31.2473, Calls: Anthro Ling, Disc Analys, Pragmatics/Switzerland

Wed Aug 5 16:51:12 UTC 2020

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2473. Wed Aug 05 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2473, Calls: Anthro Ling, Disc Analys, Pragmatics/Switzerland

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Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2020 12:50:33
From: Alice Mitchell [alice.mitchell at uni-koeln.de]
Subject: Signs of care: Communicating sympathy in African contexts

Full Title: Signs of care: Communicating sympathy in African contexts 

Date: 27-Jun-2021 - 02-Jul-2021
Location: Winterthur, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Alice Mitchell
Meeting Email: alice.mitchell at uni-koeln.de

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics 

Call Deadline: 25-Oct-2020 

Meeting Description:

Signs of care: Communicating sympathy in African contexts

This panel sets out to explore how people express sympathy in African
settings. The goal is to bring together fine-grained analyses of sympathy
displays with work that investigates broader sociocultural dynamics shaping
the expression of sympathy. From an interactional perspective, displays of
sympathy constitute affiliative responses to talk about troubles (Jefferson
1988) or to witnessed events causing pain or distress. In their analyses of
sympathy, papers in this panel will take into account a wide range of semiotic
resources, including voice quality, prosody, lexicon and grammar, gaze
behaviour, gesture, and touch. Possible topics include: the use of
conventionalized linguistic expressions of sympathy (such as Swahili
interjection pole); sympathetic uses of multi-purpose interjections (e.g.,
Unuabonah & Daniel 2020); the interdependence of sound and gesture in
communicating sympathy, as in the use of clicks reported in Pillion et al
(2019:316); the linguistic and bodily practices involved in comforting
children (e.g., Cekaite & Holm 2017). Papers might also address the forms
sympathy takes under particularly traumatic socio-historical conditions, such
as war, pandemic, or natural disaster.

Understanding sympathy as an inclusive interpersonal stance that attends to
another person's emotional status, this panel will offer linguistic
perspectives on anthropological discussions relating to ethics and care.
Papers will show how people in a range of African communities care for and
comfort one another through their communicative practices, thus highlighting
the role of language in the ethical treatment of others. Papers will also
attempt to position specific linguistic interactions within broader
sociocultural frameworks. When is sympathy appropriate, and when is it
unnecessary or even inappropriate? Who can show sympathy to whom, and how? How
are sympathy displays calibrated to the perceived severity of the situation?
And to what extent are expressions of sympathy gendered or otherwise socially
indexed? With its focus on Africa, the panel aims to explore possible
commonalities and differences in forms of sociality and ethical conduct across
the continent.

The African focus addresses the conference theme of ''inclusion'' at a
disciplinary level by working towards better representation of African
languages, perspectives, and scholarship at IPrA. In the spirit of inclusion,
however, relevant papers that focus on other parts of the world will also be
considered.

Call for Papers: 

If you would like to contribute to this panel, please send your abstract
(250-500 words) to alice.mitchell at uni-koeln.de by October 1, 2020 for initial
feedback. Abstracts will then need to be submitted individually via the
conference website (https://ipra2021.exordo.com/) by October 25, 2020. You are
very welcome to get in touch with the panel organizer, Alice Mitchell
(alice.mitchell at uni-koeln.de), at any time to discuss preliminary ideas for
talks as well as any practical issues or concerns about attending IPrA 2021.

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