AFLS Symposium at the University of East Anglia, Norwich - 3-4 November 2006

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics at a Crossroads: Speech Frames and Cultural Perceptions

The purpose of this interdisciplinary event is to bring together, under the umbrella of cross-cultural pragmatics, researchers from domains which are particularly sensitive to cross-cultural issues, to promote the cross-fertilisation of ideas and theoretical approaches, and explore, beyond stereotypes, key concerns associated with verbal communication across language, culture and acquisitional divides. Domains of specific interest will be interlanguage pragmatics, mediation (with reference to real-life or fictional contexts, i.e. translation/interpreting, but also dubbing / subtitling / translation / adaptation of fictional interactions, for example) and non-standard varieties of language. These are spheres of enquiry in which cross-cultural issues and their implications in various respects (e.g. pragmatic development for interlanguage) surface with peculiar acuteness, and which give us privileged access to data for refining their study. Questions the workshop will aim to explore include: the interface between the linguistic and the cultural, between speech frames and cultural perceptions, misapprehensions of pragmatic values across languages and their implications, issues of membership knowledge generally, issues of transfer, intercultural styles. The workshop will focus principally, but not exclusively, on the French/English pair, a combination of languages which has received comparatively limited attention in cross-cultural pragmatics (but see Béal, Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Traverso), and even less in interlanguage pragmatics. It will, by virtue of its themes and the inbuilt interdisciplinarity of cross-cultural pragmatics generally, be informed by different theoretical paradigms (e.g. conversation and interactional discourse analysis, intercultural communication, politeness theory and, for interlanguage, second language acquisition and psycholinguistics). Proposals, for individual papers (20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions) or proposer-led round-table sessions on a particular theme (1h30), will be expected clearly to identify their theoretical frame(s) of reference. The general framework for the workshop will be provided by plenary papers delivered by distinguished scholars representing complementary perspectives: cross / intercultural studies (Helen Spencer-Oatey, Cambridge University), discourse in interaction (Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Université Lyon 2), interpreting and non-standard language varieties (Declan McCavana, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris). Practical information Abstract deadline 31 May 2006 Language English or French Proposal 300-word anonymous abstract sent as an attachment (Word doc) to an email message containing the author’s name and affiliation Submission To m.guillot@uea.ac.uk Organisers Dr Marie-Noëlle Guillot and Dr Roger Baines, School of Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK