CALL FOR PAPERS: Language and Communication in Histories of Children and Young People
Date: 7 - 9 July 2025
Location: University of Greenwich, London, UK
This event is hosted by the Institute for Inclusive Communities and Environments and the Institute for Lifecourse Development, of the University of Greenwich with the Institute of Historical Research Life-Cycles Seminar Series
Overview
Language and Communication in Histories of Children and Young People will focus on the development and use of language(s) by children and young people in historical, local and global contexts, with reference to questions of children’s voice, literacy, playfulness, culture, technologies, and protest. It will explore the collision of children’s own productions with adult expectations, the intersection between language use and equality/inequality, and the ways language has been used to exert control as well as to foster self-expression. By focusing on communication, language use and production within multilingual and monolingual environments, it will provide a new lens through which to access “the voice of the child and young person”.
Through analysis of discourses from differing societal, cultural and international contexts and academic sub-disciplines, the varying mechanisms used to control, label and denigrate as well as idealise and sentimentalise the young in different age cohorts will be examined. The conference will also demonstrate how the silencing of certain experiences and social groups obscures injustice and oppression. Intergenerational forms of communication will link the conference theme to the history of the life-cycle.
Conference Themes
We welcome submissions on the history of children and young people from any period or location, as well as intergenerational perspectives. Presentations and roundtables may examine the following topics, including but not limited to:
- Children’s and young people’s productions, oral and written: folklore, verbal games, nursery rhymes, songs, diaries, letters, secret languages, gestures
- Societal perceptions and youthful experiences of multilingualism, bilingualism, monolingualism, lost, forbidden and minority languages, accent and dialect: language as a marker of national/local identity and of social class
- Language for describing children and young people: Languages of authority (or power)-obedience, etiquette, courtesy, forms of address; Medical language, diagnosis, speech therapy, trauma and language loss, labelling; Legal language -categories for evaluating chronological age and competence, rights and capacity; Institutional discourses; Religion and self-expression: child prophets, speaking in tongues, sacred languages; Discourses of affect and care: families and personal relationships; Identity formation and discriminatory language: colonialism, disability, race, class; Naming practices
- Pedagogies of mother-tongue, second or alternative language learning and communication: listening, speaking, reading and writing systems and materials; epistolary cultures and practices, conversation, communication technologies, translation and code-switching, intergenerational complexities of the above
- The right to be heard: protest, demonstration, youth culture, resistance to abuse
- Adult interpretations and transcriptions of children’s communications: children’s literature, baby talk, baby books, parental accounts of deceased prodigies; children’s participation in publication projects
- Language deprivation and the limits of humanity: feral children, human-animal and sentient animal communication
- The reciprocal impact of children’s language on adults and adults’ communications to the young. Unacceptable language
- Silences, mis-communications and absences
Submission Guidance
We welcome both individual paper proposals or panel submissions via our online submission portal:
Important Dates:
Paper submission deadline: 5 January 2025
Panel Review Period: January-February 2025
Decisions: February 2025
Conference Fees
We aim to provide a low cost and accessible conference. Fees will be published on our website in early 2025.
About Greenwich
The University of Greenwich sits on a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the banks of the River Thames. It is centred on three baroque buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren as a Royal Naval Hospital at the end of the seventeenth century. The campus is surrounded by historical landmarks, such as the Royal Observatory and the Cutty Sark, as well as Greenwich Park and a selection of bars and restaurants. There are excellent transport links, by train, river and bus. www.gre.ac.uk