Call for Papers

No longer accepting submissions.

The Organizing Committee of New Ways of Analysing Variation 49 (NWAV 49) invites abstract submissions for the conference, which will be held from October 19 to 24, 2021. Papers and posters may address any topic related to language variation and/or change. All abstracts will undergo anonymous review. All abstracts are due by June 07, 2021, with notification of acceptance or rejection by July 15, 2021. We are able to offer the following options for participation in NWAV 49:

  • Abstracts for regular papers and posters. Papers will be delivered as video lectures and discussed in a live Q&A session. Posters will be submitted as graphic files and presented at a poster session, where attendees can discuss with presenters. Abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words in length. Bibliography, glossed and/or transcribed examples, and images may appear on a second page; they can comprise up to 300 words.

  • Proposals for special sessions are to include an abstract for the special session itself, accompanied by an additional abstract for each paper proposed for the special session. Proposals are to be submitted electronically by the organizer via the panel submission link (here). Abstracts should follow the guidelines outlined above, although the abstract for the special session itself does not have to be anonymous if information about the proposed authors is important for the review of the proposed special session. If you are interested in organizing a special session, we ask that you also contact the organizers early on via e-mail at nwav49committee@gmail.com.

  • Proposals for workshops are to be no more than 500 words, not counting references. They should provide an overview of the topic, its importance, and the relevance of the workshop to NWAV 49. Proposals are also to include a complete list of speakers, abstracts of all proposed presentations, and a statement on the mode of electronic delivery (synchronous and asynchronous elements). Abstracts should follow the guidelines outlined above in the call for regular papers and posters. Proposals for workshops are to be submitted via the main abstract submittal site on Oxford Abstracts; please check the appropriate box to indicate that it is a proposal for a workshop. If you are interested in offering a workshop, we ask that you contact the organizers early on via e-mail at nwav49committee@gmail.com.

Organizers of potential special sessions and workshops are responsible for calls for papers and peer review before submission of the proposal to NWAV 49.

Although submissions may address any and all areas of language variation and change, for NWAV 49 we particularly welcome proposals which highlight:

  • Variation in less studied communities

  • Computational sociolinguistics

  • Methodological innovation

  • Combination of multiple methods

Authors of abstracts concerning less commonly studied varieties, such as endangered languages and other small or limited-access communities, will be asked to mark them as such at the time of submission. The reviewers for NWAV 49 will take into consideration that corpora for such varieties/languages may not be as large as those for studies of English and other international languages, and that this data disparity may have implications at the level of methodological design.

Authors may submit one single-authored and one joint-authored abstract, or two joint-authored abstracts. This limit applies to all presentations, regardless of type (paper, poster, or part of a special session). In the submission process, you will be asked to indicate topic areas for the submission (this is simply to streamline the reviewing process). You will also be asked to indicate whether the submission is eligible for the Best Student Abstract Award (see below) and whether you prefer to give a poster presentation.

Papers will be selected for prerecorded/live video or poster presentation based on determinations in the review process about the most effective format for submissions. If you prefer a submission be considered primarily for poster presentation, you can indicate this in the submission process.

Eligibility for the Best Student Abstract Award: Submissions whose primary intellectual work has been done by students are eligible for a Best Student Abstract Award. If your submission is eligible, please indicate this by checking the appropriate box on the abstract submission website. (To be eligible, an abstract must be [co-]authored solely by [a] student[s]; abstracts with faculty co-authors are also eligible, if any faculty co-authors have only played an advisory role, e.g. for abstracts based on dissertation or class-related research.) Please contact the organizers at nwav49committee@gmail.com if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you in October 2021!

The NWAV 49 Organizing Committee