36.1420, Confs: Generics and Stereotypes in Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective (Netherlands)

Fri May 2 19:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-1420. Fri May 02 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.1420, Confs: Generics and Stereotypes in Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective (Netherlands)

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Date: 29-Apr-2025
From: Laure Gardelle [laure.gardelle at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr]
Subject: Generics and Stereotypes in Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

Generics and Stereotypes in Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary
Perspective

Date: 05-Jun-2025 - 06-Jun-2025
Location: Leiden, Netherlands
Contact: Laure Gardelle
Contact Email: laure.gardelle at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
Meeting URL:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o-QXkAguo1CvbXXWmbQjaGnpFLZGZ1dG/view

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Linguistic Theories; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics

Here is a link to our webpage, with the programme and the registration
link:
https://www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/events/2025/06/generics-and-stereotypes
Keynote speaker: Camiel J. Beukeboom, Associate Professor, Department
of Communication Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, PI on the NWO
project “Uncovering biased language use: Implicit Communication of
Stereotypes in Natural Language”
Aim of the conference:
The aim of this international conference is to bring together
researchers from various disciplines – linguistics, sociolinguistics,
pragmatics, communication and media studies, marketing, psychology,
history, political science, among others – to further our
understanding of how and why generics and stereotypes are explicitly
referred to in discourse by speakers.
We are deliberately bringing generics and stereotypes together,
because even though a “stereotype” is understood in everyday life as
“a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like,
especially an idea that is wrong” (Cambridge Dictionary 2024), the
notion has been extended by a number of researchers in communication
and social psychology to what Beukeboom & Burgers (2017: 2), for
instance, describe as “the knowledge and expectancies about probable
behaviours, features, and traits”. This is very close to what
linguists regard as “generic” statements. While stereotypes in the
everyday sense are harmful and must be combated, the more general
cognitive reflex helps people to make sense of the world, including
the social world for humans, and to gain some predictability (Mackie
et al. 1996, Moskowitz 2005, Beukeboom & Burgers 2017). In this
broader sense at least (but probably not solely), Hinton (2020) points
out that while studies on stereotypes focus on humans, we can just as
well have stereotypes of makes of cars, cats or types of vegetables
(see also Schneider 2004).
Despite the wealth of research on generics and stereotypes, the issue
of why speakers would want to make a generic statement or make
explicit reference to a stereotype in a given context has been
understudied to date. The issue of the pragmatic function of
stereotypes and generic statements appears crucial to understanding
the circulation of generalizations and stereotypes, and the exact
connections between the generalizing reflex of the brain and harmful
stereotypes. We welcome talks that take naturally occurring generic or
stereotypical statements as their starting point. Some points of
particular interest could be the following (but the list is not meant
to be exhaustive):
1) Why produce a generic statement in a given context? For what kinds
of properties, with what form of the NP (bare plural, a N, the N,
other), and with what consequences? Are there discursive clues for the
communicative goal(s) identified?
2) Do these communicative strategies solely concern humans? Even
though research on stereotypes has focused on humans, there are
generalisations and harmful overgeneralisations about other categories
as well. One example is sharks, for which a WWF website tries to
disentangle “shark facts” from “shark myths”.
3) How exactly are generic or stereotypical (in the harmful sense)
statements phrased?
4) Is there room for diversity in the phrasing of stereotypes? Is
there a clear distinction between (harmful) stereotypical ones and
mere generic statements?
5) In a given discourse or set of extracts, does a given speaker show
fluctuations or even contradictions in the generalizations or
stereotypes they put forward? Conversely, are there forms of standard
statements in a given community of practice?
6) How do addressees react to a generic statement or a stereotype? In
interactive settings, do some trigger agreement statements, or
rejections, or other?

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