This page needs JavaScript! Please enable it to continue.

This website uses JavaScripts. If you use an adblocker, content may not be displayed or may not be displayed correctly.

Language promotion and governmental cultural agencies – economic and political interests (Workshop)

DateTuesday, 28th February 2017
Location

veranstalter: Prof. Dr. José del Valle, Stefanie Meier
ansprechpartner: Philipp Dankel
email: philipp.dankel@unibas.ch
web:
institution: HPSL
language: Englisch
location institution: Basel
date_raw: 28. Februar 2017, 9:00h – 12:30h
date_sort: 28.02.2017, 00:00:00

 

Language promotion and governmental cultural agencies – economic and political interests

Governmental cultural agencies such as the Alliance Francaise, the British Council, the Instituto Cervantes or the Goethe Institute take on a central role in the language promotion of nation states. The interests of the institutions and private companies involved are economic as well as political: Language education and language testing in itself becomes an industry, language promotion and language certificates help foster or prevent migration flows. A historical analysis can not only show language ideologies at play but also uncover how language is used to deepen inequalities in late capitalist society.
In this mini-workshop Prof. del Valle will give an input lecture/text discussion on the dynamics amongst such cultural agencies in the Spanish-speaking world. It will be followed by an input on the role of the Goethe Institute Manila in the preparation of Philippine nurses for the German market. After the second input, we will discuss a text by Miriam Gutekunst on the role of the Goethe Institute in the marriage migration from Morroco to Germany. Together they demonstrate how cultural agencies are central to border control and help to attract so-called wanted migrants (the workers needed in Germany) and discourage so-called unwanted migrants (the spouses).

Schedule:

session 1: 9:00h (s.t.) to 10:30h. 

coffee break: 10:30h to 11:00h

session 2: 11:00h to 12:30h.

Preparatory Reading: 

del Valle, José (2013): “Linguistic emancipation and the academies of the Spanish language in the twentieth century: the 1951 turning point”. In: José del Valle (Ed.): A political history of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 229-245.

Gutekunst, Miriam (2015): “Language as a new instrument of border control: the regulation of marriage migration from Morocco to Germany”. In: The Journal of North African Studies 20(4), 540-552.

Villa, Laura & del Valle, José (2014): “The Politics of Spanish in the World”. In: Manel Lacorte (Ed.): The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics. New York, London: Routledge, 571-587.

Xiang, Biao & Lindquist, Johan (2014): “Migration Infrastructure”. In: International Migration Review 48, 122-148.

(PDFs will be distributed on enrollment)