A new international linguistics project led by Emeritus Professor Pam Peters FAHA, ‘Varieties of English in the Indo-Pacific‘ (VEIP), has been officially endorsed by the Union Académique Internationale (UAI) at its 88th General Assembly in Brussels. Only 86 projects have been endorsed worldwide since the UAI’s foundation in 1919.
VEIP is one of the UAI’s long-term special projects and also carries regional significance, being the first major research project to be jointly sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Monash University’s Professor Kate Burridge FAHA will co-direct the project. VEIP establishes a collaborative network, anchored in Australia, of key researchers in English linguistics based in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, China and New Zealand.
“This is a phenomenal opportunity for Macquarie Linguistics. It extends our credentials as an epicentre for Australian English research to the larger role of English as it is evolving in the southern and eastern hemispheres,” says Emeritus Professor Peters.
Professor Peters says the ultimate goal of VEIP is to develop a fresh multifaceted model of world English in the 21st Century, beyond those based on post-colonial premises.
The research framework will embrace not only regional factors, but social and cultural aspects of the various ‘habitats’ in which English is selected for use by multilingual speakers. This fully ‘environmental’ approach to the evolution of the English language will help to generate better understanding of its uses in our region.
The inaugural VEIP international workshop will be hosted at Macquarie in November.