CIDL

The global landscape of language rights is constantly evolving, as are, necessarily, the language policies that govern the coexistence of different languages both explicitly and tacitly. Academia, but also societies and institutions, have become increasingly aware of the diversity that surrounds us, of how the linguistic needs of different communities diverge, and of the different opportunities that languages open and close to those who speak them.

The value of the advantages of expressing oneself and receiving messages in the language or languages in which one is most proficient underlies the design and implementation of language policies, but has not materialized in the recognition of a universal right. On the contrary, it continues to create hierarchies between languages, communities, and individuals. Language is a category of social stratification that enables access to the spheres in which we articulate social life. The capacity to organize such access is associated with the capital accrued by languages. When such capital is actively exercised, we see uninterrupted flows of translation and interpretation. In interstate negotiations, no resources are spared and the right to use the language that can afford a discursive advantage is not disputed. At the other extreme, individuals who migrate for economic, political, and ecological reasons face highly institutionalized and profoundly unfamiliar environments with no guarantee of understanding, let alone any negotiation advantage. Between both scenarios, a diverse panorama of situations opens up in which certain linguistic capitals linked to the structures that organize the distribution of resources and rights are invalidated or enthroned.

Particularly in the social sciences, although not exclusively, in recent decades we have witnessed the development of a transformative paradigm that places emphasis on social justice and human rights. Awareness of the possibilities of science to promote or transform injustices has opened new debates on ethical practices in the study of populations, in the communication of science and in the use and application of its possibilities. Given the critical nature of communication in increasingly extreme situations for individual lives and collective cooperation, it is urgent to reflect on the personal, institutional, and environmental advantages and disadvantages that fall on individuals and groups sharing social spaces, on the institutionalization of certain situations and on the resulting epistemic injustice. On the other hand, the complexity of the panorama offers opportunities of great interest for the intellectual development of forms of political, legal, and linguistic organization that can address imbalances, asymmetries, and injustices.

This conference seeks to articulate a forum to foreground the diversity of situations and solutions from multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary perspectives. The congress wishes to become a call for sharing the visions brought by the different disciplines of political and legal science, translation, interpretation and communication studies, discursive and social work, but also from the fields of policy-making to bring to light problems and devise solutions.

The Organizing Committee of the 1st International Conference on the Right to Languages: Language Policies and Translation and Interpreting in Public Services and Institutions invites proposals for individual presentations, round tables, or posters of a theoretical, critical, methodological, empirical, practical or didactic nature on these and other topics related to national, cross-border, and international public services and institutions:

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