Conference Streams

🎯 Conference Aims:

ICAL 2026 serves as an international, interdisciplinary catalyst to examine how glocalization and the structural diversification of Applied Linguistics are transforming language practices, educational systems, research paradigms, and communication dynamics globally (Song and Sercu, 2025; Canagarajah, 2005; Mayoma, 2026; Pfadenhauer, Rüdiger, and Serreli, 2024; Lestari and Prakoso, 2026). By bringing perspectives from Europe, the MENA region, and other global contexts into direct dialogue, the conference aims to bridge disparate theoretical models with localized empirical realities, fostering cross-border insights that redefine the boundaries of the field.

🧩 Featured Conference Strands:

We warmly welcome empirical, theoretical, and critically oriented abstracts addressing themes including, but not limited to:

🌍 Glocalization, Sociolinguistics, and Identity

• Global-local dynamics in everyday, institutional, and digital language use.
• Translanguaging, hybridity, and fluid multilingual identities in superdiverse contexts.
• Language ideologies, attitudes, and linguistic capital in stratified societies.
• Linguistic landscapes, urban multilingualism, and migration flows (Europe, MENA, and worldwide).

🏫 De-centering and Diversifying Applied Linguistics

• Historiography and institutional development of the discipline across different regions.
• De-colonizing methodologies and challenging monolingual biases in linguistic theories.
• Locally grounded, indigenous research paradigms, epistemologies, and ethics.
• The dynamics and power relations of North-South and West-East research collaborations.

🌐 Glocalization and ESP in the MENA Region, Europe and Asia

• Adaptation of global ESP models to local professional contexts
• Glocal curricula in ESP (balancing international standards and local needs)
• ESP and the negotiation of linguistic and professional identities
• Context-sensitive ESP pedagogy in multilingual environments

📘 Innovations in Language Policy and Education

• Critical perspectives on Medium of Instruction (MOI) policies (e.g., EMI in Europe vs. the MENA region).
• Comparative developments in ELT, heritage languages, and national language pedagogies (such as MSA/dialects, French, and Amazigh instruction).
• Language teacher cognition, identity, and professional agency in changing socio-political landscapes.
• Curriculum reform, assessment, and context-sensitive material design (CEFR and beyond).
• Systemic revitalization and planning for minoritized, indigenous, and endangered languages.

💬 Discourse, Media, and Intercultural Communication

• Intercultural pragmatics and cross-cultural communication patterns in globalized workplaces.
• Digital discourse analysis, social media linguistics, and youth glocal subcultures.
• Multimodal, semiotic, and critical discourse analyses of global and regional media.

🤖 Digital Applied Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence

• Generative AI (e.g., LLMs, conversational agents) in second/foreign language acquisition.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) for high-resource, low-resource, and dialectal varieties.
• Digital literacy, computer-assisted (CALL), mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), and online teaching and learning.
• Ethical implications, algorithmic justice, and inclusivity in linguistic AI development.