29.3799, Calls: Disc Analysis, Gen Ling, Semantics, Socioling, Typology/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3799. Tue Oct 02 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3799, Calls: Disc Analysis, Gen Ling, Semantics, Socioling, Typology/Germany

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Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2018 22:02:05
From: Diana Forker [diana.forker at uni-bamberg.de]
Subject: Discourse Particles and Epistemic Stance

 
Full Title: Discourse Particles and Epistemic Stance 

Date: 21-Aug-2019 - 24-Aug-2019
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact Person: Diana Forker
Meeting Email: diana.forker at uni-bamberg.de

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 09-Nov-2018 

Meeting Description:

(Session of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea)

Panel on ‘Discourse Particles and Epistemic Stance’ 

Discourse particles are an under-examined area in typological and descriptive
studies of minority languages, but even many majority languages,  as they are
often treated as extra-grammatical items. Discourse particles/markers are
short and phonologically reduced items, which routinely occur in oral speech,
have little or no propositional meaning and display textual and interpersonal
pragmatic functions, such as connecting current with prior talk, claiming the
hearer’s attention, organizing discourse (e.g. indicating new topic,
initiating or closing discourse, denoting old and new information, initiating
repair), and indexing the speaker’s stance, attitudes and evaluation towards
the addressee and his/her contribution (e.g. see Blackmore 2003, Brinton 1996,
Norrick 2009, Schiffrin 1987, Zimmermann 2011). This panel targets the latter
function of discourse particles, namely their function as markers of
epistemics/epistemic stance. Following Ochs (1996), we understand epistemic
stance as a central meaning component of social acts and social identities
that refers to knowledge or belief vis-à-vis some focus of concern including
degrees of certainly of knowledge, degrees of commitment to truth of
propositions, and sources of knowledge among other epistemic qualities.
Discourse particles that express epistemic stance are well-known from Germanic
and Slavonic languages (Abraham 1991, Jucker and Ziv 1998), e.g. German doch,
Russian že, and a few other languages (see the analysis of Hebrew harey by
Ariel 1998, the studies in Heritage and Sorjonen 2018) For example, in
Japanese a-prefaced turns convey that the action or content of the prior turn
was unexpected (Hayashi and Hayano 2018). 

We know little about the epistemic functions of discourse particles in
minority languages and largely lack a coherent cross-linguistic perspective
due to the lack of typological studies (but see Auer and Maschler 2016 for a
comparative study of the uses of the members of the NU/NÅ discourse marker
family across European and other languages). Linguists in the field often find
it difficult to tackle the pragmatic diversity of discourse particles and tend
to throw these small items in the grammar’s dustbin. Yet, these ‘trivial’
items play an important role in communicating cultural meanings in speech
communities.  
This panel aims to navigate the complex domain of discourse particles and
epistemics by identifying patterns of commonality and diversity in discourse
particles expressing epistemic stance across languages. We want to bring
together scholars working across various subfields of linguistics, including
typology, pragmatics, interactional linguistics, and using different methods
and theories.


Call for Papers:

For our workshop proposal we invite contributions including, but not limited
to, the following topics:

(i) Descriptive accounts of the (functional, discourse-pragmatic,
morphosyntactic) properties of discourse particles in lesser-known languages.
(ii) Typological studies of the functions of discourse particles expressing
epistemic stance.
(iii) Diachronic studies on the origin and evolution of discourse particles.
(iv) Corpus-based studies on the use of discourse particles in natural speech.
(v) Experimental studies on the functions of discourse particles.
(vi) Areal and language contact perspectives on the functions of discourse
particles.

Potential participants are invited to contact the workshop conveners with an
expression of interest: diana.forker at uni-bamberg.de
and Angeliki.Alvanoudi at jcu.edu.au 

Important Dates:
 
- Submission of abstracts (for a 20-minute presentation, max. 300 words) to
workshop conveners: 9 November 2018
- Notification of inclusion of abstract in the workshop proposal: 20 November
2018
- Notification of acceptance/rejection of the workshop proposal by the SLE
organizers: 15 December 2018
- If our workshop proposal is accepted, submission of full abstracts to SLE by
the participants: 15 January 2018




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