Conference theme

The theme of this year's BAAHE conference is "From theory to application (and back again)". Adopting a particular theoretical framework can help focus research and open up new avenues, while at the same time fine-grained descriptive advances need to be fed back into theory so as to refine and perfect it. We invite papers which address this dialectic either at a more general level or in specific case studies, from within (and across) any of the areas traditionally covered by BAAHE members. Topics of special interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Literary studies:

• narrative and narratology, fiction writers and fiction theorists
• authors and the authority of criticism
• metafiction as a zone of interpenetration
• literary history and the history of literary studies (to what extent do specific types of literature 'invite', 'yield' or 'merit' specific types of literary criticism and analysis?)

Translation studies:

• translation studies: between theory and practice
• classroom translations vs. professional translations: theories and practice
• the 'fictional turn' in translation studies (can translators and stories about them be seen as holders of a deeper truth about translation?)

Linguistics:

• linguistic approaches to literature
• the role of (apparent) counterexamples in linguistic theorizing (as in the much-debated 'unidirectionality' thesis in grammaticalization studies)
• the (over?)-reliance on descriptions of English and other Standard Average European languages in theory building
• the relation between linguistics and applied linguistics, and the role of empirical methods (such as corpus studies, surveys, psycholinguistic experiments) across this spectrum

ELT:

• the tension between second language acquisition theory and classroom practice
• the relation between teachers' beliefs and their practice
• theory and practice of materials development, and the role of ELT publishers
• corpus-based interlanguage studies

Abstract submission

Abstract submission is now closed.

Publication of selected papers

Presenters at the BAAHE conference will be encouraged to submit a written up version of their paper to BAAHE's journal English Text Construction, where it will be subject to external peer reviewing.

Book exhibition

Both Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press will put on display a selection of titles from their ELT as well as academic divisions.

Programme committee

• Dirk Delabastita (English Unit)
• Lieven Vandelanotte (English Unit)
• Johan Vanparys (Ecole des Langues Vivantes)

Local organizing committee

Ruth Astley, Dirk Delabastita, Norbert Jacquinet, Eloy Romero-Muñoz, José Noiret, Lieven Vandelanotte (English Unit)

Financial support

The conference is organized with the financial support of the University of Namur's Faculty of Arts and its English Unit.