We are excited to announce that the 8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium will be held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on March 25, 2027.
The Sociolinguistics Symposium (SoSy) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is an annual research event organized by graduate students in Sociolinguistics, providing a forum for scholarly exchange across sociolinguistics and related fields.
This year's theme, The Social Life of Language: Capturing Creative Chaos, highlights the creative and often unpredictable nature of language in social life. The symposium invites research exploring how people use language to construct identities, negotiate power, and challenge established norms. It also encourages discussions of how linguistic practices change as people move across communities and encounter different social expectations. Through this theme, SoSy 8 aims to capture the complexity of language as a social practice, recognizing that even seemingly ordinary interactions can reveal creativity, tension, and change.
The plenary speakers for the conference are Professor Rajend Mesthrie (University of Cape Town), and Professor Jennifer Cramer (University of Kentucky).
Abstract submissions are currently open, with the deadline for submission on December 30, 2026.
We invite abstracts that engage with this year's theme by examining how language operates between social worlds, cultural systems, and global contexts. Submissions may address how linguistic practices mediate connection, difference, and belonging across local and transnational settings.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Language and identity across transnational, diasporic, and migrant contexts
- Multilingualism, translanguaging, and everyday language practices across communities
- Language ideologies, power, and inequality in global and local settings
- Digital communication, social media, and mediated forms of global interaction
- Language, culture, and belonging in education, work, and public institutions
- Sociolinguistic perspectives on mobility, globalization, and cultural contact
- Narrative, stance, and positioning across languages and social worlds
Language policy, language rights, and global communication ethics
You can learn more about submitting an abstract here.
You can learn more about the conference on the SOSY website