NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC 2

We are now pleased to announce the second meeting of the conference series, NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC 2 (the 2nd annual meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation and Change in the Asia-Pacific Region) August 1st-4th, 2012, in Tokyo, Japan. NWAV-AP2 will be hosted by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL).

NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC 2 welcomes submissions for papers and posters on all scientific approaches to analyzing and interpreting language variation and change across the Asia-Pacific region, including real-time/apparent-time language change, dialect variation and change, speech communities, multilingualism, urbanization and migration, sociophonetics, style-shifting, language/dialect contact, variation in minority languages, variation in acquisition, perceptual dialectology, and other topics that enrich our understandings of the region and the languages.

As with NWAV in North America, the research that NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC endeavors to bring together is firmly based on empirical data with an emphasis on quantitative analysis of variation and change. Tokyo is a world-class city that boasts a vibrant linguistics community and many great historical, cultural, artistic attractions, as well as culinary and entertainment adventures.

BACKGROUND ON NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC

The annual North American meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) has a long and influential history of bringing together scholars researching language variation and change. A new Asian conference series, NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC, has now been developed as a “branch” of NWAV specifically focused on Asia and Pacific.

While the Western study of sociolinguistic variation and change emerged in the mid 1960s, highly quantitative work on variation and change has existed in Japan since 1930. The methodological and analytical approach used in the early research of Japanese dialectology region had its roots in the particular socio-historical context of the region and established its own unique foundations. Meeting in Tokyo in 2012 allows NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC to highlight and re-acknowledge the long and rich history of research on language variation and change in this region, which has often been overlooked in the field of sociolinguistics. The conference will also continue the tradition established at NWAV-AP1 of showcasing the innovative descriptive, philological, historical and socially informed research being conducted by emerging and established scholars in some of the world's most fertile arenas of language and dialect contact.

The first meeting of NWAV ASIA-PACIFIC was held at the University of Delhi, India in February 2011. The conference involved many international scholars and valuable cross-cultural exchanges of research ideas and experiences. For further information about the first meeting of the conference series, please see the following site: http://nwavap.du.ac.in/ .