprètes, Haute École de Bruxelles.

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