Northeast Modern Language Association 57th Annual Convention 2026

March 5-8, 2026 Pittsburgh, PA

"Voices in Constraint, Languages in Confinement"

This panel explores how language restrictions operate across spatial, social, and systemic boundaries, and defines who can speak, what can be spoken, and where. It invites abstracts that examine the forms and consequences of such restrictions. Submissions may address suppressed or minoritized languages, restricted expressions, and the reception of silenced voices in public and private life.

Language restrictions manifest in everyday life in ways that are often invisible yet profoundly impactful. These restrictions may appear as spatial boundaries, where certain languages are unwelcome or prohibited in specific environments; social limitations, where groups are discouraged or forbidden from speaking a language; or systemic erasures, where languages are rendered invisible despite active speakers. Such restrictions deny the fundamental human capacity to think through and with language and suppress the spontaneity and multiplicity that language naturally fosters.

This panel seeks proposals that critically examine the forms, effects, and politics of language restriction. It welcomes contributions from a wide range of disciplines that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Forms of language restriction: spatial, social, political, institutional
• Types of restricted languages: minoritized, Indigenous, hybrid, non-standard, or immigrant languages
• Consequences of language restriction: psychological, cultural, epistemological, and political
• Restricted expression: strategies of code-switching, silence, defiance, or adaptation
• Reception and perception of restricted languages in dominant discourse and public space

It is particularly interested in papers that address how language restriction produces or limits knowledge, identity, and community, and how resistance may emerge from the margins of silenced speech. 

Submit your abstracts through the following MeMLA link https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21670 by September 15th.