Synopsis

EdUHK International Conference on Linguistics (EICOL) 2026

Conference Synopsis · Language, Technology, and Mobility · 7–8 November 2026

The inaugural EdUHK International Conference on Linguistics (EICOL) examines the critical intersections of language, technology, and mobility. In an increasingly digital and interconnected world, computational tools are transforming how we describe language, technology is reshaping how it is taught and learned, and mobility is redrawing the social contexts in which language lives. Over two days, keynote speeches, roundtables, and methods workshops bring these developments together across three connected strands, joining theoretical frameworks to empirical applications in education and in multilingual societies.

Corpus and computational linguistics

Advances in text analytics are opening up the structural layers of language at scale. Corpus linguistic methods can be employed to investigate issues in second language variation, processing, production, and development (Lu, 2023), while indirect use of learner corpora brings typical learner errors to the surface and can inform teaching materials development (Schneider, 2023). Beyond the sentence, natural language processing is learning to classify connectives and infer the implicit relations that hold discourse together across large datasets (Rutherford & Xue, 2015).

Language learning and teaching

Technology is reshaping language pedagogy in both design and delivery. Task-based and game-based approaches embed language use in situated, experiential activities, showing how technology-mediated environments can support immersive learning (Cornillie, 2021). Intelligent text-analytics platforms, in turn, use automated complexity measures to calibrate teaching and adapt reading materials to learners across proficiency levels (Jin et al., 2020), pointing towards more responsive and individualised language education.

Multilingualism and mobility

As people move across an interconnected but uneven world, sociolinguistic research follows how they navigate linguistic boundaries. Community groups mobilise their communicative repertoires to reach resources and sustain connection in times of crisis (Li, 2020), while ethnographic work on transnational families shows how mobility, family language policy, and institutional life reshape home language practices after relocation (Ghimenton et al., 2023). Increasingly, this mobility extends into digital space, where the biases embedded in large language models influence identity and social relations online (Dong, 2024).

These strands trace a single question from three directions: how the tools we build, the ways we teach, and the journeys we take are remaking language and, with it, the communities that depend on it. EICOL brings researchers, educators, and practitioners into dialogue across these boundaries, and invites contributions that speak to the pressing linguistic challenges of a diverse and digital age.

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