Language Use across Time : What you didn’t know you’ve always wanted to know about historical pragmatics

Language Use across Time : What you didn’t know you’ve always wanted to know about historical pragmatics
Short Title : LUAC

Date : 16-Feb-2018 - 17-Feb-2018
Location : Padova, Italy
Contact Person : Sara Gesuato
Meeting Email : < click here to access email >
Web Site : http://www.historicalpragmatics2018.it/

Linguistic Field(s) : Historical Linguistics ; Pragmatics

Call Deadline : 15-Sep-2017

Meeting Description :

The Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies of the University of Padua will be hosting the following conference

Language Use across Time :
What you didn’t know you’ve always wanted to know about historical pragmatics

This conference is to be held in Padua in Palazzo Maldura (http://www.disll.unipd.it/content/dipartimento/sedi-ed-aule) on February 16-17, 2018.

The diachronic evolution of languages is a crucial part of a social being’s historical situatedness, given that it is mainly through language that we develop social interactions, build relationships and project our identities. The account of this evolution has traditionally focused on formal aspects of language. More recently, however, attention has broadened to include functional aspects of language use – e.g. strategies and conventions of communicative practices over time – which has given rise to the field of historical pragmatics.

The aim of the conference is to bring together historical linguists and pragmaticians interested in exploring diachronic communicative practices within and across languages with a view to shedding light on, among other things : how present-day communicative practices have been informed and shaped by earlier communicative options, constraints, goals and needs ; to what extent and in what ways present communicative practices differ from earlier communicative practices ; how past communicative practices differed across social groups.

Invited speakers : Andreas Jucker (University of Zurich) and Irma Taavitsainen (University of Helsinki) co-editors of the Handbook of Historical Pragmatics)

For more information visit http://www.historicalpragmatics2018.it/ .

We look forward to welcoming you here !

Sara Gesuato & Cecilia Poletto
Conference Organisers

2nd Call for Papers :

Language use across time :
what you didn’t know you’ve always wanted to know about historical pragmatics

The aim of the conference is to bring together historical linguists and pragmaticians interested in exploring diachronic communicative practices within and across languages with a view to shedding light on, among other things : how present-day communicative practices have been informed and shaped by earlier communicative options, constraints, goals and needs ; to what extent and in what ways present communicative practices differ from earlier communicative practices ; how past communicative practices differed across social groups.

We welcome contributions relevant, but not limited, to the following topics :

Comparative-contrastive historical pragmatics
Research methods in historical pragmatics
Corpus-informed approaches to historical pragmatics
Challenges of historical pragmatics
Variational historical pragmatics
Evolution of discursive practices in given genres
Sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects of earlier communicative practices
Conventions of means and conventions of forms in speech acts in different time periods
Temporal relativity of appropriateness of forms and practices
Reasons for changes in the understanding of politeness and impoliteness
Reasons for changes in the encoding of pragmatic behaviour
Pragmatic features of earlier texts as clues to understanding present-day interactional practices
Social deixis in different time periods
Metapragmatic descriptions in texts from different time periods
Lexico-grammatical reflexes of changes in interactional practices over time

If interested in participating, we invite you to submit an abstract for consideration (500-1000 words, including : 3-to-5 keywords, the general topic, type of contribution [e.g. poster]) and a separate file with your personal details (Family name, Given name, affiliation, email, address for correspondence). Send the two files with your abstract and personal details in Word format as email attachments to sara.gesuatounipd.it, writing “Historical Pragmatics Conference Abstract” in your subject heading. The submission deadline is 15 September 2018. You may submit a maximum of two abstracts if at least one of these is co-authored.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by early November 2018.