[Corpora-List] Call for papers

Mon Nov 10 14:00:56 UTC 2008

Call for papers for

Production, Perception, Attitude
An interdisciplinary workshop on understanding and explaining linguistic
variation

Hosted by the University of Leuven, April 2-4, 2009

Organized by the Universities of Leuven, Nijmegen, and Groningen for the
VNC-research
programme
The interaction between intelligibility, attitude, and linguistic distance.

We invite paper and poster presentations for a two day symposium which
focuses on (and
confronts) work in variationist linguistics, perceptual dialectology, and
language
attitude research. Contributions preferably tackle one of the following
topics:

* Innovative methods and techniques for measuring language variation and
change, language
perceptions, or language attitudes;
* Innovative methods and techniques for collecting reliable data in these
disciplines;
* Data-based analysis which highlights the causal relations between
production,
perception, and attitudes.
Although the focus in the research programme which frames this workshop is
on Dutch,
contributions need not be restricted to linguistic variation in the Low
Countries.

Background

Although linguistic variation in the Dutch language area (The Netherlands
and Flanders)
has enjoyed an enormous amount of descriptive and theoretical attention, few
reliable
data are available on the origin of this variation and on how it can be
accounted for. In
order to explain language variation, the sociolinguistic correlates of
phonetic, lexical,
and morpho-syntactic variables ?have to be traced back to a complex set of
underlying
criteria? (Knops & Van Hout 1988: 2). The identification of at least some of
these
criteria is the ambitious aim to which the present workshop is devoted.

Up to now, linguistic variation in The Netherlands has been investigated
predominantly
from the perspective of language production, i. e. in terms of the
description of the
linguistic distance observed between regional and stylistic varieties of
Dutch (cf.
Geeraerts, Grondelaers & Speelman 1999; Van Hout & Van de Velde 2001;
Heeringa & Nerbonne
2001). In order, however, to move from merely describing linguistic
variation to
explaining variation, three extensions are needed.

First, the production perspective on linguistic variation has to be refined
theoretically
and methodologically to chart hitherto unknown patterns and (more
importantly) triggers
of variation. Second, it is well-known that some language variation and
change patterns
are sustained by attitudinal factors (whereby ?attitudes? are provisionally
defined as
the culturally and experientially acquired inclination to perceive and
evaluate a variety
as systematically negative or positive). Although the causal link between
perception and
production has recurrently been demonstrated (cf. Van Bezooijen 2001), both
define
different disciplines in (socio)linguistics and social psychology which
rarely interact.
Attitude research is moreover hindered by a lack of reliable quantitative
data
(Grondelaers, Van Hout & Steegs: in press).

In addition to these two perspectives, the workshop also focuses on the
(often missing)
link between the production and the evaluative perception of language
variation. Before
language variation can be subjectively evaluated, it must first be
recognized by the
layman. Perceptual dialectology (Long & Preston 1999) therefore investigates
to what
extent linguistic laymen recognize and understand other varieties, and where
they situate
the boundaries between their own and other varieties. Although this paradigm
represents
one of the oldest disciplines in sociolinguistics (pioneered in Weijnen
1946), its
findings have rarely been systematically confronted with production and
attitudinal
perception data. Another crucial perspective which has largely been ignored
in this
respect is the mutual intelligibility between language varieties, a factor
which is
co-determined by attitudes and by linguistic distance (Gooskens 2007).

The present meeting is devoted to enhancing the convergence between the
cited research
disciplines in order to develop (the preliminaries to) an explanatory model
of language
variation and change. The workshop is interdisciplinary in focus and
features three
plenary speakers and presentations by the universities participating in the
research
programme. In addition, we invite contributions from (socio)linguists and
(social)
psychologists working in the three aforementioned areas for plenary oral
presentations as
well as an extended poster programme (poster presenters will be allowed
plenary
presentation time to advertize their posters).

References

Geeraerts, D., S. Grondelaers & D. Speelman (1999). Convergentie en
Divergentie in de
Nederlandse Woordenschat: een Onderzoek naar kleding- en voetbalnamen.
Amsterdam:
Meertensinstituut.
Grondelaers, S., R. van Hout & M. Steegs. Non-circular scales and ecological
stimuli.
Measuring accent attitudes in the Dutch language area. To appear in the
Journal of
Language and Social Psychology.
Gooskens, Charlotte (2007): The contribution of linguistic factors to the
intelligibility
of closely related languages. Journal of Multilingual and multicultural
development 28
(6), 445-467.
Heeringa, W. & J. Nerbonne (2002). Dialect areas and dialect continua. In
David Sankoff,
William Labov and Anthony Kroch (eds.), Language Variation and Change,
375-400. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Long, D., D. R. Preston (Eds.). (1999). Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology.
Volume 1.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Van Bezooijen, R. (2001). Poldernederlands. Hoe kijken vrouwen ertegenaan?
Nederlandse
Taalkunde 6, 257-271.
Van de Velde, H. & R. van Hout. R-atics. Sociolinguistic, Phonetic and
Phonological
Characteristics of /r/. Etudes & Travaux 4. Brussel: Editions Université
Libre de
Bruxelles.
Van Hout, R. & U. Knops (1988). Language Attitudes in the Dutch Language
Area. Dordrecht:
Foris

Plenary speakers

Dennis Preston (Michigan State University)
Janet Pierrehumbert (Northwestern University)
Roeland van Hout (Radboud University Nijmegen)

Abstracts

Please send an anonymous abstract (500 words without references) to
ppa at arts.kuleuven.be<https://webmail5.kuleuven.be/imp/message.php?index=823#>.

Specify your name, affiliation and contact details in the message body and
append your
abstract to the message. Abstracts are due on December 15, 2008 and will be
reviewed by
two members of the programme committee.

Programme & local committee

Dirk Speelman (University of Leuven)
Stefan Grondelaers (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Dirk Geeraerts (University of Leuven)
Roeland van Hout (Radboud University Nijmegen)
John Nerbonne (University of Groningen)
Charlotte Gooskens (University of Groningen)
Sebastian Kürschner (University of Groningen)
Leen Impe (University of Leuven)
Mieke Steegs (Radboud University Nijmegen)

Important dates

December 15, 2008                Abstracts due
January 15, 2009                Notification of acceptance
March 1st, 2009                Final abstracts due for inclusion in workshop
programme
April 2-4, 2009                        Workshop

Proceedings

>>From the invited and submitted contributions, 15 papers will be selected for
inclusion in
an edited volume. The workshop organizers are currently negotiating a volume
in the
series Studies in Language Variation with Benjamins.

Conference website

http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/ppa
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