[Lingtyp] Workshop: Fifty years of The Pear Film by Wallace Chafe: An Overview and New Perspectives (December 6, 2025)

[John DuBois]

Dear LingTyp:
Please use the following (much improved) announcement, in place of the one
previously submitted. (I also append it as a file.)
Best,
John DuBois

*Workshop:*

*Fifty years of The Pear Film by Wallace Chafe: An Overview and New
Perspectives*

Date: December 6, 2025, 16:00 – 19:30 (GMT+3 Moscow)

In 1975, a small team of linguists led by Wallace Chafe wrote the script
for a new kind of film, intended to be shown to speakers of languages
around the world, to elicit their tellings of what happened in it.
Paradoxically, the film itself – now known as the Pear Film – contains no
language of any kind, neither spoken nor written, not even a title or
credits. On its 50th anniversary, the time is ripe to consider why this
film was made the way it was; why the role of linguists as visual
scriptwriters was key; and why the design of the Pear Film still matters
for researchers in linguistics and cognitive science today. On one level,
the Pear Film was designed simply as a new method for the experimental
elicitation of narrative discourse. But on a deeper level, its design was
profoundly shaped by linguistic theory from the outset. The goal was to
support exploratory research on topics in cognitive linguistics, functional
linguistics, discourse, and linguistic typology. Taken together, these
goals motivated the complete absence of language from a film designed for
linguistic research. The film was intended to serve as an experiential
stimulus: a proxy for the pre-verbal human experience of a meaningful
series of events, one that could be experienced by anyone in any culture,
and verbalized by users of any language. The design as a purely visual
stimulus was intended to avoid to avoid bias toward any specific language,
while giving the viewers plenty to talk about, in ways that would reveal –
hopefully – the natural contours of their language. The events of the film
were scripted in a very specific way, in order to create specific
verbalization tasks, without dictating the linguistic solution.

Chafe set goals for the Pear Film that were ambitious and innovative at the
time. The enduring relevance of these research goals, and of the research
tool they engendered, is attested by the variety of new projects that have
been conceived and carried all over the world during the last 50 years, a
creative outpouring that continues to this day. This workshop seeks to
advance the state of the art in current Pear Film research, showcasing
projects that continue to develop novel ways of using this experiential
stimulus to explore new research directions in cognitive science and
linguistics.

*PROGRAM*

*December 6, 2025, 16:00 – 19:30 *(GMT+3 Moscow)

16:00 – 16:15. Opening Remarks by Vladimir Glebkin

16:15 – 16:40. Wallace Chafe. *Origins of the Pear Film* (video
presentation from the workshop "Stories About Pears: 40 Years Later," held
on September 25, 2015, in Turin, Italy).

16:40 – 17:10. John W. DuBois (University of California, Santa Barbara,
USA). *How the Pear Film Was Designed to Elicit Typological Diversity.*
(online)

17:10 – 17:40. André Coneglian (Federal University of Minas Gerais,
Brazil). *The Pear Stories in the Context of Cross-Linguistic Comparison:
Theory, Method, and Possibilities.* (online)

17:40 – 18:40. Yulia Nikolaeva (Lomonosov Moscow State University; National
Research University Higher School of Economics). *The Pear Film in the
Study of Speech and Gesticulation in Aphasia. *

18:40 – 19:10. Vladimir Glebkin (School 1514, Moscow; RANEPA). *The Pear
Film as a Stimulus Material for Investigating Cognitive Development. *

19:10 – 19:40. Natalia Sukhova (National University of Science and
Technology MISIS; Russian State Humanities University). *Hold Your Head Up,
or How the Cephalic Channel Works. *

*Venue:* School 1514, Moscow, Krupskoi St., 12.

*Connection link: *
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87857114836?pwd=Z2xrdlYyUWd1OWZBT25IN1VxY2hmQT09

*Conference ID: *878 5711 4836

*Access Code: *337928



*SPONSORS*

Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Philology,
Lomonosov Moscow State University

Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

Department of Cultural Studies and Social Communication, Russian
Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)

Laboratory of Historical and Cultural Anthropology at School 1514, Moscow


=======================================

John W. DuBois
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
USA
Email: dubois at ucsb.edu
Zoom: Zoom room <https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/9851117049>
Web page: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/dubois/
Rezonator: https://rezonator.com



On Thu, Dec 4, 2025 at 8:18 PM John DuBois <dubois at ucsb.edu> wrote:

> *Workshop: **Fifty years of The Pear Film by Wallace Chafe*: *An Overview
> and New Perspectives*
>
> *December 6, 2025, 16:00 – 19:40 *(GMT+3 Moscow)
>
> *Program  *
>
> 16:00 – 16:15. Opening Remarks by Vladimir Glebkin
>
> 16:15 – 16:40. Wallace Chafe. *Origins of the Pear Film* (video
> presentation from the workshop "Stories About Pears: 40 Years Later," held
> on September 25, 2015, in Turin, Italy).
>
> 16:40 – 17:10. John W. DuBois (University of California, Santa Barbara,
> USA). *How the Pear Film Was Designed to Elicit Typological Diversity.*
> (online)
>
> 17:10 – 17:40. André Coneglian (Federal University of Minas Gerais,
> Brazil). *The Pear Stories in the Context of Cross-Linguistic Comparison:
> Theory, Method, and Possibilities.*  (online)
>
> 17:40 – 18:40. Yulia Nikolaeva (Lomonosov Moscow State University;
> National Research University Higher School of Economics). *The Pear Film
> in the Study of Speech and Gesticulation in Aphasia.  *
>
> 18:40 – 19:10. Vladimir Glebkin (School 1514, Moscow; RANEPA). *The Pear
> Film as a Stimulus Material for Investigating Cognitive Development.  *
>
> 19:10 – 19:40. Natalia Sukhova (National University of Science and
> Technology MISIS; Russian State Humanities University). *Hold Your Head
> Up, or How the Cephalic Channel Works.  *
>
>
>
> *Venue:* School 1514, Moscow, Krupskoi St., 12.
>
> *Connection link: *
> https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87857114836?pwd=Z2xrdlYyUWd1OWZBT25IN1VxY2hmQT09
>
> *Conference ID:* 878 5711 4836
>
> *Access Code:* 337928
>
>
> *Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Philology,
> Lomonosov Moscow State University *
>
> *Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences *
>
> *Department of Cultural Studies and Social Communication, Russian
> Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
> (RANEPA) *
>
> *Laboratory of Historical and Cultural Anthropology at School 1514, Moscow*
>
>
>
> =======================================
>
> John W. DuBois
> Professor of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara
> Santa Barbara, California 93106
> USA
> Email: dubois at ucsb.edu
> Zoom: Zoom room <https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/9851117049>
> Web page: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/dubois/
> Rezonator: https://rezonator.com
>
>
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