Overview
Performative expression of meaning hinges on the act of producing a certain form: without this act, the target meaning cannot be expressed (in particular, it cannot be retrieved via ellipsis or anaphora resolution). For instance, when we performatively express anger or frustration by swearing, the act of swearing itself is crucial for achieving our expressive goals. Performative expression of meaning is an important part of our linguistic and near-linguistic behavior and can involve meaning-form mappings of varied conventionalization status as well as forms produced by a variety of articulators. For example, we can performatively express our immediate emotions by producing fully phonologized items like damn or ouch, less phonologized vocalizations like grunts or huffs, and different types of gesture (facial, manual, full body, etc.) or prosodic modulations of varied conventionalization status. We can also performatively produce various types of forms to build rapport with someone or, conversely, to insult them, to express aspects of our identity or our allegiance to a group or a cause, to perform a ritual of some sort, etc. This workshop is aimed to bring together researchers from various disciplines (linguistics, philosophy, psychology, biology, etc.) interested in performativity in human language and beyond. Read more about performativity and the concept of this workshop on the About page.
The workshop will take place on June 3, 2022 and will be hosted at the University of Oslo. The main organizer is Maria Esipova. For questions or comments, please contact us at perforum.workshop@gmail.com.
Invited speakers
Lea Allouche (University of Oslo)
Victor Carranza Pinedo (École Normale Supérieure and University of Milan)
Raphaela Heesen (Durham University)
Jonathan Ginzburg (Université Paris-Diderot)
Jonna Vuoskoski (University of Oslo)
Poster session
In addition to the invited talks, the workshop will feature a peer-reviewed poster session preceded by a round of lightning talks. The deadline for abstract submission is March 1, 2022. See the call for posters for further details.
Format
The workshop will be fully hybrid. Invited talks and poster lightning talks will all be streamed on Zoom, regardless of the speaker's location. The poster session will be similarly hybrid, with both a virtual and a physical space for discussion. The virtual space will be available throughout the workshop for discussion and socializing. As things stand, there are no COVID-related restrictions on in-person events at the University of Oslo, and we will not be imposing any measures beyond what is required by the university (see here).
In-person venue
Niels Treschows hus (HF-12), University of Oslo
Registration
Participation in the event is free, but we ask all participants to register here. Registration deadline for in-person participants: May 15, 2022. Registration deadline for virtual participants: May 31, 2022.
Funding
This workshop has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 891493 for the “GeMeTIC” project (PI: Maria Esipova).
