Dear Colleages:
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International colloquium PRAGMATIC INTERFACES
University of Geneva, February 12-14, 2004
Conference announcement
AIM
The colloquium aims at addressing a range of issues relating to the
possible and impossible relations between current and competing
approaches in pragmatics and discourse analysis.
SCIENTIFIC COORDINATION
Louis de Saussure & Peter Schulz
University of Geneva / University of Lugano
SPEAKERS
Nicholas ALLOTT (London)
Nicholas ASHER (Austin)
Antoine AUCHLIN (Geneva)
Alain BERRENDONNER (Fribourg)
Diane BLAKEMORE (Salford)
Robyn CARSTON (London)
Paul CHILTON (Norwich)
Paul DANLER (Innsbruck)
Marc DOMINICY (Brussels)
Laurent FILLIETTAZ (Geneva)
Hans KAMP (Stuttgart)
Jacques MOESCHLER (Geneva)
Andrea ROCCI (Lugano)
Louis de SAUSSURE (Geneva)
Peter SCHULZ (Lugano)
Frans VAN EEMEREN (Amsterdam / New York)
Daniel VANDERVEKEN (Québec)
Deirdre WILSON (London)
Ruth WODAK (Vienna)
TOPICS
Pragmatic theories, although they all focus on language in use, don't
only oppose each-other through methodology and epistemology, but also
through their domain of study.
Some describe social interaction and consider discourse as a document
for that task. Others tackle the cognitive process of interpretation in
context. Others discuss semantic issues in discourse, argumentative
processes, symbolic or semiotic aspects of discourse, or various other
psychological aspects of linguistic practice.
These oppositions result from profound epistemological discrepancies
that show how much the sciences of language are situated at the
crossroads of materialistic naturalistic methodologies and methods in
social sciences (which in turn are all but homogeneous, see the
difference between psychosocial approaches to speech acts and
ethnomethodological conversational pragmatics for example).
It's crucial for the development of pragmatics that researchers focus on
these differences, but also on potential converging lines, and, of
course, to exploit them in the future. Here resides the main objective
of the colloquium.
The main issues addressed by the colloquium are, among others, the
following:
- Is an interface possible between any radical pragmatic theory and any
discourse analysis theory?
- To what extent macro-discursive phenomena can be tackled by radical
pragmatics, in particular discourse organisation, dialogue /
interaction, and literature?
- To what degree of granularity meaning and reasoning integrate into
models in discourse analysis? And what kind of theory of meaning is
(potentially) used by theories in discourse analysis?
- Is there a path towards an interplay between theories that consider
cognition as individual and approaches that assume facts of "collective"
cognition?
- Is it necessary to posit strict limits for each kind of approach, or
should we consider that they are competing on a unique and exclusive domain?
- What are the view of scholars in related fields such as syntax,
semantics, philosophy of language and psychology?
The colloquium will be held in English and French.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
- The conference will take place in auditorium S 160, campus Uni-Mail,
Boulevard Carl-Vogt, Geneva.
- Conference website: http://www.unige.ch/lettres/latl/interfaces/index.html
- Free admission
- Contact person: Mihaela.Popa@lettres.unige.ch
The program of the colloquium will be available on the website in due time.
Louis de Saussure & Peter Schulz
Louis.deSaussure@lettres.unige.ch
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