Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest

Department of Linguistics
Centre for Romanian Studies
Centre for Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
“Solomon Marcus” Center for Computational Linguistics

THE 21ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS:
Current Trends in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

Date: November 19–20, 2021

Venue: Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest/online/blended

Description: As in previous years, we intend to cover a wide range of topics, encompassing

various domains and directions of research in the study of Romanian and in theoretical
linguistics, bringing together a large number of researchers from Romania and abroad.

We encourage topics in but not limited to the following fields:

- morphology, syntax, phonetics, and phonology;
- pragmatics and stylistics;
- lexicology and lexicography, semantics, and terminology;
- history of language, philology, and dialectology;
- teaching Romanian as a mother tongue and as a foreign language (for the section
Teaching Romanian as a mother tongue, the topic is Writing – Problems and
Solutions).

The Conference will host the workshop Pragmatic Variation across Time and Space (see the
call for papers below).

Keynote speakers:
Andreas H. Jucker (University of Zurich), Historical pragmatics and third-wave speech act
theory
Heike Pichler (Newcastle University), Exploring discourse-pragmatic variation in spoken
and written data
Salvador Valera (University of Granada), The role of empirical data in the debate
“conversion vs. zero-affixation”

Conference languages: Romanian, English, French.

Abstracts will be one page in length and will be included in the participation form attached
to the present call for papers before October 25th to colocviu.lingvistica.2021@gmail.com.

Notification of acceptance/rejection: November 5th, 2021.

Presentations will be scheduled for 30 minute slots (20 minutes presentation followed by 10
minutes for discussions).

The conference will be held online using the Google Meet platform. A few days before the
event, participants will receive the meeting link to join the main sections, as well as the
workshop and plenary speeches.

No registration fee applies to the main conference, plenary speeches, and workshop.

Isabela Nedelcu,
Head of the Department of Linguistics,
Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest
 Workshop
Pragmatic Variation across Time and Space

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers interested in contrastive and
historical pragmatics, two interrelated fields which have grown during the last four decades
putting new topics on the research agenda of linguistics. The contrastive perspective in
language usage focuses on the realization of pragmatic/functional units in different cultures,
languages, and varieties of the same idiom, while the historical perspective compares the
actualization of pragmatic/functional units at different stages in the development of a
language.

In this general framework, a large variety of interdisciplinary topics can be addressed:

 Contrastive and diachronic approaches to written-based genres (like letters, essays,

fiction, scientific texts, textbooks, cookery recipes, etc.) or speech-based genres (like
sermons, political debates, public speeches, etc.):
 The actualization of the cooperative principle and im/politeness phenomena in
different language communities or at different moments in time;
 The variation in time and space of function-to-form mappings: the performance of
speech acts (e.g. requests, complaints, threats, promises, apologies, excuses,
compliments, etc.), the realization of speech events (love declarations, verbal
courtship, gossip, etc.), the actualization of verbal behaviors and attitudes
(aggressiveness, arrogance, irony, humor), the configurations of adjacency pairs in
various types of dialogues;
 The historical and geographical variation of form-to-function mappings (deictics,
discourse markers, exclamations, tag-questions, interjections, etc.);
 Pragmaticalization and subjectification;
 The textualization of various topics (death, sexuality, disease, mental condition, etc.);
 Analyses of various institutional discourses as shaped by time and space;
 Theoretical frames and approaches in historical and contrastive pragmatics.
Keynote speakers:

o Andreas H. Jucker (Professor of English Linguistics, University of Zurich),

Historical pragmatics and third-wave speech act theory
Professor Jucker will address the latest developments in speech act theory and
reflect on how this can be applied to historical data, also providing a relevant
case study.
o Heike Pichler (Senior Lecturer in Variationist Sociolinguistics, Newcastle
University, Great Britain), Exploring discourse-pragmatic variation in spoken
and written data
Dr Pichler will explore the methods and value of extending the analysis of
discourse-pragmatic variation from vernacular speech data to informal written
data. Drawing on analyses of pragmatic and constituency variation in the use
of innit in sociolinguistic interviews and of amirite in Reddit posts, she will
demonstrate: (i) the methodological challenges encountered in the analysis of
written data; and (ii) the theoretical insights such analysis can produce.

Format of the workshop. The workshop will be held online using Google Meet platform. A
few days before the event, participants will receive the meeting link to join the workshop.

Abstract submission and presentation. The languages of the workshop are Romanian,
English, French. Each presentation will be allocated a 30-minute slot (20 minutes for the
presentation + 10 minutes for discussions). Contributors are invited to send an abstract of 500
words at most to the organizers of the workshop: Andra Vasilescu
(vasilescu.andra@gmail.com) and Mihaela Constantinescu (constantinescumv@gmail.com).

Publication. The Proceedings of the workshop will be published as a book at an international

publishing house or/and in a special issue of Revue Roumaine de Linguistique.

Important dates. Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 25th; notification of

acceptance/rejection: November 5th.