Schedule of Pre-Conference Workshops
Hammond Bldg. Room 307
Workshop 1: Applying Integrational Linguistics
Friday, August 30 10 am-1 pm
- Dorthe Duncker, University of Copenhagen
Abstract: The workshop is about how integrational linguistics can be applied in practice. Integrationism invites you to think about your everyday communicational experience, as well as your practice as a professional linguist, in a different way. Integrational linguistics privileges the “first person”perspective, the perspective of the individual communicating agent, and this perspective also defines the perspective of the investigative linguist. It is impossible to leave or to step outside of language in order to study language. Linguistics is in itself a linguistic exercise, and all communicating participants are uniquely situated in time and space. This linguistic reflexivity conditions our lives as communicating participants, and without it linguistics would not be possible. The integrational mindset requires you to think about things you take for granted and to rethink inveterate academic habits. In a sense, you become attentive to your usual inattentiveness, and in return you will realize that no linguistic methodology can be neutral or innocent. For this reason, the notion of “linguistic data”needs to be radically reconsidered for it to be compatible with integrational principles. In the workshop, you will get to have hands-onexperience with the challenges an integrational approach poses to the study of linguistic phenomena.
Workshop 2: Integrational Linguistics and the Myth of Reference
Friday, August 30 2-5 pm
- Adrian Pablé, University of Hong Kong
Abstract: In this workshop I will be discussing different theoretical models of how words are supposed to mean and the beliefs underlying these models. Drawing on practical examples, we will explore how linguistic beliefs shape communicational activities involving the establishment of ‘reference’in different domains (e.g. science), which are questions about the ontology of things and how we gain knowledge of them. Against the background of how particular traditions of philosophy and linguistics have approached the issue of ‘reference’, I will introduce participants to the tenets of an integrational semiology and epistemology based on my own fieldwork on names and discuss how decontextualized analyses of relations between ‘words and things ’mislead our thinking about the status and function of ‘names’. Furthermore, we will look into Roy Harris’s notion of ‘glossing practice’ with particular reference to the metalinguistic questions ‘What’s the name of object x?’ and ‘What does name x refer to?’ and invite participants to imagine situations in which we are called upon to establish reference as a practical communicational activity. In this way, we will be able to highlight the importance of personal linguistic experience as the point of departure for the integrational linguist.
Workshop 3: Communication in Cooperation
Saturday, August 31 9:30 am-12 pm
- Peter Jones, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
Abstract: ‘What we typically experience in face-to-face communication’, as Roy Harris put it, ‘is the temporal development of a single integrated continuum, to which signs of various kinds contribute.’In this workshop we explore the value of integrationist insights for reflecting on our experiences and observations of a practical task involving face-to-face communication to be carried out during the workshop session. The task requires small groups of participants to cooperate towards a set goal and to endeavour to improve their performance over repeated trials. Of particular interest will be the ways in which participants jointly make of the task activity ‘a single integrated continuum ’through the spontaneous creation and continual transformation in real time of the communicational dimensions of their cooperative relationship.
Workshop 4: Panel Discussion Wrap-up Discussion with the Workshop Leaders
Saturday, August 31 2-4 pm
- Dorthe Duncker, Adrian Pablé and Peter Jones in conversation
All workshops will be held in Hammond Building Room 307. Please follow the directional signs to the entrance of the building. There is an elevator to the third floor.