The Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA) is an annual conference focused on heritage language research. WILA began in 2010 as a conference on “Investigating Immigrant Languages in America,” and the workshop has traditionally had a strong emphasis on Nordic heritage languages, such as Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, with occasional inclusion of other Nordic languages, such as Finnish and Icelandic. The Twelft WILA is hosted by the University of Helsinki focusing on heritage languages in the Nordic countries with a special focus on language ideology as well as to breakthrough topics in heritage language studies.
Today, Nordic societies are multicultural entities, due to transnational and global migration and regional developments. In previous centuries, they have taken part in similar flows, when large groups of people migrated from the Nordic countries to the Americas, in search of a better life. This workshop highlights new research conducted both on migrants who have left the Nordic countries, as well as those who are in the Nordic countries in the current era. The workshop has the following research aims: to explore the linguistic relationships between minority groups and majority groups in the Nordic societies and beyond; to examine the ideological basis of language use in heritage contexts, and how heritage cultures and languages are portrayed in local politics and media and; to compare the interconnections of HLS in the Nordic societies with other settings and reflect on the global development of this area of inquiry.
The 3-day event is organized as a hybrid (in person and virtual) workshop at the University of Helsinki and at the Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki. The workshop is freely available to the public.
For more information and programme, visit: The Twelfth Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas. Theme: Language Ideology.