Past

The 1999 meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages (SPCL) took place in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) meeting in Los Angeles, 8-9 January. For the first time special sessions were held on Applied Creolistics. The following papers were delivered:

Creoles as medium of instruction (Malcolm A. Finney)
Using a stigmatized variety to teach the standard: Interference or separation? (Jeff Siegel)
A Creole English reading experiment (Ron Kephart)
Applied creolistics in court: Linguistics, methodological and ethical dimensions of expert testimony (Peter L. Patrick)
The case of Aboriginal English in the Australian legal system (Diana Eades)
The hegemony of English: Hau kam yu wen kawl wat ai spik ingglish wen yu no no waz? (Kent Sakoda & Ermile Hargrove)
Policies of teaching in a multilingual context: The case of creole languages in French Guiana (Laurence Goury)

Wat, bada yu? Voices Heard and Voices Unheard: Pidgin, Local Identities and Strategies for Multicultural Learning was a special conference on Hawai‘i Creole English (locally known as “Pidgin”), held at the University of Hawai‘i 6-10 April, organized by the Office for Women’s Research. The program included panel discussions and presentations on the following topics:

• Pidgin in the 21st century: Deconstructing the hegemony of standard English
• Language discrimination: Creole English(es) and the courts
• Pidgin in the schools: Educational policies, learning environments and teaching strategies

There was also a session with readings in Pidgin by nine well-known creative writers, and performances in Pidgin by the local personality Joe Balaz and the Kumu Kahua Theater.

Le 9e Colloque International des Etudes Créoles was held in Aix-en-Provence, France, 24-29 June 1999. There were two round tables relevant to PACE:

Orthographe: entre mythe et réalité?
Enseignement des langues maternelle et seconde en milieu franco-créolophone : problématique, enjeux, défis et perspective

The following presentations were also of interest:

Complexion créole et complexe créole dans les pages des écrivains mauriciens (Shakuntala Boolell)
Language for education and standardization, as factors in language attitude ratings: Survey findings from urban, southern Nigeria on anglo-Nigerian Pidgin (Charles Mann)
Le créole à l'épreuve de l'école antillaise. Fantasmes identitaires et expériences glottopolitiques (Lambert-Félix Prudent)
Enseigner pour instruire (Roger E. Savain)
Créole et école: de l'expérience seychelloise aux défis à venir (Rada Tirvassen)

Issues in “non-standard” dialect research was a special symposium held at the 1999 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society at the University of Western Australia in Perth, 30 September - 1 October. The following presentations were made:

Non-standard dialect research issues in legal contexts (Diana Eades)
Non-standard dialect research issues in educational contexts: New technologies in multilingual classrooms (Viv Edwards)
Stigmatized and standardized varieties in the classroom: Interference or separation? (Jeff Siegel)
Non-standard dialect research issues in community contexts (Ian Malcolm & Glenys Collard)
Non-standard dialect research issues in workplace contexts (Janet Holmes)
Work in progress: The ABC project, “Two way bidialectal education of speakers of Aboriginal English” (Ian Malcolm, Alison Hill, Patricia Königsberg, Glenys Collard & Rosemary Cahill)
Program for Bidialectal Development in a USA school district (Kelli Harris-Wright)
A study in progress: Teacher perceptions of student speech (Yvonne Haig)
Work in progress: Socio-cultural dimensions of the English of Western Australian primary school children (Graham McKay, Rhonda Oliver & Judith Rochecouste)

The symposium also included a discussion and response on the first five presentations by Susan Kaldor, and a panel discussion on Models of bidialectal education, with Glenys Collard, Kelli Harris-Wright, Patricia Königsberg and Jeff Siegel.

Upcoming

The Fifth International Creole Language Workshop will be held at Florida International University 30 March - 1 April, 2000. For further information contact:

Dr Tometro Hopkins
Linguistics Program, Dept of English
Florida International University
Miami, FL 33199 USA
Phone: (305) 348-3096
Fax: (305) 348-3878
hopkinst@fiu.edu