Welcome to the 16th International Conference on Minority Languages & 34th Summer School of Applied Language Studies in Jyväskylä & Närpes, Finland, August 28-30, 2017. The theme of the conference is Revaluing minority languages.

Minority languages have long been used by different groups of social actors for identity and community building purposes, such as the symbolic, material, and political mobilisation of linguistic and cultural rights. Currently, under changing political, economic and cultural conditions around the world, minority languages are subject to multiple, overlapping and even contradictory discourses and practices of valuation and revaluation. The peripheral position of minority languages, as structured by nation-state logics, and the central role endowed to them in the political projects of various minority groups are now complexified by both the increasing economic value of minority languages as a resource of distinction and authenticity, and by the intensified mobility of languages and their speakers. Some of the consequences of this complexification result in re-evaluating relationship between minority and migrant languages and the trajectories of so-called “new speakers” of minority languages.

ICML XVI will address critical questions such as how minority languages are valued, by whom and under what conditions. The conference is open to researchers, students and stakeholders from across the multidisciplinary field of minority languages.

ICML XVI is organised by the University of Jyväskylä Language Campus which is a forum of cooperation between JYU units that work on different language-related fields. The units include the Language Centre, the Department of Languages, the Centre for Applied Language Studies, and the Department of Teacher Education (language teacher education).