34.754, Calls: Understanding the Implicit: A question at the crossroads of disciplines

Sun Mar 5 12:05:02 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-754. Sun Mar 05 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.754, Calls: Understanding the Implicit: A question at the crossroads of disciplines

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar, Francis Tyers (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Steven Franks, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Joshua Sims, Jeremy Coburn, Daniel Swanson, Matthew Fort, Maria Lucero Guillen Puon, Billy Dickson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: 
From: Laurent Roussarie [laurent.roussarie at univ-paris8.fr]
Subject: Understanding the Implicit: A question at the crossroads of disciplines

Full Title: Understanding the Implicit: A question at the crossroads
of disciplines

Date: 05-Oct-2023 - 06-Oct-2023
Location: Nanterre, France
Contact Person: Béatrice Godart-Wendling
Meeting Email: Beatrice.Godart-Wendling at cnrs.fr
Web Site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=implicite23

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics;
Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics

Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2023

Meeting Description:

It is only very recently in the history of ideas and disciplines that
the question of implicitness has arisen in fields as diverse as
linguistics, psycholinguistics, literary theory, reading didactics and
computational linguistics. It was not until the 1970s that linguistics
took hold of this notion and that different (more or less formalist)
theoretical approaches appeared, as well as the production of precise
analyses of expressions acting as triggers for implicit meanings.
Studies in psycholinguistics began in the 1980s and often used the
experimental method to describe the cognitive processes that allow
access to implicit meanings, especially in populations where this
access seems compromised. These studies are characterized by examining
each type of implicitness in isolation using various protocols with
different populations. In literature, theories of interpretation and
reception have problematised the notions of implicit author and reader
in order to account for the different levels of reading induced by
fictional stories. In the context of reading didactics, the question
of understanding implicitness as a marker of the social background and
developmental age of pupils arose in the 1990s and the studies carried
out analysed implicit forms within the very general framework of the
notion of inference. Research in the field of computational
linguistics began in the 2010s and has led, mainly for the English
language, to the development of annotation schemes coupled with
learning systems.

However, there are still many areas to be explored for a more
operational theorization of implicitness. The boundaries that mark its
definition are blurred and there is also some disagreement about the
nature of the language phenomena that may contribute to its extension.
In addition, there is a fragmentation of studies on the topic, with
each type of implicitness being analysed in detail, but independently
of the others. While this type of scientific practice is obviously
legitimate and fruitful in itself, it does not contribute to the
development of a unified theory, as Sperber and Wilson (1989), for
example, attempted to do. Agreement on the Gricean approach (1975) to
implicitness as the “intended meaning” is intrinsically not sufficient
to carry out analyses, because it leads – like a sieve whose holes are
too big – to consider that everything in language belongs to
implicitness.

Is it possible to think of implicitness in the singular? Does the
heterogeneity of the linguistic phenomena covered by this term
(presupposition, implicatures, irony, tropes, implicit argumentation,
intonation, etc.) suggest that it would be more relevant to reason in
the plural in terms of types of implicitness? In other words, is it
possible to develop an explanatory approach, while differentiating the
linguistic properties governing these different types, which would
relate these different meanings of implicitness, and which would be
usable by all the disciplines working on this issue?

>From an epistemological point of view, the frequent but vague use of
the term “implicit” in the analyses suggests that this expression is
in the process of being theorized, so that it corresponds only to a
notion rather than an operative concept. Can its current strong
performance be explained by the use of researchers’ intuition and the
relatively loose nature of its definitional content, which allow its
use without further scrutiny? This colloquium aims to propose some
answers to these questions by confronting the needs and theoretical
contributions that have emerged in the fields of philosophy,
linguistics, psycholinguistics, didactics of comprehension, literary
theory and computer linguistics.

2nd Call for Papers:

See the full conference description at :
https://implicitness23.sciencesconf.org/

The conference will take place at the University of Paris Nanterre
from 5 to 6, October 2023.

Deadline for submission: March 31, 2023
Notification of acceptance: 31 May 2023

Abstract submission guidelines :

* Abstracts should be written in English or French and should be
around two pages single-spaced (Times New Roman, font 12).
* Figures and references should be presented on a separate page.
* Abstracts should be anonymous and sent in PDF format.

Accepted abstracts will be allocated as either oral talk or poster
presentation.
The conference will give rise to the publication of selected papers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group) http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

Dictionary Society of North America http://dictionarysociety.com/

Georgetown University Press http://www.press.georgetown.edu

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Springer Nature http://www.springer.com

Wiley http://www.wiley.com

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-34-754
----------------------------------------------------------