Nomina2007 - Call for Papers

Les noms propres dans l'oralité
Proper Names in Spoken Language

International Conference
November 22-23, 2007
University of Basle (Switzerland)

Four years after the conference on the social aspects of proper names held in Zurich and organized by the Swiss Association for Applied Linguistics (Vals/Asla), the Institute for French Studies at the University of Basle invites you to participate in the international conference Proper Names in Spoken Language. The conference aims to gather researchers from different horizons to confront their conceptions, approaches and methods. The conference should permit to scientifically assess the uses and functions of proper names in spoken language in order to generate a dynamic research on that topic. Papers based on the analysis of authentic spoken data are therefore particularly welcome.
Despite few sporadic publications, research on proper names in spoken language is not very developed. There is a considerable lack of knowledge about the functions proper names accomplish in social interactions. Moreover, there is no unanimously accepted definition of what a proper name is.
On the one hand, onomastics, with exceptions, adopts an indifferent stance towards orality; and the various linguistic approaches predominantly work with written corpora. On the other hand, research on interaction does not specifically treat the notion of proper names, which is generally absent also from sociolinguistics, a fortiori when it comes to analyzing spoken language.
Moreover, there is only little communication between the different approaches or paradigms, leading to an awkward situation in which publications in one discipline are often unknown to other domains.
However, it seems possible to create links between researchers working with different approaches and with divergent interests with regard to orality. The conference aims to explore the various points of view which allow a linguistic characterization of proper names in orality, the role of context and social variety, as well as the analysis of spoken corpora, resulting in an increased understanding of the way in which proper names are used in interaction.

Aims
Five lines of research will be taken into consideration for the selection of the submissions:
Proper names in spoken language: Linguistic descriptions of proper names in spoken language, in one language or in various languages (contrastive approach), especially within morphosyntax, semantics and prosody.
Sociolinguistics matters: Proper names in monolingual, bilingual and plurilingual situations; proper names and identity; naming conflicts; proper names in intercultural communications.
Pragmatics of proper names: The role of proper names in the organization of interaction; reference, the different possibilities of referring to a discourse object and/or to an extralinguistic object; proper names and multimodality.
Conceptualizing proper names: The theoretical and practical consequences of orality-oriented approaches on the conceptualization and definition of proper names.
Methodological issues: The retrieval of proper names in computational linguistics; problems that the anonymization of proper names causes in discourse analysis and conversation analysis; the resulting methodological and analytical questions; the transfer of proper names from their natural context to the scientific contexts; the treatment of proper names with a view to onomastic publications.

Deadline
Proposals are expected by Mai 15, 2007. Submissions should consist of a brief abstract (maximum 500 words including the title) in word, rtf or pdf formats. A separate document including the authors' first names, last names and e-mail addresses and specifying the line of research chosen for the proposal should be sent together with the abstract. Proposals should be sent as attachments via e-mail to: nomina2007@unibas.ch. You will receive a confirmation e-mail upon your abstract submission. If you do not receive a confirmation, please contact us as soon as possible. Notification of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent to you around June 30, 2007 at the latest.

Languages
Papers will be given in one of the following languages: French, English, German, Italian. 45-minute slots will be available for presentations (30 minutes + 15 minutes discussion).