New workshop on designing languages for SF/F

Beginning on 2/1, I'm going to be inviting submissions for a workshop on language design. The workshop is intended to help people who are creating languages in science fiction or fantasy contexts, and I'll be using my background in linguistics, anthropology, and science fiction/fantasy to help people tune and deepen created languages.

My current sense of what I'll be asking for in a submission is as follows:
1. a detailed description of the people speaking the language with information about their physiology (not so tough with humans) and their social structure

2. an explanation of how deeply the language should penetrate the work, i.e. whether use of the language is intended to feel intimate or estranging, and what the role of the language is in the story.

I'm planning to choose between five and ten people from among the submissions. I'll post final, official submission requirements on my blog, TalkToYoUniverse, on February first.

(cross-posted with moderator permission 1/27/09)

These are the submission questions for the workshop, now up at TalkToYoUniverse:

If you would like to participate in this workshop (for free, of course!), please submit answers to the following questions in the comments area of my blog by 5pm PST on February 8th:

1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?
1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Please describe.
1b. If spoken by aliens, what kind of aliens? Please describe.

2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.

3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?
3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?
3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?

4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?
4a. Does your story use names? If yes, give examples.
4b. Does your story use object labels? If yes, give examples.
4c. Does your story use extended sequences of created language material (dialogue, songs, poetry etc.)? If yes, give examples.
4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.

5. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?

Please answer all these questions to the best of your ability. If you can't answer every single one in detail, don't worry. I'm not looking for people who have already got perfectly designed languages here, but people to whom I can be of help. That said, please provide the best and most complete answers you can, because I'll need a good sense of the language you're aiming for in order to help you flesh it out. I urge you to read through my "How linguistics can help you!" posts from the past month. This should help you get some ideas.