LINGUIST List 25.2950
Thu
Jul 17 2014
Calls: Philosophy of
Lang, Pragmatics, Semantics, Socioling,
Typology/Belgium
Editor for this issue:
Anna White <awhitelinguistlist.org>
Date: 16-Jul-2014
From: Minyao Huang
<mh538
cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Dynamics of
Self-Expression Across Languages
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Full Title: Dynamics of Self-Expression Across
Languages
Date: 26-Jul-2015 - 31-Jul-2015
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Contact Person: Minyao Huang
Meeting Email:
< click here to access email >
Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language;
Pragmatics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics;
Typology
Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2014
Meeting Description:
The concept of the self is expressed in vastly
different ways across languages. In
Indo-European languages, while the first-person
pronouns, such as 'I' in English, are the
default forms to express the self that one is
immediately aware of (Perry 1979), impersonal
pronouns such as 'one' in English are often
used for detached self-reference (Moltmann
2010). By contrast, in many Asian languages,
honorifics for the first person enable the
speaker to refer to herself in a way that
requires conceptual mediation. In Thai for
example, a female speaker can use the word for
'mouse' to refer to herself. Such a word
exhibits the semantic characteristics of both a
first-person pronoun and an indefinite
description, as the sense of the self it
conveys is shaped by the public concept of that
small, insignificant rodent (Jaszczolt 2013).
Furthermore, in some African languages, the
first-person pronouns can be used to report a
third party's self-awareness (Schlenker 2011).
In Amharic for instance, the Amharic sentence
that literally translates as 'Mary says that I
am a genius' can mean that Mary says that she
herself is a genius.
The purpose of this panel is to explore how the
concept of the self is adapted for expression
across languages, to draw out ways in which
languages differ in the recruitment of
structural and contextual resources for
self-reference, and to enquire into the
explicit vs. implicit conveyance of different
kinds and degrees of self-awareness in
self-reference.
References:
Jaszczolt, K. 2013. First-person reference in
discourse: Aims and strategies. Journal of
Pragmatics 48. 57-70. Special Issue 'Focus on
the Speaker'.
Moltmann, F. 2010. Generalizing detached
self-reference and the semantics of generic
one. Mind and Language 25: 440-473.
Perry, J. 1979. 'The problem of the essential
indexical'. Noûs 13. 3-21.
Schlenker, P. 2011. Indexicality and de se
reports. In: K. von Heusinger, C. Maienborn and
P. Portner (eds). Semantics: An International
Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Vol. 2.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1561-1604.
Call for Papers:
Papers are invited on cross-linguistic,
semantic, pragmatic and philosophical
approaches to self-reference. Of particular
interest are questions such as:
1. Cross-linguistically, how is the act of
self-referring adapted to the cross-cultural
differences in the way the concept of the self
is construed? How is self-reference realised in
the grammar and in language use?
2. Do first-person pronouns form a universal
category dedicated to self-reference? Is
self-reference achieved via other linguistic
forms and/or through pragmatic inference that
is unarticulated in the surface linguistic
form?
3. How do different ways of referring to
oneself in languages correlate with different
kinds and degrees of self-awareness in
cultures? Is such correlation explicitly
encoded in the linguistic form or implicitly
conveyed through pragmatic inference?
4. What do such questions and their answers
imply for the commonly-held distinctions
between nouns and pronouns and between
indexical expressions and non-indexicals, for
the nature of indexicality and for the
semantics/pragmatics interface?
If you are interested in presenting a paper in
this panel, please send your abstract (max. 500
words, not including references and data) by 15
September 2014 to the following address:
mh538
cam.ac.uk
Please Note:
a) All abstracts, even if accepted by the panel
organizer, will have to be submitted
individually (web-based submission to IPrA) by
15 October 2014.
b) IPrA membership is required both for the
web-based submission and, later on, for
presentation at the 14th International
Pragmatics Conference.
Page Updated: 17-Jul-2014