Invited Academic Talks

Keynote addresses and plenary talks at academic conferences:

  • Reversing Language Shift: the case of Indian languages in South Africa. Indological Association of South Africa conference, Durban, 1995.
  • Dravidian Hindi in South Africa. Plenary address at SALA (South Asian Linguistics Association), University of York, U.K. 1995.
  • Male workers’ English in Cape Town: relexification, interlanguage and code switching. Linguistics Society of Southern Africa Conference, Pretoria 1997.
  • New Varieties of English in South Africa, with special reference to South African Indian English. English Academy Conference, Durban, 1998.
  • Language contact and Male Workers’ English in the Western Cape. Plenary address at International Association of World Englishes, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). 1998.
  • The study of New Varieties of English. Southern African Applied Language Studies Association, Cape Town, 2000.
  • Bhojpuri in South Africa. 2nd World Conference on Bhojpuri, 2000. Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius.
  • Sociolinguistics in South Africa. African Languages Association, Potchefstroom, 2001.
  • Dialect representation versus linguistic stereotype in literature. Plenary address at Association of New English Literatures, Magdeburg, Germany 2003.
  • Language endangerment in the Indian and Zanzibari communities of KwaZulu-Natal. (International) Endangered Languages Conference, Stellenbosch, Nov 2005.
  • Varieties of Bhojpuri-Hindi in diaspora, with special reference to South Africa. Plenary address at SALA (South Asian Linguistics Association), University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). 2005.
  • Dilemmas of language maintenance and shift amongst Indian South Africans and their relevance to the larger population. Keynote lecture: Multilingualism and Exclusion Conference, University of the Free State, 20-22 April 2006.
  • Language shift revisited, in the South Africa-India: Reimagining the Disciplines workshop at Wits University, 19-21st May 2006.
  • Multilingualism in tertiary education in South Africa: a sociolinguistic appraisal. Language and Education in Africa Conference, University of Oslo, 19-22 June 2006.
  • Indian languages in diaspora with special reference to Tamil and Bhojpuri-Hindi in South Africa. Joint Conference of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa and the Society for Applied Language Studies in Southern Africa, 5-7 July 2006. University of KwaZulu-Natal.
  • Keynote speaker on English dialectology at the Sociolinguistentag, University of Heidelberg, July 2007.
  • Accelerated change in the English of young middle class, Black South Africans in post-apartheid South Africa. International Association of World Englishes, University of Regensburg. 2007.
  • The sociophonetics of English in post-apartheid South Africa, University of Freiburg, ISLE 2008. (Opening keynote of first conference of the International Society for English Linguistics).
  • New directions in South African Indian English studies. Association of New English Literatures (University of Munster, Germany 2008). Plenary speaker.
  • Plenary at Complexity Theory Workshop, University of Freiburg. May 2008. (all papers were plenaries). 2008. Title: Antideletions and complexity theory, with special reference to Black South African English.
  • Urban languages and urban legends: Tsotsi and other taals in South Africa, African Languages Association of South Africa. July 2009. Keynote.
  • Plenary speaker at Sociolinguistics Symposium, University of Southampton, 2010. Title: Migration, dialectology and citizenship: a perspective from South African Indian English.
  • Opening plenary at International Mobility-Language-Literature conference, UCT-UWC, Jan. 2011. Title: Language shift, cultural practices and writing in South African Indian English.
  • Keynote speaker at first ISLE Spring Doctoral School, University of Freiburg, April 2013. Title: New Englishes and the tenacious life of vernaculars
  • Keynote speaker at University of Helsinki conference on Changing English: Contact and Variation. June 2013. Title: Morphosyntactic typology, contact and variation: South African Englishes in relation to the Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English.
  • Keynote speaker, LIMA conference on Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies. University of Hamburg. October 2013. Title: Youth language registers in informal settings.
  • Plenary speaker: First international (and 32nd) conference of the Linguistic Society of India. CIIL, Mysore. November 2013. Title: Socio-historical linguistics and three Indian diasporas in South Africa.