Expressivity 2: Social Variation and Processing
Short Title: Ex2:SoVaPro

Date: 19-Mar-2026 - 20-Mar-2026
Location: Bochum, Germany
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://www.expressivity.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/expr/expressivity-2-social-variation-and-processing/index.html.en

Linguistic Field(s): Neurolinguistics; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 15-Nov-2025

Workshop Description:
Expressivity is a category in natural languages that concerns the direct expression of emotions and attitudes (in contrast to their description). Expressive meaning can be conveyed at all linguistic level: by lexical expressions, special syntactic constructions, intonation or on the pragmatic level by expressive speech acts.

While expressivity has been approached from many different angles and has been studied in almost all disciplines of linguistics (see the Oxford Handbook of Expressivity to be published by the end of 2025), there are still a lot of areas in which our knowledge is lacking behind the progress that has been made in other areas of expressivity. After a very successful Expressivity 1 workshop in March 2025 on Variation and Change (https://www.expressivity.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/expr/expressivity-1-variation-and-change/index.html.en), we want to focus on Social Variation and Processing for an Expressivity 2 workshop in March 2026. This workshop aims to bringing together research on these two axes of research expressivity. Questions that may be addressed at the workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:

- How does the use of expressive language between different social groups based on social factors like age, region, social status, and so on?
- How do speakers vary and adjust their use of expressive language between different social situations (i.e. formal vs. informal; in-group vs. out-group)?
- How do speakers strategically employ expressivity to project certain social personae?
- Which influence does the social context have on the meaning of certain expressives, like, for instance, the in- an out-group usage of slurs or forms of banter.
- While expressivity is often taken to be very different from descriptive language, how does this manifest itself in the processing of expressive language?
- Are in-group vs. out-group uses of slurs processed differently?
- Are there processing differences between different kinds of expressives (i.e. expletives like “damn” vs. slurs vs. particularistic insults)?
- Is the projection behavior of expressives processed differently than the one for presuppositions?
- What are the processing effects of “wrongly” used expressives (i.e. the use of “damn” without a negative attitude or of “oops” if no mishap was occurring)? Does this differ from “wrong” descriptives that make an utterance false?

Contributions are encouraged to take broader views (and are invited to be a bit speculative in their conclusion), but studies on single expressive phenomena are also welcome.

Call for Papers:
We invite contributions addressing the social variation and processing of expressive phenomena at all linguistic levels and working in all linguistic frameworks.
- Please submit your abstract by November 15, 2025 to [email protected].
- Abstracts should not exceed two pages (DIN A4, 2.5cm margins, 12pt font, minimum of 1.2 linespacing)
- You can include up to one additional page for examples and graphics.
- You can include up to one additional page for references.

Important Dates:
- Submission deadline: November 15, 2025
- Notification: December 1, 2025
- Workshop: March 19–20, 2025