LINGUIST List 9.539

Tue Apr 7 1998

Calls: Texts and Realities, Language Variation

Editor for this issue: Anita Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. ELLCONLK, "Creating Sense: Texts and Realities"
2. William A. Kretzschmar, NWAV(E) 27

 ***CALL FOR PAPERS***

 
 CREATING SENSE
 TEXTS AND REALITIES
 Organized by 
 
 The Department of English Language & Literature 
 National University of Singapore 
 		
 with
 Cambridge University Press 
 and 
 Materials Development Association (MATSDA)
 
 
7-9 September, 1998
Venue: Orchard Hotel, Singapore 

Keynote presenters:
David Nunan (University of Hong Kong) 
Liz Hamp-Lyons (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Mario Rinvolucri (Pilgrims, Canterbury)
Jane Arnold (University of Seville) 

The conference organisers invite papers, both theoretical and
practical, that explore and characterise some of the main ways in
which language is used to create "sense" in contemporary life. We
encourage papers that present recent developments and address
significant theoretical issues in studies of language and discourse,
and that explore ideas and applications in the broad domains of
language education and media studies. Some possible areas of focus
(the list is not meant to be exclusive) include the development of
creative thinking and critical awareness, current issues in the
teaching and assessment of listening, speaking, reading and writing,
relations between language, literacy and curriculum "content", the
principled development and evaluation of educational materials and
activities, and the impact of different media (newspapers, television,
computers and the Internet) on contemporary ideas about literacy,
education and citizenship.

Papers from invited keynote speakers will last for 60 minutes.
Parallel papers will last for 40 minutes. Speakers in parallel
sessions are asked to limit their presentation time to 30 minutes,
leaving 10 minutes for discussion of their paper. Papers will normally
be presented in the morning sessions of the conference. Intending
paper presenters who are interested in developing ideas in afternoon
workshop sessions are especially encouraged to submit their proposals.
 
 			***Call for Workshops***
 
The organisers invite proposals for workshop sessions from intending
conference participants (not only paper presenters) who are willing to
take on the role of workshop leader. Parallel workshops will be held
as afternoon sessions, each lasting 3 hours, and some of these
workshops will extend over more than one afternoon.
 
The main aim of workshops at this conference is to provide
participants with opportunities to become actively involved in
developing, adapting or evaluating educational materials in language
education and media studies, along lines that each workshop leader
will first have related to some of the major theoretical issues
arising from the conference theme. Intending workshop leaders who can
make links between workshop activities and paper presentations at the
conference are especially encouraged to submit their proposals. The
organisers assume that each workshop will comprise approximately
thirty participants, and will be arranged such that at least 2 hours
out of 3 will be spent by workshop participants working in pairs or
groups, as the workshop leader arranges, on tasks corresponding to the
workshop theme.

Please send abstracts of about 200 words to the Programme Committee,
in accordance with the guidelines that follow. Write or (preferably)
e-mail to:
 
 	Programme Committee (attention: D. Allison)
 	"Creating Sense" Conference
 	Department of English Language & Literature
 	National University of Singapore
 	10 Kent Ridge Crescent
 	Singapore 119260
 
Departmental fax: (65)-7732981		
E-mail: ellconlknus.edu.sg

Guidelines for submissions: Your abstract must specify the category
(paper or workshop) of the proposed presentation. Please submit three
anonymous copies of the abstract (including the title of your paper or
workshop) for review purposes, plus a fourth copy that includes the
author's name and affiliation. Please also include a notecard (size 3"
by 5"), stating author's name, affiliation, title of paper or
workshop, contact telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address, and
postal address. Paper presenters are asked to specify any special
requirements for their presentation. (All rooms will have overhead
projectors.) Workshop presenters are asked to specify the intended
length of the workshop (a workshop may run for 3, 6 or 9 hours) and to
specify any special requirements for their workshop session.
 
Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 1998	
Replies will be sent by end May 1998

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 			Conference Theme
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
The focus of this Conference will be on notions of "creating" or
"making" sense, both in education and more widely throughout society.
"Making sense" sounds reassuringly uncontroversial, and it has taken
the insights of Jerome Bruner in the 1960s, and of Michael Halliday
and his associates in recent years, to bring out the richness of
meaning that this expression can carry. It is now widely accepted that
sense is not simply "there" in the world, waiting to be discovered and
documented, but that it is actually created by human beings in
societies. The idea that "reality" is "created" in language also
implies that there must be more than one reality, and that a number of
realities can be articulated and compared. These possibilities carry
major implications for language education, social identity and
participation --- or, less reassuringly, for educational and social
exclusion. The thematic emphasis of this conference on "creating
sense", then, includes the essential notions that any single form of
sense can also be questioned and "unmade", and that alternative kinds
of sense can be remade or "re-created" through texts.
 
Making, unmaking and remaking meanings are fundamental aspects of
social and educational experience, from infancy through primary and
secondary school years and beyond, continuing into adulthood and
maturity. Much education has to do with learning to think, talk and
write about things in ways that differ from the initial "commonsense"
knowledge or belief that children have already acquired in their
communities. To bring this about without undermining what is valid and
valued in children's lives is an enormously challenging and
problematic social and cultural activity. That it is also a necessary
one can be argued both in terms of mainstream rationality (the
development of scientific thinking being a prime example here) and of
critical awareness, which includes learning to deconstruct powerful
people's accounts of how the world is and ought to be, and to propose
alternative accounts. Full participation in social and political life
is only possible when people have learned, as Ronald Carter has put
it, how to "see through language".
 
These concerns over creating, questioning and re-creating sense are
explored in this conference in relation to two domains, those of
language education and media studies.
 
In the context of formal education, learners have both to discern
meaning in what is offered to them and actively to make "their own"
meanings as they interpret and analyse experience from a variety of
perspectives which may be proposed to them or discovered by them. All
this raises important issues of participation and exclusion relating
to learners' personal and social explorations of language, and the
ways in which these two modes of exploration may be related. The
conference will pursue these concerns in the broad context of language
education as its first domain.
 
The second conference domain is that of media studies, with particular
attention to media discourse and reality construction. The conference
seeks to bring to light some of the ways in which realities, like
stories, are invented, told, represented and mediated through
available technologies. Diverse experiences and accounts of reality
are constructed through the interplay of language and image. These
can, for instance, be presented as fantasies, fictional explorations
of experience, docu-dramas or documentary coverage of events, among
other things. The impact of such accounts on audiences and "the
public" depends on many social, cultural and educational factors, but
the need for modern citizens to be able to make their own sense of
accounts that are offered to them, and also to offer accounts of their
own, increasingly appears fundamental to effective social
participation as well as to social critique.

The conference looks to stimulate debate that is grounded in --- or
informedly set against --- current theories, practices and findings of
teaching and research communities in language and communication
studies. Another main aim is to suggest guidelines for informed,
responsible and reflective practice in the domains of language
education and mediaOA studies. A theme of particular interest, to be
developed especially in workshop mode, is that of materials writing
for educational purposes in both conference domains.
 

Initial Call for Papers

NWAV(E) 27 New Ways of Analyzing Variation (in English and other languages)

NWAV(E) 27 will be held Oct. 1-4, 1998, in Athens, GA, at the Georgia
Center for Continuing Education of the University of Georgia. Plenary
speakers will include William Labov and Salikoko Mufwene, and the program
will include both workshops and separate papers according to standard
practice for the meeting. There will also be a poster session. 

In the two days preceding NWAV(E) 27, September 29 and 30, there will be a
state-of-the-art conference on African American Vernacular English, hosted
by Professor Sonja Lanehart, called "Sociocultural and Historical Contexts
of African American Vernacular English". This meeting will feature
invited presentations by 14 leading scholars in the field. 

Abstracts

Abstracts are invited in all areas of language variation studies, both
synchronic and diachronic, for both 20-minute presentations and for
posters. Abstracts will be refereed anonymously. The abstract deadline is
June 15, 1998; notification is expected by August 1. International
participants who require certification of participation at an earlier
date, to apply for travel funding, should contact the organizers as soon
as possible. 

Abstracts should be submitted in two parts. The first part should include
the full title and the abstract text of no more than 500 words including
bibliography (i.e. to fit on a single page in appropriate format). The
author's name(s) should not appear in the text of the abstract or title.
The second part should give the full title of the submission and the
author's name(s), with address, e-mail, fax, and phone numbers. Please
indicate whether you wish your abstract to be considered for presentation,
for a poster, or for either. 

Abstracts may be submitted by e-mail (preferred) as an ASCII message
containing both parts of the abstract (no attachments, please). 
Alternatively, authors may send a fully formatted hard copy of the
abstract (six copies of the abstract, and one copy of the separate
identification page), plus a diskette containing the text file, to the
organizers via regular mail. 

Send e-mail abstracts to: nwave27linguistics.uga.edu. 
Send regular mail abstracts to: Bill Kretzschmar, NWAV(E) 27, Linguistics
Program, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-6205. If your mail
service requires a building name or street name, add "Park Hall, Baldwin
Street" to the address. 

A Web site for NWAV(E) 27 has been established at
http://www.linguistics.uga.edu/nwave27. 
Additional information will posted there as it becomes available.