The 6th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (SOSY) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign celebrates a quarter-century of sociolinguistic innovation and inquiry. This milestone symposium, with the theme Expanding Horizons: A Sociolinguistics Beyond Boundaries, invites us to critically explore and transcend the limits of conventional frameworks, redefining what it means to study language in its dynamic, boundary-crossing forms.
Our distinguished plenary speakers, Michele Koven, Farzad Karimzad, and Rakesh Bhatt, will guide us in exploring how linguistic practices intersect with and challenge boundaries—whether geographical, ideological, disciplinary, or semiotic. This year’s symposium marks an exciting opportunity to reflect on the evolution of the field while imagining bold directions for its future.