CfP LAUD conference on Cognitive Sociolinguistics

Fri Apr 3 17:09:23 UTC 2009

Dear Colleagues,

I would hereby like to draw your attention to the 34th International LAUD Symposium on Cognitive Sociolinguistics (March 2010, Landau, Germany). 

all best wishes,
Gitte Kristiansen

First Call for Papers
34th International LAUD Symposium

Cognitive Sociolinguistics
Language variation in its structural, conceptual and cultural dimensions

LOCATION:
University of Koblenz-Landau,
Landau/Pf., Germany

DATE:
March 15-18, 2010

CALL DEADLINE:
June 15, 2009

Confirmed Speakers

MAIN KEYNOTE SPEAKER
William Labov
- University of Pennsylvania -

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Penelope Eckert (Stanford University)
Dirk Geeraerts (University of Leuven)
Stefan Gries (Santa Barbara, University of California)
Peter Harder (University of Copenhagen)
Gitte Kristiansen (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Dennis R. Preston (Michigan State University)

Aim and scope:
Within Cognitive Linguistics and other cognitively oriented approaches to language there is a growing interest for language variation in all its dimensions, as witnessed by several publications, most recently by the landmark-fixing collective volume Cognitive Sociolinguistics (2008), edited by Gitte Kristiansen and René Dirven.
In the past decades, linguistic analyses within Cognitive Linguistics or other cognitively oriented theories were all too often carried out at the level of ‘a general, uniform language’, disregarding the rich and complex patterns of intralingual and communicative variation in that language. Such a shallow level of granularity ultimately amounts to that of a homogeneous and thus idealized speech community, reminiscent of Chomsky’s ideal speaker-hearer. To the extent that Cognitive Linguistics takes its claim of being a usage-based approach to language and cognition seriously, it cannot continue to work with an implicitly assumed conception of language being situated taxonomically at an almost Chomskyan level of abstraction. 
Cognitive Sociolinguistic research fills this gap in an enriched manner, by  combining the CL theoretical framework with the empirical methods used in sociolinguistics and social science at large.
The LAUD symposium is planning to explore the different facets of this emerging coalescence between cognitive, usage-based approaches to language and a sociolinguistic interest in language-internal variation in 4 theme sessions, each addressing one of the following questions:
1.         How do social and cognitive perspectives fit together in a general, overall model of language? 
2.         To what extent is usage-based language variation socially structured, and how is such language-internal variation represented in the individual language user's (implicit or explicit) knowledge?
3.         How does language-internal variation affect the conceptual aspects of language, i.e. linguistic meaning and linguistic categorization?
4.         How does language variation interact with cultural models in a linguistic community? Does language variation follow from cultural models, or just reflect them or, on the contrary, determine them?

Theme Session 1: 
Social factors as foundational issues in a theory of language
The first session examines the role of social factors in the conception of language as such: to what extent should the social nature of language play a role in the linguist's conception of the linguistic system - and in the individual language user's acquisition and knowledge of the language? If we abandon the simplification of an ideal speaker-hearer, what are the descriptive consequences: what models and methodologies should we use to get a grip on the interaction between social usage and individual knowledge of the language?
In the context of this theme, we invite abstracts on topics like the following:
§         The social status of linguistic facts
§         Variability and the linguistic system
§         Linguistic norms, rules and behavior
§         The ideal and the real speaker-hearer
§         Situated cognition and the distribution of (linguistic) knowledge
§         Social and individual usage: models, methods and research questions
§         The treatment of social factors and variation in the history of (cognitive) linguistics

Theme Session 2: 
Structural variation from a usage-based perspective
How are lectal variation, linguistic change, and language acquisition affected by taking a usage-based approach to language ? Usage-based and meaning-based models of grammar introduce more variation into the grammar than a rule-based approach tends to do: the language-internal or discourse-related factors that influence the use of a particular construction may be manifold, and the presence or absence of a construction is not an all-or-none matter. In the analysis of this type of variation, it often appears that the variation is co-determined by 'external', sociostylistic factors: the variation that appears in actual usage (e.g. as attested in corpora) may be determined simultaneously by grammatical, discursive, and socio-stylistic factors. Furthermore, awareness (of linguistic factors and social dimensions) also plays a role in successful conceptualisation, together with structured patterns of subjective and objective perception. 
In the context of this theme, we invite abstracts on topics like the following:
§         Cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics
§         Cognitive linguistics and dialectology
§         Cognitive linguistics and stylistics
§         Cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis
§         Linguistic variation and multidimensional research
§         Usage-based mechanisms of language change
§         Exemplar-based models of language variation
§         Lectal and interactional factors in language acquisition
§         Perceptual dialectology and production
§         Subjective and objective linguistic distances
§         Language attitude research and quantitative data
§         Linguistic variation and varieties: expert analysis versus folk perception
§         Folk perception of bilingualism and multilingualism

Theme Session 3: 
Conceptual variation in language-internal 
and cross-linguistic categorization preferences

To what extent do the phenomena that we typically focus on in Cognitive Linguistics and other meaning-related approaches - phenomena involving meaning and categorization - exhibit variation within the same linguistic community? Both the concept of semantic flexibility (as in prototype theory and radial networks) and the concept of cultural models played an important role in the emergence of Cognitive Linguistics, but this usage-based variation of meaning and categorization is not standardly analyzed from a socio-stylistic point of view.
In the context of this theme, we invite abstracts on topics like the following:
§         Lectal variation of cognitive models and metaphorical mappings
§         Lectal variation within prototype-based structures and radial networks
§         Prototypes, stereotypes, and the division of linguistic labour
§         Intralinguistic semantic conflicts and their resolution
§         The relation between language variation and cognition within a single language
§         Dialectal and sociolectal variation of meaning
§         Styles and registers as categories of meaning
§         The linguistic construal of identities as meaning creation
§         Social cognition, social categorization and interactional sociolinguistics

Theme session 4: 
Cultural  models and cultural variation of cognitive models
Within Cognitive Linguistic research on cognitive models, there is a creative tension between scholars emphasizing the universal aspects of cognitive models and those pointing to the historical and cultural variability of such models. But the variability is often considered from a cross-cultural perspective only, without specific attention for the language-internal or culture-internal variability of cultural models. So, how does variability of cultural and cognitive models work within a community, and how does it interact with variability of language and language use? In particular, what are the cultural models that people use to think about language variation and language-related social variation?
In the context of this theme, we invite abstracts on topics like the following:
§         Cultural models and their interaction with Idealized Cognitive Models
§         Universalism and (historical, cultural, anthropological) variability of cognitive models
§         Competition and conflict between cultural models
§         Cultural models and ideology
§         Critical-linguistic approaches such as Critical Cognitive Linguistics, and cognitively inspired Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
§         Cultural models of social variation
§         Cultural models of language variation, and their consequences for language planning and language policy
§         Language-based social stereotyping

CONFERENCE FEES
The conference fee is EUR 75 payable on arrival.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
Submissions are solicited for theme session presentations which should last for 20-25 minutes with 5-10 minutes for questions (maximum 30 minutes total). 
All submissions for presentations should follow the following abstract guidelines:
The deadline for abstracts is June 1, 2009.
The address for submitting the abstracts is Martin Pütz
Puetz at uni-landau.de
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words.
The subject header of your email should include:
Abstract LAUD 2010 – name/s.

Please include the following information in the main body of your email:
name of author/s, affiliation, email address, presentation title.
Please also state for which of the 4 theme sessions, as listed above, your contribution is intended.
Notification of acceptance will be given by June 30, 2009.

LOCAL CONFERENCE ORGANIZER
Martin Pütz
Email: Puetz at uni-landau

University of Koblenz-Landau
FB 6 Institut für Fremdsprachliche Philologien
Fach Anglistik
Marktstr. 40
76829 Landau/Pf.
Germany
PH: ++49-(0)6341-146-204
Fax: ++49-(0)6341-146-200

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
René Dirven
Dirk Geeraerts
Gitte Kristiansen
Martin Pütz
Monika Reif