Peking University, Beijing

Nov 27-29, 2015

Co-Organizers: School of Foreign Languages, Peking University;

International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC)

Host: Research Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University

Sponsor: Peking University Press

Conference theme:

Intercultural Communication in Social Practice: Dialogical perspectives, future directions

Today’s increasing globalization and the mobility of people have brought new challenges to repositioning Intercultural Communication and its practices. Although research in Intercultural Communication has long been grounded in everyday communication, language classroom and communities, tensions in research frameworks remain and new questions arise with the changing global landscape: Moving away from an essentialist view of culture, what are the alternative perspectives to study language and intercultural communication in this increasingly hybrid, mobile and interrelated world? How does the “fuzzy” concept of culture remain useful when social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class become interrelated and complex? How do researchers reach out from the Ivory Tower and turn their research into social actions that bring positive changes to the communities they reside in and/or investigate? How can conflicts be resolved and dialogues be facilitated between local communities, between local and international communities, between researchers and practitioners, and between the past and the present? How do individuals understand, relate, speak and act in their private, family, communal and working lives? How does web-based technology connect to and change our communication practices and facilitate the development of hybrid identities? How does the ever-changing China preserve its past, speak to the present world, and enact its new dreams in local and global arenas? 

This conference, with its focus on intercultural communication in social practice, aims to explore intercultural practices in different social arenas. It welcomes research that uses dialogical perspectives to theory and practice, and especially those that bring positive social change to the communities. The conference aims to encourage greater dialogue between researchers with different theoretical and methodological frameworks, and between Chinese and non-Chinese researchers and practitioners. It seeks to open up dialogues that will lead to new and future directions in intercultural communication research.

Papers are invited in (but not limited to) any of the following sub-themes:

Intercultural communication practices in language education

Multilingual, multicultural practices and language teachers

Intercultural rhetoric and writing instruction

Verbal participation in a second/foreign language

International teaching assistants’ professional development

Development of intercultural competence in English education, in teaching Chinese as a second/foreign/heritage language/lingua franca, and in language education generally

Multimodality in multilingual education

New technology and intercultural education

Intercultural conflict and conflict management in communities

Language policy and intercultural conflict

Intercultural conflict and emotional management

Power, politics and conflict negotiation

Language features in conflict management styles

Preservation and exploration of indigenous/local/native cultures

Ethnocentric bias in intercultural (competency) models

Diversity and heterogeneity in indigenous/local/native cultures

Change, fusion and recreation of local cultures

Intercultural competency models revisited in local cultural contexts

Migration and international relocation

Academic socialization of international students

Language and identity development of immigrants in various contexts, and language education policies and practices

Success and challenges in academic community participation

Professional development of foreign returnees

Intercultural communication and adaptation of international and home students

Other institutional practices

Multilingual practices in doctor-patient discourse

Intercultural communication in the workplace

Language and prejudice in the workplace

Construction of cultures in public media discourse

English and intercultural communication in the aviation industry

Translation and intercultural communication

Language, identity and international crime

Intercultural communication and identity in online communities

Submission guidelines

Abstracts for presentations should be submitted in English and should be between 250 and 300 words. The deadline for submission is 31 May, 2015, and notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of June, 2015.

Please submit abstracts (including a title, five keywords, a short bio (of no more than 200 words) and contact information) to ialic2015beijing@163.com