36.838, Confs: Linguistic Relativism Revisited (Workshop) (France)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-838. Sat Mar 08 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.838, Confs: Linguistic Relativism Revisited (Workshop) (France)

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Date: 08-Mar-2025
From: Simona Anastasio (Université Toulouse) & Isabel Repiso (Université Haute Alsace) [isabel.repiso at uha.fr]
Subject: Linguistic Relativism Revisited (Workshop)


Linguistic Relativism Revisited (Workshop)
Theme: Processing, Conceptualization, and Verbalization of Events in
Additional Languages

Date: 01-Sep-2025 - 05-Sep-2025
Location: University of Lille, France
Contact Email: isabel.repiso at uha.fr
Meeting URL:
https://llcd2025.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Linguistic_Relativism_Revisited_Workshop.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     French (fra)

At the crossroads of linguistics and cognitive psychology, the study
of the multilingual mind sheds light on the human language capacity
and the cognitive processes involved in processing a language, whether
first or additional.
CURRENT STATE OF THE RESEARCH
Linguistic relativism is a body of research that questions the
relationship between language and cognition. Also known in its early
form as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this body of research assumes that
a given reality can be apprehended differently depending on the
speaker’s language. This means that a given experiential domain can be
segmented differently according to the communicative needs and
socio-cultural practices of each community. Initially rooted in the
disciplines of philosophy and anthropology through the significant
contributions of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767-1835) and Franz Boas (1858-1942), this tradition of
thought proved to be a relevant framework for psycholinguistics with
the cross-linguistic work on colour (Lenneberg 1953, Berlin and Kay
1969). It was revived in the 1990s with Lucy’s monographies (1992a,
1992b) and Dan Slobin (1996) ‘thinking for speaking’ longer-lasting
hypothesis in resonance with Pim Levelt’s (1989) model of language
production. According to this hypothesis, grammaticalized or
lexicalized linguistic patterns specific to a first language
predispose to a specific representation of events, both cognitively
and linguistically, in the first- and additional languages (Benazzo et
al. 2012). Since the 2000s, usage-based descriptive work on additional
languages was completed by studies addressing some of the cognitive
processes involved in language processing. This branch of studies
represents a third generation of contributions to linguistic
relativism. Cross-linguistic studies covering language production from
native speakers of different languages and from additional languages’
learners highlighted the role of the typological properties at play in
the linguistic and cognitive processing of a specific language
(Pavlenko 2008, Cook & Bassetti 2011, Benazzo et al. 2012, Cadierno
2020, Athanasopoulos & Bylund 2020, Leclercq & Benazzo 2021, Lambert
et al. 2022, among others). Overall, these studies showed that
speakers are influenced by first-language properties in the process of
selecting and verbalizing events. (Soroli & Hickmann 2011, Soroli
2012, Flecken et al. 2015a, Flecken et al. 2015b, Gerwien & v.
Stutterheim 2018). On the other hand, the study of some attentional
processes involved in non-verbal tasks suggests the existence of a
conceptualization of events which seems to be independent of language
production and distinct from ‘thinking for speaking’ (Gennari et al.
2002, Papafragou et al. 2008). The diversity of recent behavioural and
electrophysiological approaches (eye-tracking, event-related
potentials) and the outcomes resulting from them open new paths for
research.
OBJECTIVES
This workshop aims to bring together research on second language (L2)
and additional language (Ln) acquisition within the framework of
linguistic relativism, at the interface of linguistics and cognitive
psychology. In particular, it will seek to better understand the
extent to which the way of processing, conceptualizing, and
verbalizing events (aspect, space, time, agency, modality) varies
according to a range of parameters, including the typological
properties of languages in contact. We encourage the submission of
works on lesser-studied languages, combining linguistic and
non-linguistic data, ecological and laboratory settings, involving
verbal and non-verbal tasks, with diverse populations – e.g. heritage
language speakers, guided instruction vs. immersion in the country of
the target language, the role of literacy – and at various proficient
levels or stages of acquisition.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Non-exhaustively, the proposals for this workshop will address the
following questions:
RQ1: To what extent are the typological properties of the speaker’s
language repertoire involved in conceptualizing and verbalizing events
in a non-native language?
RQ2: What are the explicative factors behind individual variation at
the same task and across different tasks?
RQ3: What is the impact of the order of acquisition, the level of
proficiency, and other sociolinguistics factors in the
conceptualization and verbalization of events?
RQ4: How does the representation of events in a first language evolve
under the influence of the subsequent additional languages learned?
RQ5: To what extent do typological properties of languages interfere
with the perception or memory of an event?
RQ6: What is observable in the domain of aspect or motion, is it also
observable in the experiential domains of temporality, modality,
evidentiality, or other event dimensions?
RQ7: Can the conceptualization in an additional language be taught?
etc.
(SUB)-DISCIPLINES
Second and additional language acquisition, typology,
psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics.
HOW TO SUBMIT
This workshop will be held in the framework of the 2nd edition of the
conference 'Language & Languages at the crossroads of Disciplines'
(https://llcd2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/8). Submissions
must be made via Easychair using this link:
https://easychair.org/account2/signin?l=3046083942981414171
When submitting your paper via Easychair, please make sure to select
the title of the workshop: ‘Linguistic relativism revisited’. All
proposals will be evaluated anonymously by three reviewers. Your
abstract must not contain any information revealing the identity of
the authors (name, affiliation, address, bibliographical references).
It should be no longer than 500 words (including examples, excluding
references) and clearly present the research questions, approach,
methodology, data and results. The submission period for individual
proposals will run until 30 March 2025.
Please also note that the LLcD2025 conference will take place
exclusively in person. No session will be broadcast online. We are
unfortunately unable to offer a self-organised hybrid format due to
the impossibility of guaranteeing a stable Internet connection in all
the rooms on the site.
REFERENCES
Athanasopoulos, P. & Bylund, E. (2013). Does grammatical aspect affect
motion event cognition? A cross-linguistic comparison of English and
Swedish speakers. Cognitive Science, 37, 286–309.
Athanasopoulos, P. & Bylund, E. (2020). Whorf in the Wild:
Naturalistic Evidence from Human Interaction. Applied Linguistics,
41(6), 947–970. doi: 10.1093/applin/amz050
Benazzo, S., Flecken, M. & Soroli, E. (2012). Typological perspectives
on second language acquisition. ‘Thinking for Speaking’ in L2.
Language, Interaction and Acquisition 3(2): 163-172.
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.3.2.01int
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. (1969). Basic Color Terms. Their Universality and
Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cook, V.J. & Bassetti, B. (eds.). (2011). Language and bilingual
cognition. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Flecken, M., Gerwien, J., Carroll, M. & von Stutterheim, C. (2015a).
Analyzing gaze allocation during language planning: a cross-linguistic
study on dynamic events. Language and Cognition 7: 138-166.
Flecken, M., Weimar, K., Carroll, M & von Stutterheim, C. (2015).
Driving Along the Road or Heading for the Village? Conceptual
Differences Underlying Motion Event Encoding in French, German, and
French–German L2 Users. The Modern Language Journal 99: 100-122.
Gennari, S., Sloman, S., Malt, B. & Tecumseh Fitch, W. (2002). Motion
events in language and cognition. Cognition 83: 49–79.
Gerwien, J. & v. Stutterheim, C. (2018). Event segmentation:
Cross-linguistic differences in verbal and non-verbal tasks. Cognition
180: 225-237. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.07.008
Jarvis, S.& Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language
and cognition. London: Routledge.
Lambert, M., v. Stutterheim, C., Carroll, M. & Gerwien, J. (2022).
Under the surface: A Survey of Principles of Language Use in Advanced
L2 Speakers. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 13 (1) : 1–28.
Leclercq, P. & Benazzo, S. (2021). La relativité linguistique et
l’acquisition du langage. In : Leclercq, P., A. Edmonds & E.
Sneed-German (eds.), Introduction à l’acquisition des langues
étrangères. Louvain la Neuve : De Boeck Supérieur, pp. 35-51.
Lenneberg, E. (1953). Cognition in Ethnolinguistics. Language 29 (4):
463-471.
Lucy, J. (1992a). Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of
the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lucy, J. (1992b). Grammatical Categories and A Cognition: A Case Study
of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Papafragou, A., Hulbert, J. & Trueswell, J. (2008). Does language
guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements. Cognition 108
(1): 155-184. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.02.007
Slobin, D. I. (1996). From "thought and language" to "thinking for
speaking." In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking
linguistic relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 70–96.
Soroli, E. (2012). Variation in spatial language and cognition:
exploring visuo-spatial thinking and speaking cross-linguistically.
Cognitive Processing 13 (1): 333-337. doi: 10.1007/s10339-012-0494-4
Soroli E. & Hickmann, M. (2011). Language and spatial representations
in French and in English: Some evidence from eye-movements. In: G.
Marotta, A. Lenci, L. Meini & F. Rovai (eds.), Space in Language.
Pisa: Edizioni ETS, pp. 581-597.



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