Call for papers: Panel at IPrA Conference, Hong Kong 9-14 June 2019
Address practices in Italian
Dr Agnese Bresin, University of Melbourne
Addressing each other is a complex operation, in which speakers position themselves and their interlocutors in some form of relationship. With their strong link to the situational context and to the wider cultural context, but also to basic demographic features of interlocutors, address practices are seen as revealing in terms of perceived identities and human relations. Moreover, the study of address practices can speak about large scale societal changes, as well as about developments in relationships between individuals. Address research has produced a large body of studies from a variety of disciplines and involving various languages. The growing interest in this area is evident, for instance, from INAR, an International Network of Address Researchers, with its annual bibliography and regular conferences, and the launch of the dedicated book series Topics in Address Research by John Benjamins.
The Italian case is of particular interest in this field of study for a number of reasons, including the status and geographical distribution of “voi” in relation to “tu” and “lei”, the significant diatopic variation expected and the complex relationship between regional varieties of Italian and the so called “Italian dialects”. Address practices in Italian have so far received some attention from isolated researchers working in different parts of world, but there has not been an organised effort in this sense yet.
The aim of this panel is therefore to bring together researchers working on Italian address practices from different perspectives, providing space for an informed and highly specialised discussion in this field and opening opportunities for future cooperation.
Contributions on address practices in Italian are welcome from any discipline, methodology and theoretical orientation, including, but not limited to:
- qualitative, quantitative and mixed design studies;
- synchronic and diachronic perspectives;
- spoken, written and mediated language;
- Italian dialects, regional varieties of Italian and minority languages;
- translation and dubbing;
- teaching and learning Italian as a second/foreign language;
- nominal address, pronominal address, greetings and combination thereof;
- contrastive, cross-cultural and inter-cultural studies.
The total time allocated to each paper, to be delivered in English, is 30 minutes, with 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions. Please send your expressions of interest to agnese.bresin@unimelb.edu.au by 1 October 2018 and your abstracts by 15 October 2018. Please note that all abstracts must also be submitted separately by the individual contributors by 15 October 2018 via the conference web page. Visit the Call for Papers page for details https://pragmatics.international/general/custom.asp?page=CfP