36.2341, Confs: Social Meaning and Grammar (Switzerland)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2341. Mon Aug 04 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2341, Confs: Social Meaning and Grammar (Switzerland)

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Date: 02-Aug-2025
From: Andreas Trotzke [trotzke at ds.uzh.ch]
Subject: Social Meaning and Grammar


Social Meaning and Grammar

Date: 10-Feb-2026 - 11-Feb-2026
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Meeting URL:
https://www.ds.uzh.ch/de/tagungen/social-meaning-and-grammar.html

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 01-Oct-2025

The question of how humans process social information is one of the
biggest topics in cognitive science. This workshop addresses the topic
from the perspective of linguistics and aims at breaking new ground by
bringing together the two very different perspectives of
sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology on the one hand and
formal syntax and semantics on the other hand.
Confirmed Speakers:
Elin McCready (ICREA/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Emma Moore (University of Sheffield)
Paul Portner (Georgetown University)
Marina Terkourafi (Leiden University)
Recent work in formal syntax-semantics has developed elaborated
frameworks for analyzing social meaning components such as
‘commitment’ or ‘politeness’, also exploring in great detail how the
relation between speaker and addressee is instantiated in the
morphosyntax not only across languages (e.g., Portner et al. 2019),
but also across registers (e.g., McCready 2019).
On the other hand, the question of how we use and adapt linguistic
form to convey social information lies at the heart of sociolinguistic
research. Recent work has particularly focused on variationist
aspects. Specifically, grammatical forms are crucial in shaping our
social identity and style, and they can be an inclusive and incredibly
empowering tool to overcome otherwise static social hierarchies (e.g.,
Moore 2023).
In addition to broaden the empirical picture and refining our analyses
of grammatical phenomena related to social meaning, our workshop will
also address the more fundamental question of conventionalization in
that domain (e.g., Terkourafi 2015) and thus reconsider our notion of
‘grammar’. From a social point of view, so-called indirect forms such
as "Could you pass the salt?", for instance, are often the most common
versions of performing a speech act because their direct counterparts
("Pass the salt!") are socially awkward in most situations.
This workshop kicks off the Social Grammar Lab at the University of
Zurich—a research unit that explores new ways of conceptualizing and
experimentally testing a theory of grammar that is built on the
fundamental interaction between linguistic form and social
information. The driving philosophy of the Lab is that only
outside-of-the-box thinking across different subfields might enable
significant progress in an interdisciplinary area such as Social
Grammar—and might also ultimately lead to a change in how grammar is
taught in schools and discussed and conceptualized in our societies
more generally. Therefore, we invite contributions from a wide range
of linguistic subfields, including but not limited to:
 - Formal linguistics frameworks that analyze social meaning
components.
 - Sociolinguistic frameworks that focus on linguistic form.
 - Experimental work on processing social meaning components,
including questions regarding their acquisition, comprehension, and
production.
 - Philosophical work on conventionalization as connected to social
meaning.
Submission Guidelines:
We invite submissions of anonymous abstracts for 30-minute talks (20
presentation + 10 discussion). Submissions should not exceed two A4
pages (incl. references + examples), 12pt. single spaced, with 2.5cm
(= one-inch) margins on all sides. Either PDF or Word format is
accepted. Please upload your abstracts at:
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/SocGram/ by the deadline
listed below.
Submission Deadline: October 1, 2025
Notification: November 1, 2025
Workshop: February 10-11, 2026
Organizers:
Laura Reimer and Andreas Trotzke
References:
McCready, E. (2019). The Semantics and Pragmatics of Honorification:
Register and Social Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, E. (2023). Socio-Syntax: Exploring the Social Life of Grammar.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Portner, P., M. Pak & R. Zanuttini (2019). The speaker-addressee
relation at the syntax-semantics interface. Language 95, 1–36.
Terkourafi M. (2015). Conventionalization: A new agenda for
im/politeness research. Journal of Pragmatics 86, 11–18.



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