Malaysia Symposium, December 2011
Please find details of our forthcoming symposium in Malaysia here and also below. Details of registration and accommodation can be found here. Details of airlines for Malaysia can be found here.
Language and Intercultural Communication: The Discourse of Ethics and Equity 2011 Symposium of the International Association for Languages and Communication (IALIC)
This year’s symposium for the International Association for Languages and Communication (IALIC) is being held for the first time outside Europe. It is being convened by Shanta Nair-Venugopal and organized and hosted by the Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, at its main campus in Bangi, Malaysia from 9-10 December 2011. Usually held between IALIC’s biennial conferences and meetings, the symposium provides for its members a more focused discussion of a topic of specific interest. This time round, the mailing list for the symposium includes not only those who have regularly supported IALIC conferences and meetings in more recent times but also others with particular expertise or interest in language and intercultural communication.
The theme for the 2011 symposium is Language and Intercultural Communication: The Discourse of Ethics and Equity. It hopes to take us beyond the more familiar pedagogical and linguistic contexts that lie at the heart of IALIC to others such as: the workplace (which provides natural borders for intercultural communication) in relation to the praxis of business, training and management; the arena of international relations, given the emergence of translocal individuals, border zone identities, spiritual movements, new nationalisms etc.; and social networks including the impact of the new media vis-à-vis face-to-face interaction. In focusing on ethics, and on equity as fairplay or the democratisation of the interactional space in which intercultural communication takes place, it includes a philosophical dimension. It asks us to consider why some groups of individuals like fund managers, celebrities and well heeled tourists (no matter what language they speak), are better ‘understood’ than others like refugees, trafficked persons and marginalised communities? We ask if the intention to understand and ‘tolerate’ is as important as the intention to ‘accept’ and understand? These issues are just as important, if not more so, in this part of the world as anywhere else in order to achieve intercultural understanding. We ask you to consider these questions in the light of IKON’s tagline Building Bridges, Pursuing Peace
We invite all IALIC members to send in an abstract of a minimum of 250 to a maximum of 500 words. The closing date for the submission of abstracts is 30 July 2011. Please email them to Shantanair.Venugopal@gmail.com. You will be notified of acceptance by 31 August 2011.
We look forward to your participation in December 2011.
Jumpa nanti dan salaam bahagia!
Shanta Nair-Venugopal
