“Vox California” is an interdisciplinary workshop that seeks both to highlight language as a central component of California studies and to establish California as a crucial site for the investigation of language in social life. As the first conference to focus on the full scope of California’s linguistic resources, including but not limited to indigenous and immigrant languages, regional and ethnoracial dialects, subcultural linguistic styles, and linguistically mediated social activities, “Vox California” has a broad interdisciplinary mandate to examine how language semiotically shapes the sociocultural meaning of California and Californians locally, nationally, and globally. The workshop’s goal is not simply to document the state’s linguistic diversity but more importantly to investigate the cultural meanings of specific linguistic forms, representations, and practices, including social identities, political ideologies, and embodied cultural activities.
