For more information and a booking form please contact Emma Woodward,
Conference Officer via e-mail on [log in to unmask]
6th NWCL International Conference
PROSODY AND PRAGMATICS
Friday 14th - Sunday 16th November 2003
Organised by
Anne Wichmann (University of Central Lancashire)
and Diane Blakemore (University of Salford)
Conference Background
This is the 6th annual conference organised under the aegis of the
North West Centre for Linguistics. It is being held in Preston, hosted
by the University of Central Lancashire, and addresses the interface
between prosody and pragmatics. Selected papers from the conference will
be published in a Special Issue of the Journal of Pragmatics.
The contribution of prosody to pragmatic meaning is undisputed, but in
practice the two disciplines of pragmatics and prosody rarely meet. On
the whole, those working in speech tend to pay only limited attention to
communicative processes, while those working on the social and cognitive
processes involved in communication have either avoided prosody
altogether or approached it in a fairly informal way.
We feel now that research in discourse and pragmatics has recognised
the need to take account of prosodic phenomena, and that research in
prosody, while still focussing necessarily on developing formal models,
has begun to interface with other disciplines. There are many phenomena
where research in pragmatics feeds into research in prosody and vice
versa - for example, focus and information structure, questions about
processing units and the identification of an utterance, the
communication of attitudes and emotions, constraints on implicatures.
The interface between prosody and pragmatics is thus a rich area of
research, and this conference will give it the attention it deserves.
A wide range of phenomena from both disciplines will be addressed by
invited keynote speakers and in around 60 oral presentations.
Aims and objectives
This conference is for all researchers who are interested in the way in
which prosody contributes to pragmatic meaning in spoken discourse. It
provides a forum in which they can meet with the aims of
·contributing to a fuller understanding of the role prosody plays in
pragmatic interpretation, and
·creating new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration
Content
The areas covered by the conference will include:
·Conversational interaction
·Speech and emotion
·Intonation and text, discourse markers
·Focus, Prominence, Reference assignment
·Clinical and pedagogical applications
·Politeness
·Intonational meaning, illocution
Keynote Speakers
The keynote speakers are internationally renowned researchers in
prosody and pragmatics from different points of view including Relevance
Theory, Conversation Analysis, discourse and processing, intonational
phonology and speech technology.
Wallace Chafe, University of California, Santa Barbara
Carlos Gussenhoven, University of Nijmegen
Jill House, University College London
John Local, University of York
Deirdre Wilson, University College London
Draft Outline Conference Programme
Friday 14th November 9.00am - 5.30pm
Keynote Lectures:
(1) John Local, University of York. "Reconstruing 'prosody' in
talk-in-interaction"
(2) Jill House, University College London. "Constructing a context with
intonation: the role of the high rise"
Topics to include: -
Conversational Interaction; Intonational Meaning, Prominence; Focus;
Sign Language, Clinical and Acquisition Issues
Saturday 15th November 9.00am - 5.30pm
Keynote Lectures
(1) Carlos Gussenhoven, University of Nijmegen "Pitch variation and
pragmatic meaning"
(2) Wallace Chafe, University of California, Santa Barbara "What are
sentences?"
Topics to include: -
Emotion; Focus; Politeness; Illocution; Text Structure; Reference
Assignment
Sunday 16th November 9.00am - 1.00pm
Keynote Lecture
(1) Deirdre Wilson, University College London. "Relevance and P
rosody"
Topics to include: -
Relevance Theory; Discourse Markers
For more information and a booking form please contact Emma Woodward,
Conference Officer via e-mail on [log in to unmask]
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