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chula.ac.th>First Circular and Call for Papers International Symposium on Linguistic Politeness: Theoretical Approaches and Intercultural Perspectives 7-9 December 1999 Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * About the Symposium * Suggested Topics * Symposium Format * Participants * Organizing Committee and Contact Address * Submission * Important Dates * Response Form ------------------------------------------------------------------------ About the Symposium An emphasis on language as a communication system is instrumental in an age of globalization. Not only does it help uncover principles underlying social interactions, but it also enables us to gain an access to ways of thinking, belief systems, and world views of people from various cultural backgrounds and thus enhances empathy, mutual understanding and dialogue. Investigating issues concerning cross-cultural communication is especially momentous in today's time, when national boundaries are becoming less visible, and more and more people are engaging in intercultural communication. Understanding social conventions and attention to such concepts as politeness, face, prestige, and gender, which are important to members in a particular culture will certainly enable us to better comprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thus helping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings. There have been an impressive number of research on politeness in language from various perspectives and disciplines. Theoretical approaches have been proposed, in the light of data from both western and non-western languages. These, as well as specific questions related to the relationship between politeness and such issues as gender, genre, indirectness, or even impoliteness, are worth investigating more thoroughly. The purpose of the Symposium is to arrive at a new theoretical understanding of politeness in the light of recent research on different aspects of this linguistic phenomenon. This International Symposium, with its focus on an issue of great significance to Asian cultures, is a necessary step in the advancement of linguistic and socio-cultural research in this part of the world. The International Symposium will bring together researchers (not only linguists) who are interested in contemporary problems related to language, communication, and culture, to seek a better insight into the various issues related to politeness in language. The Symposium aims at promoting awareness of these issues and at facilitating original research from various perspectives and disciplines. This Symposium centers around the theme of linguistic politeness, which is an important concept in the study of language use. Three specific questions are focused in this Symposium: (1) How can we account for politeness in language?, (2) In what ways does politeness relate to language and culture?, and (3) How is politeness realized in different languages, especially in non-western ones? Focusing on the issue of politeness, which is an essential element in human communication, this Symposium is a befitting event in the celebration of the auspicious occasion of King Bhumibol's 72nd birthday in December, 1999. [Back] Suggested Topics We primarily seek contributions which discuss one or more of the following issues: * Universality and typology of linguistic politeness * Cognitive and psychological bases of politeness * Developmental perspectives on politeness * Politeness strategies used by native and non-native speakers * Differences between definition and expression of linguistic politeness in western and non-western contexts * Politeness realizations in inadequately studied languages * Politeness in spoken and written genres * Politeness and facework in social interactions * Politeness in conversations and institutional discourses * Politeness and gender * Politeness and indirectness * Impoliteness Symposium Format Each contribution will be allowed 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. The Symposium will be concluded each day with a session of concluding remarks. This will be an opportunity for more active interactions among participants. Participants Invited Speakers * Professor Sachiko Ide, Japan's Women University, Tokyo * Professor Robin Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley The Symposium will bring together 50 scholars from Asia, Australia, Europe, Canada and the U.S.A. Participants are invited to present new and original papers. These papers will be screened and selected by the Review Committee. The organizers will select the proposed abstracts of good quality which contribute to the theme of the Symposium. Organizing Committee and Contact Address The International Symposium on Linguistic Politeness is organized by Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University. The Chairperson of the Organizing Committee is Sudaporn Luksaneeyanawin (Head, Department of Linguistics). The Chairperson of the Technical Program Committee is Pranee Kullavanijaya. Potential participants are requested to contact the Symposium secretary at the following addresses. Please visit the Symposium home page for more information and registration form: http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~hkrisada/Politeness/index.html Krisadawan Hongladarom Department of Linguistics Faculty of Arts Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 Tel. 66-2-218-4690 Fax. 66-2-218-4697 E-mail: hkrisadaMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
nil.fut.es>DEADLINE EXTENDED: April 5 Workshop: GRAMMAR SYSTEMS: A FORMAL LANGUAGE THEORETIC MULTI-AGENT ARCHITECTURE To be held at the 9th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL'99), Bergen, Norway, June 12, 1999. In cooperation with the IFIP Working Group 1.2 on Descriptional Complexity. Scope: The theory of grammar systems is a recent branch of formal language theory intending to model complex distributed systems. A basic reference in the field is E. Csuhaj-Varju, J. Dassow, J. Kelemen & Gh. Paun (1994), Grammar systems: a grammatical approach to distribution and cooperation. Gordon & Breach, London. For a more recent survey, see J. Dassow, Gh. Paun & G. Rozenberg, "Grammar systems", in G. Rozenberg & A. Salomaa, eds. (1997), Handbook of formal languages, 2: 155-213. Springer, Berlin. For the most recent work, see Acta Cybernetica, 12.4 (1996), ed. E. Csuhaj-Varju; Computers and Artificial Intelligence, 15.2-3 (1996), eds. J. Kelemen & Gh. Paun; Grammars, 1.3 (1998), ed. J. Kelemen; and Gh. Paun & A. Salomaa, eds. (1999), "Grammatical models of multi-agent systems". Gordon & Breach, London. In traditional formal language theory, a language is usually generated by one grammar. In contrast, in this new framework language generation is regarded as a joint activity of several grammars working together under different strategies. In this way, for instance, the non-context-free language a^nb^nc^n is easily generated using only context-free rules suitably distributed through several machines. There are two main classes of devices of this kind: Cooperating Distributed Grammar Systems (CDGS, where, all the grammars starting from the same axiom, at each step of the derivation process one grammar rewrites the string according to a cooperation protocol) and Parallel Communicating Grammar Systems (PCGS, where, each grammar starting from its own axiom, at each step of the derivation process each grammar rewrites its own string and, at a certain moment, some communication symbol appears forcing the combination of such strings in a certain manner). Some recent derivations of the theory include eco-grammar systems, colonies and networks of language processors. Grammar systems intend to model distribution, at the same time increasing the generative capacity and decreasing the descriptional complexity. They are being preliminarily used to model natural language understanding/generation systems as well as other empirical data from artificial intelligence. Each one of the grammars is an agent and the whole is a modular architecture. This formal architecture seems potentially close to the kind of data natural language processing systems face. So far, developments in the field have mainly come from theoretical computer science, and now it's time to check these systems against natural language processing problems. The aims of the workshop are to present this new theory and to suggest trends of development in the field of natural language processing. As well, the organizers welcome contributions from theoretical as well as applied closely related areas, especially those discussing formal language theoretic-inspired models of natural language problems and those presenting other multi-agent processing systems. The workshop may be of interest to the community attending EACL'99 in search of new formal processing architectures. Programme committee: Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) Jurgen Dassow (University of Magdeburg, Germany) Rudolf Freund (Vienna University of Technology, Austria) Lila Kari (University of Western Ontario, London, Canada) Jozef Kelemen (Silesian University, Opava, Czech Republic; University of Economics, Bratislava, Slovakia) Alica Kelemenova (Silesian University, Opava, Czech Republic) Carlos Martin-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain) Alexandru Mateescu (University of Turku, Finland) Victor Mitrana (University of Bucharest, Romania) Gheorghe Paun (Romanian Academy, Bucharest) Grzegorz Rozenberg (University of Leiden, The Netherlands) Arto Salomaa (University of Turku, Finland) Detlef Wotschke (University of Frankfurt, Germany) Organizers: Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) Jurgen Dassow (University of Magdeburg, Germany) Jozef Kelemen (Silesian University, Opava, Czech Republic; University of Economics, Bratislava, Slovakia) Carlos Martin-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain) Gheorghe Paun (Romanian Academy, Bucharest) Contact person: Carlos Martin-Vide Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics and Language Engineering (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Pl. Imperial Tarraco, 1 43005 Tarragona Spain Phone: +34-977-55-9543 Fax: +34-977-55-9597 E-mail: cmvMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue