Mikroglottika : Academic minority language net
Minority languages have drawn the attention of sociolinguistic studies for the last two decades and continue to be interesting not only for the specialized linguist but also for the general public. At the beginning of the 21st century minority languages have been given a powerful tool for intercommunication and dissemination for the up-to-then scarcely available knowledge: the World Wide Web.
Besides "classical" websites supporting a closed format, the introduction of new collaborative and dialogical web types like forums, blogs and wikis, as well as video and photo sharing platforms, have triggered the use of (European) minority languages on the Net. Almost every Western minority language community has a more or less extensive range of forum, blog and wiki activists, passive readers and semi-engaged commentators.
The volume that will be edited by the Mikroglottika research group (http://www.mikroglottika.com) and published by major academic publisher Peter Lang will tackle the linguistic implications of the so called Web 2.0 or Social Web for minority languages. Theoretical and practical contributions to the volume are welcomed:
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Theoretical papers can expose methodical aspects on how to conduct research and describe the importance of interactive web communication for minority languages or languages of ethnic minorities, as well as analyse a possible adaptation of existing linguistic theories to the linguistic description of the Social Web for these languages.
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Practical contributions should concentrate on a specific language. Specially welcomed will be case studies describing language use in forums, blogs, wikis and video or photo sharing platforms.
Contributions should not exceed 15 pages (please stick to the style sheet). They should be submitted in English until the 10/01/2010 to the following email address as a word file:
Prof. Dr. Raúl Sánchez Prieto (University of Salamanca):