The American Association of Applied Linguistics(AAAL) held its annual conference March 8-11, 1997, at the Holiday Inn in Orlando, Florida. More than 900 participants attended the conference, mainly from the United States but also from Africa, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, and Taiwan. Most participants were applied linguists and language teachers and teacher educators with an interest in applied linguistics.
The conference opened on March 8th with an opening plenary. Participants were welcomed by Mary McGroarty, AAAL Vice President and the chair of the conference. Two AAAL awards were presented: The Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award was presented to Courtney B. Cazden, Professor Emerita at Harvard Graduate School of Education, a researcher in the area of forms and functions in written and spoken discourse in L1 and L2 education, and The Student Travel Award went to Suzanne Scott, a PhD student at Northern Arizona University, who has served as the chair of the Applied Linguistics Interest Section of TESOL.
The opening plenary speaker was Nancy H. Hornberger of the University of Pennsylvania, who spoke on "Language Policy, Language Education, and Language Rights: Indigenous, Immigrant, and International Perspectives." She discussed the plight of indigenous languages, many of which are in danger of disappearing because they are not being transmitted to the next generation. In many cases, speakers have the twin needs of learning a new language and maintaining their original language. Pressures from majority languages, and social, political, and economic pressures make it difficult for indigenous languages to survive. And yet, language policy and language education can often counter these pressures, promote the vitality and stability of these languages, and protect the rights of their speakers. Speakers should have the right, according to Hornberger, to have education in their own language and to have control over the educational process as it affects their children.
Two plenaries were held on Sunday, March 9th. In the first, Peter H. Nelde of the Catholic University of Brussels gave a speech entitled, "How to Neutralize Language Conflict: A European Perspective." He pointed out that the European Union has 11 official languages, meaning that there are 110 language combinations. In addition, there are 48 "minority languages" or "lesser-used languages." However, Nelde maintained that there is no such thing as "symmetrical multilingualism"-- one language is always stronger or has more numerous or economically better-off speakers. This inevitably creates conflicts, and solutions that have been proposed include using an artificial language, choosing one lingua franca, and choosing a small number of languages, none of which is a practical or acceptable solution. While Nelde did not propose a solution, he encouraged multilingualism, particularly the learning of surrounding languages, and discouraged elitism, asserting that monolingualism is curable, and that multilingualism is for everyone.
The speaker in the second plenary was Guadalupe Valdes of Stanford University, who gave a presentation entitled, "Language-Based Discrimination." She asserted that "monolingual" nations often disregard the rights of linguistic minorities. Using the example of the United States, she then reviewed several court cases which involved what she considered language-based discrimination, including cases where sales of service station franchises in the United States were blocked based on TOEIC scores, and "English only" rules in the workplace, even during employees' break time. Valdes proposed that more research be done in such areas as the changeability of accents, appropriate norms and procedures for evaluating job-related language ability, the ability of aging individuals to acquire or improve a second language, and the evaluation/development of different tests that are appropriate for use with speakers of different varieties of English.
In the first plenary on March 10, John Edwards of St. Francis Xavier University spoke on "Multilingualism and Identity Negotiation." He pointed out that as the world becomes smaller linguistically, local languages are threatened, but that this has also had the effect of motivating concern for, and loyalty to, local languages. In spite of the spread of global languages, multilingual competence remains important. However, Edwards maintained that the importance of language is not limited to instrumentality; it is a marker of group identity, and, as such, it often requires speakers to negotiate between the desire advance and at the same time maintain social, cultural, and linguistic continuity.
Plenary speaker Elana Shohamy of Tel Aviv University spoke on "Critical Language Testing and Beyond." Shohamy maintained that language tests are not neutral. They exist in a context of social, political, and educational agendas. Tests are not always used for the purpose for which they were developed and validated which has the effect of narrowing linguistic knowledge, suppressing creative learning, creating a harmful backwash effect on teaching and learning, among other effects.
The last plenary was delivered by Craig Chaudron of the University of Hawai'i, who spoke on "Theory and Practice in Classroom Research." He discussed the "old" model of classroom research, which focused on context and process variables and outcomes, the limitations of this model, and the need for a more dynamic model of research. With the changes of focus and the development of "collaborative research," "action research," and "teacher research," there has been a greater focus on classroom research and on such aspects of learning as the language in social interaction, between learner autonomy and strategy use, learner-centered program types, individualized learning, and language across the curriculum.
Conference colloquia and concurrent presentations were divided into twelve strands: Assessment, Discourse Analysis, Language Acquisition/Socialization, Literacy, Language for Specific Purposes, Language Policy and Planning, Second/Foreign Language Pedagogy, Psycholinguistics/SLA, Rhetoric and Stylistics, and Sociolinguistics. Concurrent sessions were often scheduled so that related sessions were held one after another in the same room
Over the course of the conference, there were seven invited colloquia, organized by scholars in various areas of applied linguistics and bringing together four or five papers related to the subject. The topics of their subjects included "Incorporating a Sociolinguistic Perspective into SLA Theory" (organized by Elaine Tarone and Leslie Beebe), "Creole Linguistics and Social Responsibility" (organized by Lise Winer and dedicated to Charlene Sato), "Foreign Language Acquisition in the Classroom Context" (organized by Carol A. Klee) and "Learning to Read in L2: A View from L1 Research" (organized by Rose-Marie Weber).
There were various opportunities for participants to make contact with each other and with presenters. "Meet the Speakers" was held on the evenings of the 9th and 10th. There was also an "Institutional Information Session," which was an opportunity for participants to share information about their programs, and three Professional Networking Sessions, where participants could meet others with similar interests. Finally, there were two receptions, one after the opening session, and the other after the President's Reception on Monday evening. A Publishers' Exhibit was held on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Almost twenty publishers displayed books related to various areas of applied linguistics, language teaching, and related subjects.
Next year's AAAL conference will be held in Seattle, March 14-17.