Plenary speakers

Abstract submission deadline extended to the 7th  October, 2018


Speakers who have already confirmed their participation:

• Prof. Ken Hyland, University of East England, Norwich, England

Community and identity in academic writing

Identity and community are central organizing principles of our social worlds, yet remain controversial and elusive concepts.    With the emergence of community-oriented views of literacy in recent years, greater attention has been given to the specific contexts of language use, so we have learnt that texts are successful only when they employ conventions that other members of the community find familiar and convincing.  Because of this, language choices help construct both arguments and disciplines.  Moreover, because we choose our words to connect with others and present ideas in ways that make most sense to them, such repeated uses of language encourages the performance of certain kinds of professional identities. Communities thus constrain identity choices but they also indicate the ways we relate independent beliefs to shared experience.  In this way, the production of specific texts is always the production of community and of self.

Ken Hyland is Professor of Applied Linguistics in Education at the University of East Anglia. He is well known for his work on academic writing and EAP, having published 240 articles and 27 books on these topics with over 38,000 citations on Google Scholar. He was founding co-editor of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, co-editor of Applied Linguistics and now edits two book series with Routledge and Bloomsbury. He is an honorary professor at The Universities of Hong Kong, Warwick and Jilin, China and a Foundation Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. A collection of his work was recently published as The Essential Hyland, Bloomsbury, 2018.

 

https://www2.caes.hku.hk/kenhyland/


• Prof. Robin Anderson, University of Milan, Bicocca, Milan, Italy

AN OVERVIEW OF MACRO AND MICRO FACTORS IN THE GLOBAL USE OF ENGLISH,

WITH A FOCUS ON ITALY AND POLAND 

Globalisation and increased mobilization are just two factors which have made English the global language it is today. What are the implications of this unassailable position of the English language in social, professional and academic contexts in the world today? Drawing on the opinions and experiences of the participants it is hoped to investigate the effects of this phenomenon. Why do some countries reach a higher proficiency than others? Are the reasons to be found in global, national or individual differences? Previous studies of English language achievement have focused on cultural and affective factors as predictors to success or failure in second language learning. Is this dichotomy sufficient to explain the place of English in the world today? Have the consequences of globalization called for a rethinking of our conception of why and how people learn? Focusing on Poland and Italy, the talk will point at connections between cultural, societal and individual factors and English language proficiency. Is the question ‘Why aren’t you learning English?’, rather than ‘Why are you learning in English?’

Robin Anderson has worked in the field of English as a Second Language for over 30 years and has taught and trained teachers in the UK, Portugal, Italy and China where he was Senior English Language Specialist for the British Government’s Overseas Development Administration programme. He is the author of four books on the study of English for Economics and Business and he has published articles in academic journals on a number of applied linguistic themes including; English for Special Purposes, Motivational theories and Discourse Analysis. He works as a researcher in the language department of the Faculty of Economics in the ‘Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca’, Italy.

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• Prof. zw. dr hab. Tomasz Krzeszowski, University of Social Sciences, Warsaw
 

Whose God is Yahwe? – A case of translational imbroglio

The three monotheistic religions, namely, Judasim, Christianity and Islam, nothwithstanding various important doctrinal differences between them, as well as between their numerous variants, have one thing in common.  They confess faith in the existence of GOD, one Supreme Entity, the Ultimate Source and Creator of everything that exists in all possible cognitive domains. In the three monotheistic religions God reveals Himself through His messengers and prophets, of whom the most outstanding ones are Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet. All three religions are rooted in “Holy Scriptures” and in the respective traditions. The present paper is concerned with one of numerous translational problems inherent in Hebrew and Christian holy texts usually referred to as The Bible, which is a compilation of various texts written in different times in various historical and cultural contexts by different authors firmly believed to be inspired by GOD, the central concept in all versions of The Bible.

   In most Hebrew versions of what Christian versions of the Bible call ‘Old Testament’  GOD is most often referred to by three words: ‘elohim’, ‘adonai’ and YHWH (transcribed asYahweh, Yehveh, Yahve, Jahveh, Jahve, Jahweh, Jahwe, *Jehovah ). The first two of these words may be used to refer to various gods while the third one (well over 6000 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible) is a proper noun, the name the God of Israel. It is these three words that are regularly rendered by two Greek words, qeoϛ and kurioϛ in the Septuagint, and by two Latin words, ‘Deus’ and ‘Dominus’, in various versions of the Vulgate. In modern vernacular target versions corresponding lexical equivalents of these Greek and Latin words are easily available and are regularly used. However, in a number of vernacular target versions based on the original Hebrew texts rather than on the Septuagint or one of the Vulgates, other lexemes, more accurately rendering the source lexemes can also be found. One-to-one correspondence between respective Hebrew words and vernacular words cannot be expected, and some contrasts in the source texts have become obliterated in some target texts. All this inevitably involves translation problems and results in a number of inconsistencies, all of which deserve being called ‘a translational imbroglio’. The present paper focuses on deliberate mistranslations of the tetragramaton YHWH (יְהֹוָה), which are motivated by the doctrinal need to prove the alleged fundamental contrast between Judaism and Christianity. A number of examples are presented and discussed to illustrate the claim that these mistranslations, with notable exceptions plaguing translated versions of The Bible, in a major way contribute to maintaining anti-Semitic attitudes among contemporary Christians; yet, Christians seem to – at least implicitly and inconsistently –  assume that their God is the same Supreme Being as the God of ancient Israelites and of contemporary  pious Jews.

Tomasz P. Krzeszowski . Professor Emeritus at Warsaw University; Professor Ordinarius at University of Social Sciences in Łódź/Warsaw. Areas of academic research: contrastive linguistics, cognitive linguistics, translation studies, axiological aspects of language, metaphor. Major books: Early contrastive studies in England, Gramatyka angielska dla Polaków, Contrasting languages: the scope of contrastive linguistics, Angels and devils in hell: elements of axiology in semantics; Time works wonders, The translation equivalence delusion.