Mr. Verb

The 6th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA6) will take place on September 24–26, 2015, at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. The workshop is hosted by the Department of English.

We invite abstracts for 20-minute presentations on any aspect of the linguistics of heritage languages in the Americas (e.g., structural, generative, historical, sociolinguistic, or experimental). Abstracts should be no more than one page in length, but may include a second page with diagrams, charts, and references. The abstract itself should be anonymous, while the accompanying email should contain author information and the title of the paper. Abstracts should be sent to Joe Salmons. 

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2015. Decisions on acceptance will be announced in July.

Conference website 

Heritage Language List

For further information, please contact Joe Salmons. 

Local Organizers 

Angela Hoffman Falk, Department of English, Uppsala University 

Merja Kytö, Department of English, Uppsala University 

Organizers of WILA6 

Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir, University of Iceland 

Janne Bondi Johannessen, University of Oslo 

Michael Putnam, Penn State University

Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin – Madison

Previous Workshops

The Fifth Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas, October 2014, UCLA 

The Fourth Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas, September 2013, University of Iceland

The Third Workshop on Immigrant Languages in America, September 2012, Penn State University 

The Second Workshop on Immigrant Languages in America, September 2011, University of Oslo 

Wait, what? People immigrate to the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States because English is the dominant language in those places? I know a ton of immigrants, from many walks of life and from literally all over the world. Aside from a couple who came to work as English professors or something, I cannot imagine that a single one of them was motivated in any way by the dominant language spoken here.

Does anybody know of any evidence of any kind, even anecdotal, that English motivates immigration to English-speaking countries? 

Image from here.*

*Answer to question: Lingua franca is English / in English. Wasn't always English, but is now.