Students from 91亚色鈥檚 Osgoode Hall Law School will make their case in increments of 140 characters or less, in what鈥檚 billed as the world鈥檚 first Twitter moot court ().

On Tuesday, Feb. 21, five teams from law schools across Canada will argue a moot court case entirely on the popular social media platform. The event, hosted by West Coast Environmental Law, begins at 1pm EST; its hashtag is #twtmoot.

鈥淥ne hundred and forty聽characters is a great way to focus legal arguments and ideas,鈥� says Osgoode Dean Lorne Sossin, himself an avid tweeter (). 鈥淭his is a novel and timely initiative. Congratulations to West Coast Environmental Law for initiating the project and good luck to the mooters, especially Team Osgoode. We鈥檒l be following this groundbreaking moot with great interest,鈥� he says.

The public is invited to participate by following @twtmoot, watching the action on the Twitter Moot list () or on its (no account required), and posting with the #twtmoot hashtag 鈥� comments, discussion and heckling welcome!

Teams of two students from law schools at Dalhousie University, University of Ottawa, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria and 91亚色 will argue a mock appeal of a recent precedent-setting environmental case, West Moberly First Nations vs. British Columbia. The case raises issues related to the survival of an endangered caribou herd threatened by coal mining and ongoing industrial development.

Osgoode students Nikki Petersen and Emelia Baack will represent the West Moberly First Nations in the appeal; they will argue that the nation鈥檚 treaty right to hunt should extend to protecting a particular herd of caribou from coal mining impacts.

Petersen hopes the social media aspect will help connect people who are passionate about issues stemming from the case.

鈥淭witter is a great way to let many people share their views. I see the moot as a spark to get a discussion going about environmental law issues in Canada. The response to Team Osgoode has been very positive,鈥� she says.

The Twitter Moot will be presided over by a panel of three judges: William Deverell, Omar Ha-Redeye, and Kathleen Mahoney.

For more information about the Twitter Moot and how to participate, . Team Osgoode is sponsored by Saxe Law Office.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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Funded聽through the聽 program of聽the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the principal investigator of the project 鈥� Le fran莽ais 脿 la mesure d'un continent : un patrimoine en partage (French Language Across a Continent: A Shared Heritage) 鈥� is Professor France Martineau of the University of Ottawa who holds a University Research Chair in Language and Migration in French America and is the director of Le laboratoire Les Polyphonies du fran莽ais and co-founder of the Laboratoire de fran莽ais ancien.

The study will include 13 fellow researchers and 59 partners from Canada, the United States, France and Japan working in a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, history, geography and computer science.

Right: Raymond Mougeon

Other members of the involved in the project include H茅l猫ne Blondeau of the University of Florida, Annette Boudreau and Rodrigue Landry of the Universit茅 de Moncton, Yves Frenette of the University of Ottawa, Fran莽oise Gadet of the Universit茅 de Paris Ouest Nanterre La D茅fense (Paris X) and Ruth King of 91亚色.

The way French is spoken in places as diverse as Gatineau, Shediac and New Orleans can tell a lot about how Francophone communities evolved in North America. "We are looking at three fields of expansion from France: New France 鈥� now known as Quebec聽鈥� Louisiana and Acadia," says Mougeon.

"If we just focused on Canada, we would miss some important components of the North American francophonie, mainly Louisiana, probably one of the most interesting colonial settings, because it involved not only colonization from France, but also secondary migration from Acadia 鈥� basically the French language continued to live, but in a completely different setting from the original."

According to Mougeon, the project team plans to reach beyond linguistics to include history and sociology. "We believe that you can only understand the evolution of language if you can actually place it in its broader socio-historical setting.鈥�

The study will use innovative approaches, by presenting individuals and their language as a central factor in the changes that society undergoes and by examining the relationship between the cognitive and cultural aspects of language. Relying on extensive documentation, the study will seek to identify the concerns of present-day francophone communities, in majority, minority or multicultural settings.

The research will also help produce a major corpus of French in North America, which will include informal exchanges between individuals in the form of private correspondence or spontaneous conversation. This publicly accessible tool will be useful as a starting point to systematically compare francophone communities.

Mougeon has conducted research on the diversity of spoken French in Ontario, the demo-linguistic vitality of the Franco-Ontarian community, the sociolinguistic history of French in Quebec and France from the colonial period to the present day and the sociolinguistic competence of French-immersion students. He is the author or co-author of several publications and has participated in 36 research projects with funds representing over $5 million in research grants, including those from SSHRC, the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Association of Canadian Studies.

By Marika Kemeny, Glendon communications officer.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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