Securing languages presence and development in cyberspace is an important prerequisite for their preservation.
What can and should be done in order to overcome language marginalization? How can we help languages become better equipped, represented and used? And who is able and obliged to do this?
To study these issues Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Program, North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) and Interregional Library Cooperation Centre supported by the Government of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) will hold the 3rd International Conference on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace, 28 June - 3 July, 2014 in Yakutsk, Russia.
The conference is held within Russian chairmanship in the UNESCO Information for All Intergovernmental Programme and the Year of Culture in the Russian Federation.
The conference main topic is creating and implementing policies to develop and preserve languages. The conference will address following issues:
• Developing legal and institutional instruments to support multilingualism
• Internet as an environment for preserving cultural identity
• Education and preservation of linguistic diversity: role, functions, responsibility
• Challenges and opportunities of internationalization of languages
• Language marginalization: a verdict or a challenge?
• Russian as a language of international communication
We are pleased to invite interested representatives of intergovernmental, international, regional and national NGO, universities and research centres, public authorities in charge of culture, education, science, information and communication, representatives of business entities and media to take part in the Conference.
Registration fee is not charged. The organizing committee will cover the following expenses:
– Transfers in Yakutsk
– Participation in the welcome reception and cultural programme
Other expenses are covered by a sending party.
Working languages of the conference are Russian and English (simultaneous interpreting).
Contacts:
ifap@ifapcom.ru
+7 (499) 267-33-34 (tel./fax)
Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Program
Ms Tatiana Murovana
Ms Daria Ignatova
3rd International Conference on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace
Mon, Feb 24, 2014
UNESCO has been continuously warning that more than half of the currently alive 7,000 languages may extinguish within several generations. Wise ethno-linguistic policies and modern information technologies offer a chance of at least slowing down these processes, which are capable of inflicting much harm to the entire humankind.