Multilingualism, Communication and Social Reality in Pre-Modern Eurasia:
Linguistic, Ritual, and Socio-Economic Aspects
International Workshop
organized by the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Vienna Linguistic Society and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
Vienna, December 13–15, 2016
Venue:
Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Hollandstraße 11–13 (3rd floor, seminar room), 1020 Vienna
Speakers include
Florentina Badalanova-Geller (TOPOI Excellence Cluster, Freie Universität zu Berlin); Jens Braarvig (University of Oslo); Paola Cotticelli (University of Verona); Orhan Elmaz (St. Andrews University); Ela Filippone (University of Viterbo); Markham J. Geller (Freie Universität zu Berlin); Hrach Martirosyan (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Oswald Panagl (University of Salzburg); Adriano V. Rossi (University of Naples); Velizar Sadovski (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Rüdiger Schmitt (Laboe, Germany / Austrian Academy of Sciences); Gebhard Selz (University of Vienna); Klaus Wagensonner (Yale University); Ran Zadok (University of Tel Aviv)
The Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Wiener Sprachgesellschaft, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press organize an international Symposium under the title ‘Multilingualism, Communication and Social Reality in Pre-Modern Eurasia: Linguistic, Ritual, and Socio-Economic Aspects’.
Ancient societies display, in varying degrees, a multilingual environment. Among the numerous studies dealing with this issue the social implications of multilingualism has not yet received much attention. We would like to discuss five major aspects: (a) cognitive aspects of the relation between language and social experience in the dialectic conditions of a multilingual state; (b) religious experience and social pragmatics in the context of ancient societies; (c) attempts to impose the language of the elite upon the dependant classes, including its application for “imperialistic” purposes; (d) studying the relevance of linguistic affiliations for the questions of social mobility within a specific socio-political system; (e) addressing the use and misuse of languages for establishing group identities, focussing on antagonistic social groups on various levels of a society.
The Symposium will be held in Vienna on 13th–15th of December 2016, at the Institut für Iranistik of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It is convened by the Multilingualism Research Group as a part of a series of thematic conferences and panels dedicated to problems of multilingualism and the history of knowledge.
The keynote lectures on questions of multilingualism in Achaemenid times will be delivered by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schmitt, Foreign Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In the framework of the conference we also shall present the new fascicle of the Grammatica Iranica publications by Rüdiger Schmitt, dedicated to the stylistics of Old Persian inscriptions and published in the Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik series of the Sitzungsberichte der ÖAW by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.
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