35.3572, Calls: Geographical Contrast in Variational Pragmatics

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-3572. Wed Dec 18 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.3572, Calls: Geographical Contrast in Variational Pragmatics

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Date: 15-Dec-2024
From: Tanja Ackermann [tanja.ackermann at uni-bielefeld.de]
Subject: Geographical Contrast in Variational Pragmatics


Full Title: Geographical Contrast in Variational Pragmatics

Date: 30-Jul-2025 - 01-Aug-2025
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
Contact Person: Tanja Ackermann
Meeting Email: vari.ling at uni-bielefeld.de
Web Site: https://www.variprag.net/workshop

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics

Call Deadline: 15-Jan-2025

Meeting Description:

Since Schneider and Barron (2008) introduced the framework of
variational pragmatics, there has been increasing interest in studying
intralingual pragmatic variation. Variational pragmatics investigates
pragmatic variation in both geographical and social space. This
workshop, however, focuses specifically on the former. In this
context, we are interested in all perspectives on the macro-social
variable region, i.e., the national, sub-national, or local level.

Firstly, a central question concerns the geographical variable itself:
What exactly shapes national and regional cultures and communities
(see, e.g., van Dorst, Gillings & Culpeper 2024 on population density
and politeness in Britain)? Given that region as such has little
explanatory potential but hints at societal and cultural aspects, its
complex interactions with other macro-social variables such as ethnic
and cultural group membership or urbanity, age profile and
socio-economic status of speakers are of great importance when
investigating communicative language use (see Barron 2021 for an
overview of the multiple facets of contexts).

Secondly, concerning geographical variation on the sub-national level,
it is a non-trivial question of how region can be operationalized and
modeled (e.g., by adopting geostatistical approaches). Also, the
choice of participants matters: Traditionally, dialectology has mainly
studied older, non-mobile men from rural areas to control for factors
such as contact with other dialects. However, due to increased
mobility, such an approach would not capture the reality of many
people. As recent studies have shown, higher exposure to dialectal
variation contributes to more dialect change (see, e.g., Jeszenszky,
Steiner & Leemann 2024 on the calculation of a Linguistic Mobility
Index for estimating long-term exposure to phonological variation).
Concerning pragmatic variation, it is an open question whether a
person’s origin or their current place of residency, both clearly
interrelated with social group membership, has a bigger influence on
communicative language use.

Lastly, we are also interested in a metapragmatic perspective, which
is relatively new to variational pragmatics research: Which pragmatic
features are made salient (according) to members of particular
communities? Which geographical areas are perceived as homogeneous
from the perspective of communicative language use? Which contrasts
between – regionally differentiated – groups of speakers are actively
perceived or even reified as cultural stereotypes?

References
Barron, Anne. 2021. Contrastivity and comparability: Pragmatic
variation across pluricentric varieties. Sociolinguistica 35 (1).
189–216.
van Dorst, Isolde, Mathew Gillings & Jonathan Culpeper. 2024.
Sociopragmatic variation in Britain : A corpus-based study of
politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 227. 37–56.
Jeszenszky, Péter, Carina Steiner & Adrian Leemann. 2024. Effects of
mobility on dialect change: Introducing the linguistic mobility index.
(Ed.) Shiri Lev-Ari. PLOS ONE 19 (4). e0300735.
Schneider, Klaus P. & Anne Barron (eds.). 2008. Variational
pragmatics. A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages.
(Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 178). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.

Invited speakers:
Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University)
J. César Félix-Brasdefer (Indiana University)
Jenny Nilsson (Isof Gothenburg)

Discussants:
Antje Dammel (University of Münster)
Christa Dürscheid (University of Zurich)
Stephan Elspaß (University of Salzburg)
Ulrike Gut (University of Münster)
Eva Ogiermann (King’s College London)
Klaus P. Schneider (University of Bonn)

Organisers:
Tanja Ackermann, Henrik Discher, Horst Simon, Janel Zoske
(variprag.net)
Anne Schröder, Pawel Sickinger (www.uni-bielefeld.de/praprone)

2nd Call for Papers:

We invite contributions dealing with multi-standard languages as well
as sub-national varieties of a language. We especially encourage
contributions dealing with lesser-studied languages and varieties.
Topics to be explored include, but are not restricted to:

-       Cross-varietal comparisons of pragmatic variables
-       The importance of the national, sub-national, or local level
in pragmatics
-       The social, cultural and ethnic dimension of geographical
contrast in pragmatics
-       Measures of linguistic mobility in pragmatics
-       The influence of (local) linguistic and cultural ecologies on
pragmatic preferences
-       The perception (or construction) of geographical variation on
a metapragmatic level
-       Methodological approaches and challenges in variational
pragmatics

We invite abstracts for 25-minute talks (+ 15minutes discussion).
Abstracts should be anonymous and approximately 500 words in length,
plus references. Please send your abstracts to
vari.ling at uni-bielefeld.de, and include your name, affiliation, and
the title of the abstract in the body of the e-mail.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: January 15, 2025
Notification of acceptance: February 2025

For further information please contact: vari.ling at uni-bielefeld.de



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