First Call for papers: MAD03

[Luuk Lagerwerf]

Please find below the first call for papers for MAD03

Luuk Lagerwerf

5th International Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Discourse
October 22th-25th, 2003

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Discourse 2003 (MAD'03) is the fifth in a
series of small-scale, high-quality workshops that have been organised every
second year since 1995 (Egmond-aan-zee (NL), 1995; Utrecht (NL), 1997;
Edinburgh (GB), 1999; Ittre (BE), 2001). Its aim is to bring together
researchers from different disciplines, in particular theoretical and
applied linguists, computational linguists, and psycholinguists, to exchange
information and learn from each other on a common topic of investigation:
text and discourse.

Workshop Theme
In this edition of the workshop, MAD’03 aims at bringing together social
scientists and linguists by pursuing the following theme:  Determination of
Information and Tenor  in Texts. Topics of the workshop are exemplified by,
but not limited to, questions like:

	*	How is content (or information) extracted from text?
	*	How does one systematically infer stances from texts?
	*	What determines differences in interpretation between readers?
	*	How do (automated) discourse representations come about?
	*	How can linguistic properties be put to use for analysis of large text
collections?
	*	What do co-occurrences of words tell about discourses?
	*	How does text type or genre change the interpretation of text variables?
	*	How do new media change the use of text variables and genres?

Keynote speakers
Klaus Schönbach, Universiteit van Amsterdam (NL)
Peter Foltz, New Mexico State University (NM)
 Bonnie Webber, University of Edinburgh (UK)
Paul Deane, Educational Testing Service (NJ)

Workshop  Location
The workshop and lodging will be in conference centre De Bergse Bossen,
located in the forests of Driebergen, a village near Utrecht. Travelling by
train to Schiphol Airport or the city of Amsterdam takes less than an hour.

Workshop Design
In the workshop, about 20 people will be presenting an accepted paper in
plenary sessions. The total number of participants will be limited to 40.
Anonymous review of full papers will be carried out in order to guarantee
high quality of papers. The organisers also strive to publish all accepted
papers in workshop proceedings at the start of the workshop. After the
workshop, a selection of papers are likely to be published in a special
issue of an appropriate journal (see the references).

Call for papers
Deadline for submission of full papers addressing one of the questions of
the workshop is May 1st, 2003. On the website of MAD03,
http://home.scw.vu.nl/~lagerwerf/Mad03Web/index.htm, specific guidelines for
submission are given.

Workshop Organisers
Luuk Lagerwerf, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
Wilbert Spooren, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
Liesbeth Degand, Université catholique de Louvain (BE)

MAD’03 is hosted by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Netherlands
School of Communication Research (NESCoR; in the persons of Prof. Dr. J.
Kleinnijenhuis, Vrije Universiteit; Prof. Dr. P.J. Schellens, Universiteit
Twente).

Workshop Theme Description
In many approaches to discourse analysis in linguistics, and content or
media analysis in social sciences, methods have been developed to extract
information from texts systematically. Apart from extracting information,
many different approaches have also been aiming to determine the tenor of
texts. In this small-scale intensive workshop, we want to encourage
discussion between researchers from different backgrounds.
	The workshop will have significance for document design as well as content
analysis. In both cases, it is important to analyse processes of recognition
and evaluation of information in text. Also, linguistic properties of texts
may serve as cues for systematising these processes.
	Other related areas are the fields of persuasion and argumentation, and
discourse psychology, discourse analysis, and  computational modelling of
discourse processes. By using statistical approaches based on
co-occurrences, judgments of diverse aspects of texts may be delivered
automatically.
Together, these approaches make it possible to build information structures
of texts, make abstracts automatically, or disclose tendencies in the
content of multiple texts.
	In each of these approaches, it is important to realize that text type (or
genre) is perhaps one of the most determining factors in extracting
information, evaluating information or examining linguistic aspects of text.
Regarding the workshop topics, this factor will be controlled by either
taking news texts as the default text type, or taking text type itself as a
topic to determine its influence on information, tenor or linguistic
aspects.
The application of any of these approaches to the design or analysis of new
media provides a very interesting extension of the topics of the workshop.

Schedule
Announcement of the workshop: December 6th, 2002
Call for papers: February 3rd, 2003
Deadline (full papers): May 1st, 2003
Notice of acceptance: July 1st, 2003
Deliverance final papers: August 1st, 2003

References
A short impression of the previous workshop MAD’01 can be obtained at:
http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/FLTR/GERM/lingne/Degand/MAD/mad-presentation.htm

Previous workshops resulted in the following publications:
- Degand, L., Y. Bestgen & W. Spooren & L. v. Waes (eds.; 2001).
Multidisciplinary approaches to discourse (pp. 183-194). Münster: Nodus
Publikationen.
- Knott, A., J. Oberlander & T. Sanders (eds.; 2001). Special Issue: Levels
of Representation in Discourse Relations, Cognitive Linguistics 12 (3).
- Risselada, R. & W. Spooren (eds.; 1998). Special issue: Discourse markers
and coherence relations. Journal of Pragmatics 30 (2).
- Sanders, T., J. Schilperoord & W. Spooren (eds.; 2001). Text
Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
- Spooren, W. & R. Risselada (eds.; 1997). Special issue: Discourse markers.
Discourse Processes 24 (1).