Conference Theme and Mission

LiP 2027: Language is Plural – Celebrating Multilingualism in Language Education

LiP – Language is Plural emphasises that language is never singular or fixed: people engage with language through dynamic, overlapping repertoires rather than isolated, standardised codes, and these repertoires shape how learners communicate, learn, and participate. Language learning is therefore inherently a multilingual process: learners possess diverse multilingual repertoires that should be valued, systematically developed and strategically drawn upon to learn new languages.

From a global and historical perspective, multilingualism is the societal norm. In contemporary contexts, societies are becoming increasingly diverse, while populist tendencies are on the rise that resist and oppose this diversity in its various facets – linguistic, cultural, social, gender-related, religious, and beyond. Particularly in the light of growing social tensions, globalisation, superdiversity and rapidly advancing technology and AI, language education bears a central social responsibility.

The multilingual LiP 2027 conference therefore focuses on how language teaching and language education can strengthen multilingualism and promote an appreciation of and engagement with diversity; which pedagogical frameworks and institutional conditions need to be developed or adapted to support this; and how these aims can be successfully and sustainably implemented at different levels, including classroom practice, teacher education, curricular development, learning resources and language policy. The overarching educational goal is to advance linguistic justice, educational equity, and democratic culture by recognising learners’ multilingual repertoires, strengthening their opportunities for meaningful and inclusive engagement, and creating environments that support full participation in educational and social and cultural life.

Language is not a neutral medium but socially and politically situated. Accordingly, language learning is inseparably embedded in contexts shaped by power relations, hierarchies, and inequality. These manifest, for example, in racism, linguicism, language mandates, language bans, and the differing prestige accorded to languages. Such power relations and their impact on learning processes and educational trajectories must be critically reflected upon, while consistently taking one’s own social, linguistic, biographical and institutional positioning into account. Against this backdrop, language learning becomes an empowering and transformative act of participation and agency. LiP 2027 explores how self-empowerment and participation in language learning can be supported through the recognition and use of learners’ linguistic repertoires, and how teaching and learning spaces can be designed as open, inclusive, and emancipatory environments.

Learning languages opens up new opportunities for interaction, mutual understanding and social participation including democratic, economic and cultural life. LiP 2027 celebrates multilingualism, underscores its value, and advocates for its recognition and strengthening. The conference invites scholars, educators and practitioners to exchange expertise and to build networks in the field of multilingualism and the promotion and facilitation of language learning. It is conceived as a multilingual event in which a wide range of languages serve as media of communication. LiP 2027 formulates priorities for language policy and emphasises that, in the spirit of a “bottom-up” approach, everyone involved in educational processes can act as language policy agents in strengthening multilingual practices and the conditions for equitable language education.