Full Title: Workshop on Pragmatic Variation across Time and Space
Date: 19-Nov-2021 – 20-Dec-2021
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Contact Person: Andra Vasilescu
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: https://litere.ro/2021/07/17/colocviul-international-al-departamentului-de-lingvistica-editia-a-xxi-a-19-20-noiembrie-2021/
Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
Subject Language(s): Rabha
Call Deadline: 15-Oct-2021
Meeting Description:
Date: November 19‒20, 2021
Organizers: Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest
This workshop will be held as part of the 21st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS of the University of Bucharest.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers interested in contrastive and historical pragmatics, two interrelated fields which have grown during the last four decades putting new topics on the research agenda of linguistics. The contrastive perspective in language usage focuses on the realization of pragmatic/functional units in different cultures, languages, and varieties of the same idiom, while the historical perspective compares the actualization of pragmatic/functional units at different stages in the development of a language.
In this general framework, a large variety of interdisciplinary topics can be addressed:
– Contrastive and diachronic approaches to written-based genres (like letters, essays, fiction, scientific texts, textbooks, cookery recipes, etc.) or speech-based genres (like sermons, political debates, public speeches, etc.):
– The actualization of the cooperative principle and im/politeness phenomena in different language communities or at different moments in time;
– The variation in time and space of function-to-form mappings: the performance of speech acts (e.g. requests, complaints, threats, promises, apologies, excuses, compliments, etc.), the realization of speech events (love declarations, verbal courtship, gossip, etc.), the actualization of verbal behaviors and attitudes (aggressiveness, arrogance, irony, humor), the configurations of adjacency pairs in various types of dialogues;
– The historical and geographical variation of form-to-function mappings (deictics, discourse markers, exclamations, tag-questions, interjections, etc.);
– Pragmaticalization and subjectification;
– The textualization of various topics (death, sexuality, disease, mental condition, etc.);
– Analyses of various institutional discourses as shaped by time and space;
– Theoretical frames and approaches in historical and contrastive pragmatics.
Keynote speakers:
– Andreas H. Jucker (Professor of English Linguistics, University of Zurich), Historical pragmatics and third-wave speech act theory
Professor Jucker will address the latest developments in speech act theory and reflect on how this can be applied to historical data, also providing a relevant case study.
– Heike Pichler (Senior Lecturer in Variationist Sociolinguistics, Newcastle University, Great Britain), Exploring discourse-pragmatic variation in spoken and written data
Dr Pichler will explore the methods and value of extending the analysis of discourse-pragmatic variation from vernacular speech data to informal written data. Drawing on analyses of pragmatic and constituency variation in the use of innit in sociolinguistic interviews and of amirite in Reddit posts, she will demonstrate: (i) the methodological challenges encountered in the analysis of written data; and (ii) the theoretical insights such analysis can produce.
Format of the workshop: face-to-face, online or blended (depending on the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic situation). We will keep you informed in a timely manner on how the workshop will take place.
Call for Papers:
Abstract submission and presentation:
The languages of the workshop are Romanian, English, French. Each presentation will be allocated a 30-minute slot (20 minutes for the presentation + 10 minutes for discussions). Contributors are invited to send an abstract of 500 words at most to the organizers of the workshop: Andra Vasilescu (vasilescu.andra(at)gmail.com) and Mihaela Constantinescu (constantinescumv(at)gmail.com).
Publication: The Proceedings of the workshop will be published as a book at an international publishing house or/and in a special issue of Revue Roumaine de Linguistique.
Important dates:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 15
Notification of acceptance/rejection: October 25