The 3rd Asian Conference on Language (ACL2022)

Join us in Tokyo (and online) for ACL2022!

March 25–27, 2022 | Held online from Tokyo, Japan

Welcome to The 3rd Asian Conference on Language (ACL2022), held in partnership with the IAFOR Research Centre at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, Japan.

ACL2022 is an exciting in-person interdisciplinary conference that explores the many fields, theories and practices of the study of language, from questions of language acquisition, psychology and linguistics, through those of culture, communication, community-building and technology, to the teaching and learning of language. Come join your colleagues as IAFOR welcomes you to Japan!

In its written and spoken forms language dominates and shapes our lives. Far from just being the tool of communication, language can be beautiful or ugly, sparse and succinct, or overblown and technocratic – direct or obfuscatory. It can be mediocre, lazy, hurtful, spiteful, libellous, slanderous, or false, but it can also be uplifting, joyous, salutary, truthful, and even divine. The past year of the global pandemic has demonstrated those facts as never before. Language brings us our first and dying words, and accompanies our journeys, helping us to formulate concepts, sentences, and lives, and helps us negotiate meanings, ideas, and each other. As we emerge from COVID and its terrible impact on our families and communities, we find solace, inspiration, and connection through our various modes of expression – written, oral, artistic, and non-verbal.

The study of language and languages is an immense opportunity to engage with international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary content and issues that lie at the heart of the IAFOR mission. Since its founding in 2009, IAFOR has brought people and ideas together in a variety of events and platforms to promote and celebrate interdisciplinary study, and underline its importance. Over the past year we have engaged in many cross-sectoral projects, including those with universities (the University of Tokyo, Singapore Management University, Birkbeck University of London, and UCL), research centers (RECSIE), as well as collaborative projects with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the Australian Institute of Foreign Affairs.

With the IAFOR Research Centre at Osaka University’s Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), we have engaged in a number of interdisciplinary initiatives we believe will have an important impact on domestic and international public policy conversations. It is through conferences like these that we expand our network and partners, and we have no doubt that ACL2022 will offer a remarkable opportunity for the sharing of research and best practice, and for the meeting of people and ideas.

At the intersection of theory, pedagogy, and praxis The Asian Conference on Language invites researchers and teachers to submit proposals in the following areas:

• Language Acquisition
• Language and Communication
• Language and Culture
• Language and Psychology
• Language and Technology
• Language and Resilience
• Language and Community
• Language Learning and Teaching
• Linguistics

We look forward to meeting you in Tokyo and online!

– The ACL2022 Organising Committee

Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Donald E. Hall, University of Rochester, United States
Yasuko Ito, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan
Barbara Lockee, Virginia Tech., United States
Jo Mynard, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan
Diane Hawley Nagatomo, Ochanomizu University, Japan
Dexter Da Silva, Keisen University, Japan
Kie Yamamoto, Wayo Women’s University, Japan

This conference is associated with the Scopus and DOAJ listed IAFOR Journal of Education. Authors need to submit their manuscripts directly to the IAFOR Journal of Education for the normal review peer-review process. Please note that papers already submitted to, or published in IAFOR Conference Proceedings are not accepted for publication in any of IAFOR’s journals. IAFOR's Conference Proceedings are not Scopus listed.

---

---

About IAFOR’s Education Conferences

IAFOR promotes and facilitates new multifaceted approaches to one of the core issues of our time, namely globalisation and its many forms of growth and expansion. Awareness of how it cuts across the world of education, and its subsequent impact on societies, institutions and individuals, is a driving force in educational policies and practices across the globe. IAFOR’s conferences on education have these issues at their core. The conferences present those taking part with three unique dimensions of experience, encouraging interdisciplinary discussion, facilitating heightened intercultural awareness and they promoting international exchange. In short, IAFOR’s conferences on education are about change, transformation and social justice. As IAFOR’s previous conferences on education have shown, education has the power to transform and change whilst it is also continuously transformed and changed.

Globalised education systems are becoming increasingly socially, ethnically and culturally diverse. However, education is often defined through discourses embedded in Western paradigms as globalised education systems become increasingly determined by dominant knowledge economies. Policies, practices and ideologies of education help define and determine ways in which social justice is perceived and acted out. What counts as "education" and as "knowledge" can appear uncontestable but is in fact both contestable and partial. Discourses of learning and teaching regulate and normalise gendered and classed, racialised and ethnicised understandings of what learning is and who counts as a learner.

In many educational settings and contexts throughout the world, there remains an assumption that teachers are the possessors of knowledge which is to be imparted to students, and that this happens in neutral, impartial and objective ways. However, learning is about making meaning, and learners can experience the same teaching in very different ways. Students (as well as teachers) are part of complex social, cultural, political, ideological and personal circumstances, and current experiences of learning will depend in part on previous ones, as well as on age, gender, social class, culture, ethnicity, varying abilities and more.

IAFOR has several annual conferences on education across the world, exploring common themes in different ways to develop a shared research agenda which develops interdisciplinary discussion, heightens intercultural awareness and promotes international exchange.

---

About IAFOR

Founded in 2009, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) is a politically independent non-partisan and non-profit interdisciplinary think tank, conference organiser and publisher. Based in Japan, its main administrative office is in Nagoya, and its research centre is in the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), a graduate school of Osaka University. IAFOR runs research programs and events in Asia, Europe and North America in partnership with universities and think tanks, and has also worked on a number of multi-sector cooperative programs and events, including collaborations with the United Nations and the Government of Japan.