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exchange.lancs.ac.uk>LANCASTER UNIVERSITY APPLIED LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE 1999 DISCOURSES AND LEARNING: THEORETICAL AND APPLIED PERSPECTIVES UPDATE The Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University, is holding a two-day Applied Linguistics Conference on the 10th and 11th July 1999 at Lancaster University. The plenary speakers for the conference are: Michael Breen (Stirling University) - The Discourse of Assessment: the Case of Young ESL Students in Australia Carmen Caldas-Coulthard (Birmingham University) - Toys as the Representation of Gendered Social Actors There will also be special presentations by Dick Allwright, David Barton, Roz Ivanic and Greg Myers. The theme of the conference is Discourses and Learning: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives and we welcome proposals for papers or workshops that reflect this theme. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and preference will be given to proposals that draw on the theme of the conference. The deadline for proposals is 31 March 1999. Please address all enquiries and requests for registration forms to Ms Elaine Heron (Conference Secretary) at the conference e-mail address: ldtap99Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
sparcling.uta.edu>- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION FOR A WORKSHOP AND MINITRACK ON PERSISTENT CONVERSATION Part of the Digital Documents Track of the Thirty-third Annual Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS), Maui, Hawai'i, January 4-7, 2000. ===== AT A GLANCE ===== WHAT: Minitrack and Workshop on 'Persistent Conversation' (e.g. email, MUDs, IRC, etc.) WHO: Designers and researchers from CMC, HCI, the social sciences, the humanities, etc. DATES: Abstract submission - April 1; Paper submission - June 1; CHAIRS: Thomas Erickson and Susan Herring ===== DETAILS ===== PERSISTENT CONVERSATION: DEFINITION This minitrack and workshop will explore persistent conversation, the transposition of ordinarily ephemeral conversation into the potentially persistent digital medium. The phenomena of interest include conversations carried out using email, mailing lists, news groups, bulletin board systems, textual and graphic MUDs, chat clients, structured conversation systems, document annotation systems, etc. The persistence of such conversations as computerized records, although variable in duration and ease of user access, gives them the potential to be searched, browsed, replayed, annotated, visualized, restructured, and recontextualized, thus opening the door to a variety of new uses and practices. PARTICIPANTS The aim of the minitrack is to bring together researchers who analyze existing computer-mediated conversational practices and sites, with designers who propose, implement, or deploy new types of conversational systems. By bringing together participants from such diverse areas as anthropology, computer-mediated communication, HCI, interaction design, linguistics, psychology, rhetoric, sociology, and the like, we hope that the work of each may inform the others, suggesting new questions, methods, perspectives, and design approaches relating to the theme of persistent conversation. WORKSHOP The minitrack will begin with a half day workshop on Tuesday afternoon. The goal of the workshop is to provide a background for the sessions and to set the stage for a dialog between researchers and designers that will continue during the minitrack. The minitrack co-chairs will contribute the bulk of the workshop content, one presenting a design example and the other presenting a research approach to computer-mediated conversation, with these two cases providing a common ground and starting point for the research-design dialog. MINITRACK PAPERS We are seeking papers that address issues such as the following: * Understanding Practice. The burgeoning popularity of the internet (and intranets) provides an opportunity to study and characterize new forms of conversational practice. Questions of interest range from how various features of conversations (e.g., turn-taking, topic organization, expression of paralinguistic information) have adapted in response to the digital medium, to new roles played by persistent conversation in domains such as education, business, and entertainment. * Analytical Tools. The effort to understand practice can benefit from an array of analytical tools and methods. One goal of this mini-track is to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines, so as to gain a fuller understanding of the kinds of insights different approaches can reveal to analyzing persistent conversation. * Design. Digital systems do not support conversation well: it is difficult to converse with grace, clarity, depth and coherence over computer networks. But this need not remain the case. To this end, we welcome analyses of existing systems as well as designs for new systems which better support conversation. Of equal interest are inquiries into how participants design their own conversations within the digital medium -- that is, how they make use of system features to create, structure, and regulate their discourse. * Social Implications. In addition to suggesting intriguing new applications, the persistence of digital conversation has beneficial social effects ranging from making a community's discourse more accessible to non-native speakers, to laying the foundations for mutual support and community in distributed groups. At the same time, it also raises troubling issues of privacy, authenticity, and authority. Authors are encouraged to reflect on the social implications of their observations, analyses, and designs. * Historical Parallels. From the constructed dialogs of Plato to the epistolary exchanges of the eighteenth century literati, persistent conversation is not without precedent. How might earlier practices help us understand the new practices evolving in the digital medium? How might they help us design new systems? What perspectives do they offer on the social impacts (present and future) of persistent conversation? MINITRACK CHAIRS Thomas Erickson IBM T. J. Watson Research Center 3136 Irving Ave. S. Minneapolis MN 55409-2515 USA email: snowfallMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue