(ULAB)
Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain (ULAB) April 17-‐18-‐19, 2015 York St John University THIS IS A PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE Organised by: Jack Joyce, Executive Chair Andreea Piciu, Executive Treasurer Tom Rhodes, Executive Vice Chair Daniel Eggleston, Executive Vice Treasurer David Gallardo, Executive Webmaster Amie Fairs, Ordinary member Andrew Merrison, Ordinary member Charlie Burgess, Ordinary member Chloe Langford, Ordinary member Chris Robson, Ordinary member Pippa Shoemark, Ordinary member Sami Huttunen, Ordinary member Sheena Prasad, Ordinary member Chris Robson, Local Co‐Chair Fiona Preston, Local Co‐Chair Jack Joyce, Local Treasurer Natalie Flint, Local Secretary Chloe Langford, Local Vice Chair Grace Mason, Local Vice Treasurer Angie Peters, Local Webmaster Alexander Robertson, Ordinary member Andrew Merrison, Ordinary member Annie Rockett, Ordinary member Arielle Redman, Ordinary member Katy Jones, Ordinary member DG/017 & DG/014 can be found on the ground floor, DG/123, DG/124, DG/125 can be found on the first floor. DG/014 is available throughout each day for delegates to practice their presentation, this room is open to anyone and everyone. DG/123, apart from when it is schedule for the postgraduate panel can be used as an area for delegates to sit down and chill out, away from the conference. This schedule is subject to change. If you have any queries, ask a committee member. They will be wearing a different style ULAB t-shirt to yours. Friday Schedule DG/017 0930-1000 WELCOME and ANNOUNCEMENTS 1000-1100 NO SESSION 1100-1120 Break 1120-1140 Male Aesthetics in Young-Adult Fiction: A Corpus Stylistics Analysis L Barrett COVENTRY UNIVERSITY 1145-1205 Sexuality in Hip-Hop: A Content Analysis of Misogyny in Hip-Hop Number Ones Dan Eggleston YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1205-1225 The Role of Risk Management Discourse as Hegemonic Discourse in the Public Debate on Shale Gas Exploitation: A Critical Discourse Approach Jay Bain UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE 1230-1250 What is the point of the anti-fracking protests?: Framing the debate on shale gas development in the UK media Phillip Norris UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE 1250-1350 Lunch 1350-1500 Dr Derek Bousfield (PLENARY) (TBC) 1505-1525 Has Barack Obama Changed his Language in Later Life?: A Case Study on ing/in Variables and MOUTH Vowel Siqi Liu & Xinyun Lei UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 1530-1550 External Influences on Accent Change in Shetland William Brown UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1555-1615 Accent and Identity on the North York Moors: An Investigation of /t/-glottalling and CURE-lowering in the Esk Valley Myriam Day UNIVERSITY OF YORK 1620-1640 Perception of Phonetic and Isochronic Synchronization in Dubbing: Its Influence on the Artistic Experience Gozalo Iturregui Gallardo UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER The ULAB meet and greet event will take place from 5:30pm-late at York St John Students Union. Friday Schedule DG/124 0930-1000 WELCOME and ANNOUNCEMENTS 1000-1100 Dr Andrew Merrison (WORKSHOP) ARE YOU PLANNING DOING RESEARCH? On the Interconnectedness of Many Things … Including Butterflies, Dragons, Ogres and Giants’ Shoulders 1100-1120 Break 1120-1140 Dr Andrew Merrison: Extended project brainstorm session 1145-1205 NO SESSION 1205-1225 Dr Andrew Merrison: Extended project brainstorm session 1230-1250 Dr Andrew Merrison: Extended project brainstorm session 1250-1350 Lunch 1350-1500 NO SESSION 1505-1525 The Impact of a Home Literacy Environment on Children’s Creative Writing Competence and Literacy Levels Sophie Mafham YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1530-1550 ‘At School the Other Day ...’: The Structure of Child Narratives Thurstan Russell UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM 1555-1615 Getting Back on Track: Power Strategies in University Seminar Interactions Natalie Flint YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1620-1640 The Role of Speech-Accompanying Gestures in Construing Temporal Recognition Alice Power UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM Saturday Schedule DG/017 0915-0930 ANNOUNCEMENTS 0930-1040 Prof. Peter French (PLENARY) 1040-1055 Break 1055-1115 Investigating the Voice of Identical Twins Mari Aigro UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1120-1140 Lifespan Change in /r/-Vocalization and /t/-Flapping: Can imitation trigger lifespan change? Ying Zhou/Yaorui UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 1145-1205 You can take the women out of Merseyside ... Angie Peters UNIVERSITY OF YORK 1210-1230 An investigation into the Lifespan Change of Madonna Ciccone 1984 – 2012 Lisa Perrett & Emma Fieldhouse UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 1230-1310 Lunch 1310-1355 AGM/Voting 1400-1420 What's in a(n Italian) pronoun? Structural deficiency meets morphological feature Valentina Hu University College London 1425-1445 Examining the Distinction between Hard and Soft Presupposition Triggers Eoin Mahon UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1450-1510 The Interface Between Morphology and Syntax in Chinese Compounds Junyan Song BEIJING FOREIGN STUDIES UNIVERSITY 1515-1535 Break 1540-1600 Is there a need for more recognition and attention to be given to comorbidity in assessment and diagnosis?: A longitudinal case study of a child with multiple speech, language and hearing difficulties, exhibiting numerous symptoms of certain neurodevelopmental disorders Fiona Preston YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1605-1625 PEPS-C: a comparison of autistic and L2 prosodic features Sarah Fawcett UNIVERSITY OF YORK 1630-1650 The combinability of derivational suffixes in the mental lexicon: A psycholinguistic study Bartosz Brzoza & Stela Manova ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY in POZNAN 1655-1805 Dr Diane Nelson (PLENARY) The problem with convergence, or whose grammar is it anyway? The evening meal will be held at COSMOS at 8:30pm. At 8pm we will be walking over from the De Grey Building. This is an all-you-can-eat buffet at a very reasonable price, we anticipate for everyone to have a space, you needn’t book a place. Saturday Schedule DG/124 0915-0930 ANNOUNCEMENTS 0930-1040 NO SESSION 1040-1055 Break 1055-1115 An Exploration on the Influence of the Chinese Education System on the Learning Style Preferences of Chinese EFL Learners Jessica White YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1120-1140 The Meaning and Function of Utterance-final Japanese Discourse Particle ‘Ne’ Shao Ting Hoong UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 1145-1205 The Effect of Linguistic Immersion on Processing Collocations in a Second Language: An Eye Tracking Study Eve Groake LANCASTER UNVIERSITY 1210-1230 A Psycholinguistic Study of Lexical and Syntactic Representation in Speakers of Trinidadian Creole and Trinidadian Standard English Aara Cleghorn UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1230-1310 Lunch 1310-1355 AGM/Voting 1400-1420 NO SESSION 1425-1445 NO SESSION 1450-1510 NO SESSION 1515-1535 Break 1540-1600 Social Mobility, Geographical Relocation and Linguistic Change across Lifespan Wen Cai UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 1605-1625 Meme Culture: A Study of Memes and How they Help to Establish Identity within Communities of Practice on Tumblr Hannah Purnell YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1630-1650 A Solution to the Problem of Identifying Historical Spelling Variants in Texts Alexander Robertson UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1655-1805 NO SESSION Saturday Schedule DG/125 0915-0930 ANNOUNCEMENTS 0930-1040 NO SESSION 1040-1055 Break 1055-1115 The Role of the Anterior Temporal Lobe in Sentence Comprehension. Niki Drossinos Sancho UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 1120-1140 Neuter, not Neutral Max Dunn UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1145-1205 Bulgarian Voice Onset Time: At Home and Abroad Maria Dokovova UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1210-1230 Spoken-Word Recognition of Problematic L2 Vowel Contrasts: An Eye-Tracking Study Bartosz Brzoza & Agnieszka Lijewska ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY in POZNAN 1230-1310 Lunch 1310-1355 AGM/Voting 1400-1420 Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Language Policies: An Investigation into Sámi Language Rights Simone Peschek UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1425-1445 Norwegian Nynorsk: From Politics to Pedagogy James Konrad Puchowski UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1450-1510 The Prosody of Pre-modified NPs in Information Structural Focus Domains in Danish Chris Cox UNIVERSITY OF YORK 1515-1535 Break 1540-1600 Teaching Academic Writing in Iranian EFL Classrooms: Teacher-initiated Comments or Peer-provided Feedback Fatameh Gholizadeh TAHA UNIVERSITY 1605-1625 Embodiment Effects and L2 learning: Whether Embodiment Effects can be Enhanced by Method of Teaching. Jessica Dealey UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1630-1650 Och, awa’ wi’ you: British Workin’ Class Pronunciation Spelled ‘n’ Translated into Polish Jerzy Skwarz MARIA CURIE-SKLODOWSKA UNIVERSITY 1655-1805 NO SESSION Saturday Schedule DG/123 0915-0930 ANNOUNCEMENTS 0930-1040 NO SESSION 1040-1055 Break 1055-1115 NO SESSION 1120-1230 DOING POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH, A PANEL Jack Wilson Hazel Price Chloe Langford Tom Rhodes Dr Andrew Merrison Dr Rachel Wicaksono Dr Diane Nelson 1230-1310 Lunch 1310-1355 NO SESSION 1400-1420 NO SESSION 1425-1445 NO SESSION 1450-1510 NO SESSION 1515-1535 Break 1540-1600 NO SESSION 1605-1625 NO SESSION 1630-1650 NO SESSION 1655-1805 NO SESSION Sunday Schedule DG/017 1130-1200 ANNOUNCEMENTS 1200-1220 Free Pizza: A Sociolinguistic Investigation into the Achieved Audience Design Through Comments Made on a Customer Driven, Public Forum by an Anonymous Community of Practice Ben Edwards YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1225-1245 And I’m like, ‘who even uses be like?’: A Study into the Production and Perception of Quotative BE LIKE in Hull, UK Sally Finn YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1250-1310 Language Ideological Debates and the Role of Language as a Marker of National Identity in Luxembourg Sarah Muller UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 1315-1335 A Partial Sketch of Membership Categorisation Devices in Initial Interactions Jack Joyce YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1340-1400 Break 1440-1500 Is Peter Svenonius’ Syntactic Account of Adjective Order Satisfactory? Christopher Bacon UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1505-1525 “Send it me later”: Investigating Geographical Variation in the Use and Acceptability of the THEME-GOAL Ditransitive Jonathan Stevenson UNIVERSITY OF YORK 1530-1550 Unaccusative Verbs in the Icelandic New Construction: The Grammaticality Judgement Task in Practice Sandy Rushton UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1555-1615 Can there be a Science of Grammaticalized Thought? Anna Wallace UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM 1620-1730 Prof. Paul Drew (PLENARY) What went wrong? Two case studies of communication breakdowns in conversation 1730-1740 Break 1740-1840 AGM Part 2 The Sunday evening meal will occur at Mamma Mia’s, this is reservation only. You must book a place if you would like to attend. Sunday Schedule DG/124 1130-1200 ANNOUNCEMENTS 1200-1220 Emotional Appeals in Advertising and Humanitarian Campaigns: A Critical Approach Lewis Hallet UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE 1225-1245 From Invisibility to Marginalisation: A Comparison of LGBTQ Representations in Sex and Relationship Education Materials in Finland and England Ilona Suviranta UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1250-1310 „Is this even a word?“: Variation, Linguistic Insecurity and Language Attitudes Eleonore Schmitt UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON / UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG 1315-1335 When You Play the Game of Thrones, You Either Win or You’re ‘A Dumb Bitch’: Discussing Gender Expectations in an Online Community of Practice Andreea Piciui UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 1340-1400 Break 1440-1500 Face-Work in an Online Forum Beth Griffiths YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1505-1525 Onomasiology as a Sociolinguistic Variable Rhys Sandow UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX 1530-1550 Language is Used for Doing Things: An Investigation of MIGHT Benefits in Interaction Chris Robson YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1555-1615 Value in Interaction: Interactional (In)equitability Jack Joyce YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY 1620-1730 NO SESSION 1730-1740 Break 1740-1840 NO SESSION Posters: Annabel Dahne Can Captioners Achieve Formal and Functional Equivalence when Translating the Programme Audio of Breaking Bad into Closed Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing? Joseph Williams Autism and Language: Wider implications of synaptic transmission failures between brain regions Katie Wadeson Facebook: a Platform for Language Change? Valeriya Shilova The interdependence of the inclination to depression in primary school children with EEG indices in resting conditions and during the examination of speech-motion tasks FRIDAY ABSTRACTS L Barrett Coventry University Male Aesthetics in Young-Adult Fiction: A Corpus Stylistics Analysis This paper studies the concept of ‘male beauty’ in ‘Twilight’ (Meyer 2005; 2007) through a corpus stylistics analysis. The objective is to explore how the I-narrator, Bella Swan, depicts the male main character, Edward Cullen by analysing the lexico-semantic choices associated with him. The lexical analysis tools AntConc (Lawrence 2014) and W-matrix (Rayson 2011) will be used to identify the relevant data using quantitative and qualitative methods. In the first stage, the tools wordlist, concordances and collocates will be used to find the most frequent word-forms whist exploring them in context. The second stage involves a keyness contrastive analysis (Scott and Tribble 2006). The keywords in the main corpus ‘Twilight’ (Meyer 2005; 2007) will be identified through an intertextual comparison of the lead male characters in the reference corpus made up of two other paranormal young-adult novels: ‘Fallen’ (Kate 2009) and ‘Vampire Academy’ (Mead 2010). Overall, the use of corpus linguistic tools can aid in uncovering vast and concrete examples of repetition and linguistic patterns, which can in turn reveal whether the language used to describe males in paranormal young-adult fiction reinforce, challenge or jettison with traditional Western aesthetics altogether. Keywords: Twilight, corpus stylistics, Vampire Academy, KWIC, collocates, concordances, frequency, keyness, Fallen. REFERENCES Brown, C. (2009) Feminism and the vampire novel [online] available from< http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2009/09/feminism_and_th> [24 March 2015] Hayes-Smith, R. (2011) Gender norms in the Twilight Saga [online] available from< http://www.academia.edu/642302/Gender_Norms_in_the_Twilight_Series> [26 March 2015] Summers, S. (2010) ‘Twilight is so anti-feminist that I want to cry: Twilight fans finding and defining feminism on the World Wide Web’ Computers and Composition. [online] 27 (4) 315323. available from< http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461510000800> [26 March 2015] Yamosh, E. (2009) ‘Twilight Pushes the Harmful Gender Stereotypes we’ve fought for Decades’ Alternet [online] 7 July. available from < http://www.alternet.org/story/141135/%22twilight%22_pushes_the_harmful_gender_stereoty pes_we've_fought_for_decades> [26 March 2015] Bidisha. (2010) ‘Twilight’s feminist backlash’ The Guardian [online] 15 July. available from < http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/twilight-feminist-backlash-bella> [26 March 2015] Scott, M. R. & Tribble C. (2006) Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 55-56 Whitehead, S. (2002) Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions. London: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 181 Mead, R. (2007) The Vampire Academy. New York: Razorbill Kate, L. (2009) Fallen. New York: Delacorte Books Meyer, S. (2007) Twilight. London: Atom Books Dan Eggleston York St John University Sexuality in Hip-Hop: A Content Analysis of Misogyny in Hip-Hop Number Ones From humble beginnings on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s the culture known as hip-hop has exploded into what it is today, a pop culture phenomenon with a less than stellar reputation. Although it is now seen as a major genre of music and its timeline spans over more than four decades it is still connected with the same buzzwords of negativity; homophobia, sexism and misogyny. The stigma of misogyny has been widely promoted by the media even though linguistic research has proven that although misogyny is present in hip-hop music it is by no means as prominent as the reports suggest. This study attempts to answer the question of whether the stigma attached to hip-hop is based on fact or fiction through the analysis of hip-hop number ones. In 1989 the US Billboard charts initiated a chart solely for hip-hop. The number ones are based on sales and it is these songs that are (at least for one week) the most popular songs in US hip-hop and so any misogynistic message will be transmitted to the largest audience possible. In total 307 songs have been number one between the years 1989-2013. This study discounts 30 of these songs due to appearing more than once, not appearing in the lyrics sourcing website and for having non-English lyrics respectively. This leaves a data sample of 277 hip-hop songs. To assess whether a song contained misogyny every lyric of every song had to be analysed. Utilising a framework used in previous misogyny in hip-hop studies by Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) the misogynistic lyrics are placed into five categories: derogatory naming and shaming of women, sexual objectification of women, distrust of women, legitimation of violence against women and celebration of prostitution and pimping. As well as these five categories there is discussion on the female voice in hip-hop and an analysis of their attempts to combat the misogyny they face as well as attempting to find a correlation between the popularity of the song and the amount of weeks they were number one. This is the first study to attempt to find a connection between popularity and misogyny use. The analysis of the data set aims to explore the use of misogyny within a genre that has an ever increasing popularity and to provide evidence in an attempt to prove or disprove the stigma attached to it. Jay Bain University of Central Lancashire The Role of Risk Management Discourse as Hegemonic Discourse in the Public Debate on Shale Gas Exploitation. A Critical Discourse Approach Fracking has stirred public debate as an alternative energy resource. Hydraulic fracturing is haunted by Risks in relation to Public-Health and indeed the Environment. Issues surrounding the Fracturing process are regulation, economic gain, environmental-output, pollution production/reduction), community impact and national energy security. The coalition promotes; the gains of energy security; Fracking as a bridging prospect into more sustainable energy sources; job creation; economic stability and national independency. The Coalition’s stance is that precautionary regulation diminishes risk; they employ discourse to negate public arguments and attempt to facilitate the acceptance of Fracking. Whilst suggesting that Fracking Risks are acceptable under stringent regulation, 'The Royal Society Commission' report, calls for research into social acceptability of all Risks relating to the UKs climate, economic and energy policy. Resilient arguments raise numerous Risks which focus upon loss rather than gain. These factors are embroiled within contentions of regulation and riskmanagement. Yet it is the Risks selected by the dominant power which are up for discussion using societal position as a platform to legitimate Risk over those of opponents. The Fracking debate has initiated hegemonic resistance and social mobilization, thus creating an environment for discoursal-Risk management to thrive. These communication strategies have the potential to mitigate values and thus policy/risk acceptability within society. Taking precautionary Risk management frameworks, this text will build upon Risk models that incorporate value mediation and identify Risks which hold acceptability in argumentation processes which endorse or legitimate goals and values. The mitigation/maintenance of societal values creates boundaries of response and resilience thereby distorting public understanding and sustaining hegemony; yet just how democratic is it to control the parameters of response and resilience? The strategic mediation of Risk is available as a democratic tool to suppress human values in favour of economic and corporate political agendas through the use of conductive- strategies. The argument will be made that Risk communication is used for societal cohesion as opposed to honest societal advancement. Insidious adoption of Risk management discourse has the potential to ensure neutralization and/or diversion of any objection. The acceptability of a Risk through dilution/reduction of value response can render a schema where no risk is unacceptable and a given proposal cannot be refuted. This is a process of mediating social mobilization, societal opinion and socio-economic output under the guise of earnest engagement, as opposed to a malevolent affront to the environment and public-health – subsidising free-will with political input. Philip Norris University of Central Lancashire What is the point of the anti-fracking protests? Framing the debate on shale gas development in the UK media This paper investigates the controversial mining technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Fracking is debated and contested, with many proponents and opponents competing for their own conceptualization of the issue to become the dominant ideological perspective. Supporters argue that fracking will bring economic benefits, ensure fuel independence, create economical wealth. Opponents contest these claims, on the basis of high risks of negative environmental impacts, including the dangers of water contamination, air pollution and implications for public health. Following various legislative initiatives by the government, intended to facilitate shale gas exploitation, mass protests have occurred within the UK since 2012. This paper attempts to investigate the various ways in which anti-fracking protests have been framed within the media. On the one hand, protesters have seen protests as the only legitimate form of action within the circumstances, due to other democratic processes being exhausted. On the other hand, the profracking side have framed these protests as criminal action. This paper will employ an argumentative approach to framing which aims to demonstrate how the framing of an issue within the media supports particular arguments for action in view of specific desired outcomes. It draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1992, Fairclough & Fairclough 2012) to show how the public debate over fracking has evolved and how it is being shaped by broader power relations in the current UK context. Three corpora of media data were collected and a quantitative and qualitative analysis was undertaken. The different ways in which the protests have been ‘framed’ enter into different arguments for action, in favour or against fracking. Protesters define their actions in terms of ‘civil disobedience’, ‘peaceful protests’, and ‘legal direct action’, which is said to be required due to a ‘democratic deficit’ in the UK. Fracking supporters define the protests as a form of ‘illegal’, ‘criminal’ action. Appeals to legality are also used by opponents to argue that fracking would contravene Britain’s binding legal commitments relating to climate change, as well as violating basic rights. The use of the legal frame to justify or criticize the actions of both sides is a thought-provoking argumentative strategy which this paper aims to explore further. Siqi Liu & Xinyun Lei University of Manchester Has Barack Obama Changed his Language in Later Life: a Case Study on ing/in Variables and MOUTH Vowel？ This study explores whether individual speakers could change their language on phonological level across their lifespan by conducting a longitudinal research on U.S. president Barack Obama at three time points in his middle years, 1995, 2008 and 2014 respectively. Two phonological variations, ing/in variables and front /aw/ vowel, were taken into consideration. Our data collected from three formal TV interviews on Youtube with Barack Obama and they were re-recorded by Audacity. We chose the beginning 14-17 minutes as our samples from each interview. Later, the samples were transcribed by the researchers using Elan. The ing/in variables appearing at the word-final position were coded by Praat and the F1 and F2 of /aw/ vowel were calculated by FAVEextract. By conducting Multivariate Analysis and Fish Exact Test, results revealed that Obama’s /aw/ vowel showed an increasingly lowering from 1995 to 2014 and dramatically fronting it from 1995 to 2008, which could be explained by his geographic mobility from Northern region of USA to Middle land of USA with latter favouring fronting /aw/ vowel as well as his rise in social status. Yet, from 2008 to 2014, a slightly back was found that could be explained by accommodation of Obama’s speech. However, as for stable ing/in variables, no statistical significance between age and the ing/in variable was found, while in 2008 and 2014, it was found that the rate of ing variant in gerunds surpassed that in nouns, which differs from numerous previous finding that nouns were more generally used with the ing variant and verbs favour the in variant. Still, lacking of data from informal speech, whether Obama changes the stable variables needs further investigation. To conclude, these patterns indicate the possibilities of individuals change their language across lifespan, and several motivating factors, such as geographical and social class mobility, style of speech, and accommodation, tend to affect the courses of the change. William Brown University of Aberdeen External Influences on Accent Change in Shetland Use of the Shetland dialect is in rapid decline. While older speakers cling on to traditional dialect forms, most younger speakers are moving away from this local heritage variety, adopting in its place a hybrid variety of Shetland and Standard Scottish English. The vast literature on language use in the Islands currently supports this observation and thus far has primarily dealt with only lexical or syntactic variation so that while some analyses of the Shetland phonological inventory exist no serious contemporary material has been published on accent change which may be accompanying this dialect change. I aim to illustrate that such change is indeed occurring by examining unique phonological features of Shetlanders, such as vowel mutation, mergers and /l/-opposition, in an apparent time study across two age groups. My prediction is that dialect-levelling does indeed occur at the phonological level and that the traditional Shetland accent, like the dialect, has adopted non-local, specifically SSE forms. I will also look at how frequently the accent is shifting with the dialect, how this particular case study relates to wider research on the topic and whether it is helpful in explaining other language variation, both historical and contemporary. Myriam Day University of York Accent and Identity on the North York Moors: An Investigation of /t/-glottalling and CURElowering in the Esk Valley The main research question for this study was to investigate whether changes appear to be taking place in the realisations of two linguistic variables on the North York Moors: the /t/ variable, which can be realised as a plosive, a glottal stop or as a glottal reinforcement, and whether words such as poor and moor are realised with the CURE diphthong, /ʊə/, or the THOUGHT monophthong, /ɔː/. The traditional variants for North York Moors residents are firstly, the fully realised [t] and secondly, the diphthong /ʊə/. The aim of my investigation was to find out whether these variables were undergoing change across apparent time and whether changes could be correlated with shifts in identity. Therefore, I conducted a small study with sociolinguistic interviews with eight participants, four older (50 years and over) and four younger (18 – 26 years), who had all grown up in the Moors area. The interviews involved casual conversation to acquire attitudinal data, followed by a reading passage and a word list to elicit tokens of the words in different stylistic contexts. Statistical analyses were carried out on the data and the findings were that significant differences are taking place in the realisation of /t/: the glottal stop is preferred by younger speakers. For the second variable, /ʊə/ is largely preferred by both age groups, but younger groups show an increase in /ɔː/ in the most formal context. However, the token sample was much smaller for this variable and there could be a lexical effect: unfortunately the study was not large enough for me to investigate this in depth. In terms of the attitudinal data, the qualitative data indicate that there is a division between the identity of place and the linguistic identity of younger speakers: they identify strongly as coming from Yorkshire but their definitions of their accent are split between Yorkshire and the North-east. It could be posited that the division is a result of the increased geographic and social mobility of the younger generation. The study poses interesting results in terms of the correlation between accent and identity, but also the relationship between geographic place and linguistic space. It must be acknowledged that the study has limitations and generalisations cannot be made due to my small sample size: it was a small undergraduate project and it was my first experience of conducting fieldwork. However, the study has generated further research questions which I hope to investigate in detail with postgraduate study. Gonzalo Iturregui Gallardo University of Leicester Perception of Phonetic and Isochronic Synchronization in Dubbing: its Influence on the Artistic Experience Theoretical framework: the McGurk-MacDonald effect presents the perception of speech as a duality which is separately perceived by the cognitive system. This study focuses on the analysis of the perception of the two stimuli which compose any piece of speech: audio and visual. The interlinguistic dubbing technique combines two stimuli of different linguistic origin. This “imperfect” art presents dyschronies in the matching, which are differently perceived by the viewers. The standards of phonetic synchronisation in dubbing have been previously discussed. The work of I. Fodor stands as one of the most exhaustive proposals of the visually phonetic equivalence between. Some studies suggest that neither age nor previous experience interfere in the identification of mismatches. Hypothesis: The Spanish audience, greatly influenced by English dubbed materials, may perceive dubbing into other languages differently. This study centres on English and French, which are compared to Spanish taking into account their phonetic and prosodic characteristics applied to dubbing requirements. Methods: the experiment, performed within subjects of a Spanish audience, consisted on the visualisation of close-up scenes of both English and French films dubbed into Spanish and the completion of a questionnaire dealing with synchronisation quality. Results: the results showed that Spanish viewers develop a great acceptance of dyschronies in dubbing and recognise English articulatory features as more natural, even though Spanish and French languages have by nature more resemblance. Discussion: the study shows the perceptual behaviour of the Spanish audience: little dyschrony is perceived and English lip-movement looks more natural. Fodor’s theories could be considered as exaggerated as the limits of phonetic perception clearly allow a certain level of dyschrony. However, individual linguistic and audio-visual background factors influence the perception of synchrony in dubbing. Conclusions: research on the perception of audio-visual stimuli has little empirical background. Previous studies focused on the perception of both stimuli in neurolinguistic tests, but these were not applied to real dubbed films. These studies did not prove that age or experience could represent a decisive factor in the audio-visual stimuli perception. In spite of its limited extent, the study suggests new lines of research, such as investigating (a) with the combination of other languages or (b) with a more scientific approach, entailing disciplines such as neurolinguistics. Sophie Mafham York St John University The Impact of a Home Literacy Environment on Children's Creative Writing Competence and Literacy Levels. This presentation will look at how a home literacy environment (whether it be positive or negative) can influence a child's creative writing skills and their literacy levels achieved at school. The participants involved in this study are six to seven year old children in a school environment, where they will asked to produce a short story. The researcher will also have insight from the teacher of each child's current literacy level. A questionnaire will be sent home to parents to access their home literacy environment. From this data, it should be possible to see any links between a 'positive' home literacy environment, competence in creative writing tasks and average/above average attainment in their literacy lessons. Based on research for my dissertation, this presentation will focus on the pilot study conducted for the dissertation. Issues regarding the main data collection for this dissertation will be discussed along with how the dissertation is progressing. This work hopes to create an awareness of the importance of literacy in the home environment and how what affect it has on a child's initial steps in education. Thurstan Russell University of Birmingham ‘At School the Other Day...’: The Structure of Child Narratives The art of conversation is crucial to successful social interaction and an important part of conversation is the act of storytelling. Previous research has identified obligatory stages in the structures of storytelling that must be adhered to during conversation, enabling people to recount their experiences to others in a clear and concise manner. This paper looks at the storytelling of different ages of children and examines whether they have acquired and correctly used the stages considered obligatory in adult narratives. Identifying the level of development of storytelling at different stages of childhood could benefit pedagogical approaches to primary and secondary school teaching. The research involved recording three children of eight, ten and twelve years old, each telling a story. The transcripts were analysed and the structural stages of these stories were compared against a story told by an adult. The aim of the analysis was to examine whether the children had acquired the same coherent skills of storytelling as the adult, or whether a separate, scaled sub-genre of child narrative needs to be defined. Analysis of the transcriptions showed that all three children had used all stages of storytelling identified by previous research as obligatory. The eight-year-old child’s recount of events was less padded than the adult’s but was still structurally sound, while the ten-year-old child’s narrative was structurally very similar to the adult’s. Interestingly, the anecdote told by the twelve-year-old appeared to be the least coherent as, although the obligatory stages were present, high level use of evaluation and the pragmatic marker ‘like’ distracted from the clarity of the story. This specialised style of language, which can also begin to be seen in the ten-year-old child’s narrative, suggests the possible need to define a separate adolescent discourse community. However, no evidence was found from the analysis of the transcriptions to suggest that the development of storytelling skills in children is underdeveloped or requires changes in pedagogical practices. Keywords: child narrative, storytelling, recount, anecdote, stages, structure Fatemeh Gholizadeh Taha University Teaching Academic Writing in Iranian EFL Classrooms: Teacher-initiated Comments or Peer-provided Feedback This research study aimed at investigating whether using peer-provided feedbacks rather than teacher-provided comments would result in any significance difference in Iranian English undergraduate students’ ability in writing. In so doing, based on a pretest (an OPT and a writing exam), 50 subjects were assigned to two homogeneous groups of equal number; the subjects in the control group received more traditional form of feedback; i.e., Teacher’s Written Comments (TW) and those in the experimental group who received the alternative: Peers’ Written Comments (PW). The students were required to write ten paragraphs, five pairs, on each topic, one before receiving feedback and another, the revised version, after the feedback. The analyses of the data revealed that peer feedback--in its general sense--affects students’ writing performances, which in turn means that the students do incorporate suggestions made by their teacher and/or peers while revising their drafts. In sum, Peer-reviews in the form of comments and suggestions given by the students on one another’s drafts proved beneficial. Natalie Flint York St John University Getting back on track: Power strategies in classroom interactions This paper explores the use of ‘power strategies’ within undergraduate university seminar discussions. The particular focus is on the power strategies of topic management with the goal of “getting back on track”. Tannen’s (2009) linguistic strategies for the expression of dominance and power create a framework for this analysis. Such strategies include; INDIRECTNESS, INTERRUPTION, SILENCE and ADVERSATIVENESS (conflict and verbal aggression). This interactional sociolinguistic project uses applied conversation analysis is order to analyse and draw conclusions on the use of power strategies in classroom situations. Taking the view that conversation is a joint activity used to achieve goals (Clark, 1996), and that in institutional settings one participant (typically with an institution relevant identity) initiates the dominant goal and other participants join (Clark, 1996; Drew and Heritage, 2006). The study will therefore focus on not only the strategies available, but also which strategies are employed by which people dependent on their institutional relevant identities. Based on this research and previous work (Clark, 1996; Drew and Heritage, 2006; Tannen, 2009) this paper aims to demonstrate that an individual’s institutional relevant identity and their ‘place’ in the hierarchy of the class’ community of practice (Davies, 2005) affects the choice in power strategy chosen by the participant. SATURDAY ABSTRACTS Mari Aigro University of Aberdeen Although the idiosyncracy of human voice has been debated for a long while it is still unclear what determines the sound of one’s voice. It is normally agreed that the size and shape of the vocal tract and vocal folds is genetically determined. It is not agreed, however, to which extent this affects the acoustic features of one’s voice and how important is the role of one’s linguistic environment. Studying the voice of monozygotic twins (MZ) twins allows us to control the genetic aspect in order to test the environmental aspects. Except for undetectable micromutations, MZ twins have identical DNA (Jain, Prabhakar, Pankanti 2002) and – importantly to the current study – identical vocal tracts. This means that whichever features in a person’s voice are predetermined by genes, MZ twins share them between themselves. Whichever differences the twin voices exhibit, these features must be caused by environmental factors. Various studies have found that MZ twin voices are hard to distinguish from one another (Sebastian et al, 2013). However, most agree that there may be a few realisational differences. Nolan and Oh (1996) reported that MZ twins had different /l/ and /r/ realisations, some pairs differing by F1 and F2, some by F3 and F4. Some have found one twin constantly fronting vowels more than her sibling (Loakes 2006), others that MZ twins living together are much more similar in their Voice Onset Time than MZ twins living apart (Ryalls et al, 2004). Many agree that the fundamental frequency is very similar in MZ twins (Sebastian et al, 2004; Przybyla et al, 1992). To the best of this author’s knowledge there have been no studies focussing on bilingual MZ twins to find out whether the realisational differences might vary across languages. This study aims to acoustically differentiate between MZ twin voices in order to see if any acoustic features are more affected by the linguistic environment. It presents data from two female MZ twin pairs, one of which speaks Scots and the other one is bilingual in English and Italian. It compares the formants F1, F2 and F3 of five cardinal vowels as well as their fundamental frequency. It assumes that twins may exhibit differences in their vowel realisations but that they will mainly show in F3. Finally it will show that F3 is indeed the least identical formant but that F2 can differ as well, depending on the actual vowel allophones. The realisational differences of twins’ vowels are both personal and language based, depending on the possible allophones of that particular language. The Scots speaking pair differed more in high vowels, the bilingual pair differed in some vowels in English and other ones in Italian. References: Jain, A. Prabhakar, S. Pankanti, S. (2002). On the Similarity of Identical Twin Fingerprints. Pattern Recognitio, 35, pp 2653-2663. Loakes, D. (2008). A Forensic Phonetic Investigation Into the Speech Patterns of Identical and Non-Identical Twins. The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, vol 15.1, pp 97-100. Nolan, F. Oh, T. (1996). Identical Twins, Different Voices. Forensic Linguistics, 3 (1), pp 39-49. Przybyla, B. Horii, Y. Crawford, M. (1992). Vocal Fundamental Frequency in a Twin Sample: Looking for a Genetic Effect. Journal of Voice, 6 (3), pp 261-266. Ryalls, J. Shaw, H. Simon, M. (2004). Voice Onset Time Production in Older and Younger Female Monozygotic Twins. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 56, pp 165-169. Sebastian, S. Benadict, A. Sunny, G. Balraj, A. (2013). An Investigation Into the Voice of Identical Twins. Otolaryngology Online Journal, 3 (2). Chen, Yaorui and Zhou, Ying University of Manchester Lifespan Change in /r/-Vocalization and /t/-Flapping: Can imitation trigger lifespan change? Quite a few studies (e.g. Raumolin-Brunberg (2005), Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) and among others) clearly indicate that it is possible for individuals to change their language usages in adulthood. However, this change is not compatible with imitation, which is largely a result of short-time accommodation. (Babel, 2011) In this study, we aims to examine whether imitation would trigger lifespan change in language use. Hugh Laurie, a British actor who is famous for his imitation of American accent in the American TV shows House, was selected as our subject. Two linguistic variables were under studied: /r/-vocalization and /t/-flapping. We used a longitudinal approach to observe two phases in Laurie’s life: (1) the period before he went to America (British TV comedy, 1989-1995); (2) the period after he filmed House (four interviews, 2008-2014). We also collected data from one episode of the TV show House, so that we were able to see the “language input” that Laurie had when he was in US. Our first hypothesis was that due to Laurie’s imitation of American accents, he would have an increase of usage of American features (non-vocalised /r/ and flapped /t/) in the second phase compared to the first one. In addition, since two interviews from phase (2) was conducted in UK and the other two in US, we were able to test our second hypothesis that Laurie was more likely to identify himself as British in American interviews and therefore retained more of his British accent. All utterances by Hugh Laurie from online YouTube videos were recorded and transcribed in ELAN (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/) for coding variables manually in Praat (http://www.fon.hum.uva.al/praat/). In actual speech, some realizations of /r/ and /t/ were ambiguous or influenced by linguistic environment and needed be treated carefully. In total, we had collected 747 tokens for /r/-vocalization and 132 for /t/-flapping. Our data showed that Hugh Laurie was very good at imitating non-vocalized /r/ and flapped /t/ in American English while still preserved most of his British accent. However, he still experienced slight but significant change in the usage of /r/-vocalisation and /t/-flapping before and after he filmed House. We attributed this lifespan change to his imitation of American accents. However, we failed to support the second hypothesis that identity affected Laurie’s way of speaking. He was not just accommodating to the surrounding dialect. Angie Peters University of York You can take the women out of Merseyside.... It has been acknowledged that when people move from one area to another some of these people lose their original accent and begin to speak in the same manner as people brought up in the area that they have moved to. However, these changes are not uniform - some people retain more of their original dialect while others acquire the local dialect to the extent that they are almost indistinguishable from native speakers. This study focuses on three adults who have moved away from the area of their birth and attempts to ascertain to what extent they have retained their original accent. It also addresses the influences of their social networks on their acquisition of a new dialect. The hypothesis is that the multi-dialectal makeup of the loose networks that holiday camp workers are exposed to on a daily basis throughout the holiday season inhibit the acquisition of a new ‘local’ dialect, leaving their original accent largely intact. The presentation details the methods used in the study and highlights some of the previous research in this area. The most relevant situation relevant to this proposed study is described by Auer as one in which the standard variety is constant, but the immigrants commonly use a regional variety or dialect which differs from that in the new area, he goes on to explain that the immigrants may ‘give up’ features of their original dialect in favour of a more standard variety, or to a greater or lesser extent they may acquire features of the new dialect. Auer distinguishes between acquisition of the new variety (positive accommodation) and the loss of the original dialect (negative accommodation). He also mentions indirect accommodation - increasing use of the neutral standard form at the expense of the regional forms. According to Auer, accommodation may be influenced by external factors such as social network ties, and internal factors such as the salience of specific features. The question of the role of social networks is the focus of Evans (2004) whose study of Appalachian migrants in Michigan hypothesises that a tight social network can inhibit accommodation to the local norm. Liverpool English or Scouse, is one of the most “negatively stereotyped” accents in Britain. This could lead to the expectation that migrants from the area would readily lose their accent and acquire the accent of their host community but evidence from this study shows this not to be the case. Lisa Perrett and Emma Fieldhouse University of Manchester An investigation into the Lifespan Change of Madonna Ciccone 1984 – 2012 Does Madonna show linguistic changes due to geographical relocation and social mobility over the course of her rather unorthodox adult life? The aim of this project was to further existing research in the field of sociolinguistics and to ascertain whether an adult can acquire new linguistic variants after the critical period. Our research paper focuses on Madonna’s use of t-glottalling vs t-flapping, rhoticity and British broad /a/ split. We chose to study these variables due to their salience and prominence in either British English (BrE) or General American English (GenAm) and predicted that we would find significant changes due to Madonna’s social and geographical mobility. In order to obtain a data set we used sophisticated software which allowed us to convert YouTube videos into audio files and then obtain specific phonological information. We sampled a total of four interviews, two from the 1980s and two from the 2010s, taking extra care to select those in similar environments i.e. a one-to-one interview with no studio audience. Both interviews from 1984 and 1987 were conducted with American interviewers, as was that of 2012, however, the interviewer in 2011 was English and therefore allowed us to explore the notion of accommodation theory. This comparison yielded interesting results which led us to conclude that Madonna in fact increased her rates of t-glottalling and decreased her rates of r-vocalisation over time – the first contrary to our expectations and the latter in line with them. We also discovered that although she already used the broad /a/ phoneme, she didn’t use it in the same environments in which BrE speakers do, instead she continued to employ the phoneme as in GenAm. Although Madonna did not always show changes in the ways which we had predicted, she has nonetheless showed changes and therefore proved that it is in fact possible for an adult to display linguistic change after the critical period; the result that we had been hoping for. Jessica White York St John University AN EXPLORATION ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHINESE EDUCATION SYSTEM ON THE LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES OF CHINESE EFL LEARNERS. This paper is an exploration of the ways in which previous educational experience and the learners’ personality affects the Learning Style preferences of Chinese EFL learners. It explores the influence of changing the learner’s environment on their preferences and what other factors affect their learning. This was investigated using a two-stage qualitative study, firstly by interviewing three Chinese students studying at a university in England to gather data about their education experience in both China and England, their experience of English Language learning, including their strengths and weaknesses and asking them to predict their preferred Learning Styles. The students then completed then completed the Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (Reid, 1984) and the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1989), to confirm or challenge their predictions. These interviews and questionnaires showed similarities between the participants’ educational experience and their major and minor learning preferences, suggesting that our educational experience and response to our learning environment does influence the way we learn. The findings of this study showed similarities to the findings of Xie’s (2009) research into relationships between students and teachers in Chinese schools and the impact of this on students Learning Style preferences. The project then developed into a case study of one of the participant’s learning exploring the similarities and differences between how they believed they preferred to learn and how they preferred to learn in practice, the factors they deemed most important in their EFL learning and how studying in England had given them the opportunity to explore and use a wider range of Learning Styles and Strategies than they were exposed to in China. Overall the findings of this project suggest that the Chinese education system is one of an autonomous nature, where students are likely to have had similar educational experiences and developed similar Learning Style preferences as they have not been given the opportunity to explore alternative ways of learning. It is argued that even in a different learning environment they are likely to still be driven by success and achievement, and that is beneficial to make both students and teachers aware of different Learning Styles and adapt lessons to suit students Learning Styles. References: Reid, J (1984) Explanation of learning styles adapted from the Learning Styles Instrument, Murdoch Teacher Centre, Kansas Oxford, R (1989) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, ESL/EFL Shao Ting Hoong University College London The Meaning and Function of Utterance-final Japanese Discourse Particle 'Ne' Discourse particles (e.g. ‘well’ and ‘man’ in English) are common throughout the world’s spoken languages but never seem to be given the attention they deserve enough. Japanese speakers employ a host of particles in their speech, but if you were to ask a native, he would probably be unable to explain the precise meanings/functions of these particles. I, as a L2 speaker of Japanese, found myself struggling with the use of those particles when I first discovered their existence. This project seeks to provide an account of one of the most commonly used utterancefinal Japanese discourse particles, 'ne', through a review of previous studies and analysis of various examples. A simplified version of Davis’s (2009) analysis on another Japanese particle, 'yo', is adapted and applied to 'ne' to detail its meaning/function in terms of the conversational common ground and presuppositions imposed by the use of the particle. The findings suggest that 'ne', in fact, serves a very simple function that has been taken for granted in Japanese speech. The relationship (or absence of one) between 'ne' and intonation was also investigated as previous studies had suggested interactions between intonation and meaning/function of Japanese discourse particles including 'ne'. Understanding discourse particles like 'ne' is theoretically significant as they reveal ways in which natural language discourse is structured. The formal account of the particle suggests why 'ne' cannot be used in certain circumstances, why it is necessitated it other circumstances, and the difference in nuances its usage produces in general. This can possibly make a difference to learners of the language, especially second language learners like myself, whom otherwise have to figure out by themselves how to use the particles that are not explicitly taught in the classroom. Eve Groarke Lancaster University The Effect of Linguistic Immersion on Processing Collocations in a Second Language: An Eye Tracking Study This presentation will first outline the nature of collocations (frequent multi-word constructions such as “cup of tea”), arguing that they are stored holistically in the mental lexicon due to their frequency in language. Following this, I will present an eye tracking study investigating the processing of collocations in learners of French as a second language, and the effect of linguistic immersion. Advanced learners of French as a foreign language were asked to silently read 10 passages of French. Each passage included multi-word constructions of varying frequency (e.g., ce n’est pas grave (high frequency) and ce n’est pas sérieux (low frequency)). Although the data lacks statistical strength, having only 11 participants and 10 items, the data gathered indicates that the frequency of a collocation can affect the eye fixation duration of participants in reading. The more frequent the collocation in the target language, the less time they spent looking at the phrase. This suggests that more frequent multi-word constructions are processed quicker, indicating that they are stored holistically in the lexicon. Furthermore, the experiment was repeated after the participants had spent at least eight months in a francophone country, and showed some evidence that linguistic immersion in a second language can affect learning of collocations. These findings suggest that exposure to collocations accelerates learning therefore making for easier processing, which is said to relate to developing a native-like language skills. Aara Cleghorn University of Edinburgh A Psycholinguistic Study of Lexical and Syntactic Representation in Speakers of Trinidadian Creole and Trinidadian Standard English There is evidence that bilingual speakers share syntactic representations between languages, but retain separate lexical representations at the lemma level. The present study investigates whether varilinguals (speakers of more than one language variety) who speak two closely-related varieties have separate lexical representations like bilinguals, or whether they have a single integrated network of lexical representation, with lemmas being shared between languages. A cross-linguistic syntactic priming experiment was conducted with speakers of two closely-related varieties: Trinidadian Creole and Trinidadian Standard English. The results showed that priming occurred within Trinidadian Standard English, and from Trinidadian Creole to Standard English. These priming effects were comparable in magnitude, indicating that syntactic priming in Trinidadian speakers was not affected by language variety. This is taken as evidence for an integrated lexical network for Trinidadian Creole and Trinidadian Standard English with shared representations at the lemma level. Valentina Hu University College London What's in a(n Italian) pronoun? Structural deficiency meets morphological features Italian’s paradigm of pronouns is rich in two ways: first, it features a significant number of distinct lexical items, and second, some of these items can alternatively assume different grammatical functions: (1) noi abbiamo visto la casa. we have seen the house We have seen the house. (2) la casa ha affascinato noi. the house has fascinated us The house has fascinated us. It has been claimed in the literature that Italian pronouns are divided into three distinct classes, each of these characterised by differing levels of structural complexity (Cardinaletti and Starke 1999): the class of clitics is the most structurally deficient, the intermediate class of weak pronouns is medially deficient, and strong pronouns are the least structurally deficient. I will examine this view in conjunction with a specific framework of feature-based morphology. Specifically, I will do this by evaluating Distributed Morphology (DM) - a framework that posits syntax and morphology as having the same hierarchical structure - and its compatibility with the structural deficiency proposal. I will argue that a unification of the two can be accomplished, but that there are further theoretical complications to account for. In particular, I will show that by investigating the content of the extended layers of the strong pronoun, we can integrate the structural deficiency proposal into current research in the syntax of information structure (Samek-Lodovici 2015), which supports an in-situ analysis of contrastive focus (contra Rizzi 1997, Belletti 2001, and the left-peripheral cartographic hypothesis). My arguments will be supported with evidence from Italian data that I will examine comprehensively, in such a way as to account for native speakers’ current usage of the different pronouns available in Standard Italian. In light of this, I will then propose a motivated modified structural analysis of Italian pronouns that is compatible with other areas of interest of linguistics (morphology, information structure). Belletti, A. (2001). Inversion as focalization. In A. Hulk and J-Y Pollock (Eds.), Subject inversion in Romance and the theory of Universal Grammar (pp. 60-90). Oxford: OUP. Cardinaletti, A., & Starke, M. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In H. van Riemsdijk (Ed.), Clitics in the Languages of Europe (pp. 145233). Walter de Gruyter. Rizzi, L. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In L. Haegeman (Ed.), Elements of grammar (pp. 281-337). Springer Netherlands. Samek-Lodovici, V. (2015). The Interaction of Focus, Givenness, and Prosody. Oxford: OUP. Eoin Mahon University of Cambrdige Examining the distinction between hard and soft presupposition triggers Certain presupposition triggers allow their presuppositions to be cancelled more easily than others in contexts where the presupposition is called into question. For example, the presupposition of the cleft construction in (1), that at least one person went to town, is unavoidable even when it clashes with a statement of ignorance about the presupposed content. This leads to an utterance which is infelicitous. Meanwhile, the prosodic focus in (2), which triggers the same presuppositional content as the cleft, allows its presupposition to be cancelled easily. (1) ? I don’t know whether anyone went to town, but if it was John who went to town, I’ll be angry. (2) I don’t know whether anyone went to town, but if JOHN went to town, I’ll be angry. Abusch (2010) attributes this difference to a distinction in kind between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ presupposition triggers, where the presuppositions of ‘hard’ triggers are an intrinsic part of the semantic content, while those of ‘soft’ triggers are defeasible inferences arising from the interaction of pragmatic principles with the semantic content. The present study examines an alternative account, where the varying cancellability arises from variation in the at-issueness of the presuppositions of different triggers. The aim was to discover whether a correlation exists between the at-issueness of presuppositions and their cancellability in contexts where ignorance of the presupposition is avowed. The study consisted of two online surveys in which participants rated various stimuli involving presupposition triggers for naturalness on a 1-7 scale. The cancellability of a trigger was measured by taking the difference in ratings between contexts of explicit knowledge and explicit ignorance, while a diagnostic devised by Cummins, Amaral and Katsos (2012) was used to measure at-issueness. The first survey involved audio clips and the cleft and prosodic focus constructions, while the second was text-based and included a wider range of triggers. Both surveys exhibited significant correlations between cancellability and at-issueness, indicating that Abusch's account is inadequate, and that atissueness is relevant to any account of the phenomena at hand. However, in the case of the second survey, the correlation was quite weak, suggesting that at-issueness is among a multiplicity of factors contributing to the observed differences among presupposition triggers. Researchers in experimental pragmatics have taken a great deal of interest in presupposition triggers in recent years, and the present study represents a modest contribution to what is a very lively field. References Abusch, Dorit. (2010). Presupposition Triggering from Alternatives. Journal of Semantics 27(1): 3780. Cummins, Chris., Amaral, Patricia. and Katsos, Napoleon. (2012). Experimental investigations of the typology of presupposition triggers. Humana Mente 23: 1-16. Alice Power University of Birmingham The Role of Speech-Accompanying Gestures in Construing Temporal Recognition How do we think and talk about time? The abstract concept of time is not just defined in terms of the units we measure it in i.e. seconds, minutes and hours. Much work in the area of cognitive linguistics supports the notion of two particular deictic space-time metaphors in relation to temporal reasoning. The first (the moving-ego) perspective, applies movement to the observer in describing them as moving towards a stationary object or event. Conversely, (the moving-time) perspective imagines the observer as stationary whereby the event or object is moving towards them. With this in mind, we are then inspired to think about the ways in which our reasoning and conceptualisations of time alter when the motion of space around us is manipulated. Beyond reasoning about time at a theoretical level, temporal reasoning has more recently been measured at a practical level involving the variable of speech-accompanying gestures used against McGlone and Harding’s (1998) ambiguous temporal question ‘next Wednesday’s meeting’. This current study extends from previous research in investigating the effect certain speechaccompanying gestures have in construing temporal recognition when elicited against an ambiguous temporal expression. Additionally, it possesses a new dimension in investigating the variable of gestural bias, across a lateral axis, on construing temporal reasoning. The results of the four conditions, in which the variable of gestures altered, firstly support the hypothesis that physical spatial movement directly affects temporal reasoning. Significantly, the results newly suggest that lateral gestural movement causes the individual to perceive time moving in a certain direction. Niki Drossinos Sancho University College London The role of the anterior temporal lobe in sentence comprehension. The two classical brain areas involved in the production and comprehension of language are Broca’s speech motor area in the Inferior Frontal Gyrus, and Wernicke’s sensory speech area in the Temporal and Parietal lobes. However, since the increase and more consistent use of neuroimaging techniques in the 1990s to study brain functions, language researchers have found another area that is consistently activated during language processing, and that is the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). The ATL, the anterior part of the temporal cortex, is now believed to play a fundamental role in language comprehension. Understanding what its role is exactly is a little more complex. There are two views regarding the role of the ATL: first, that it is engaged in computing simple syntactic structures, putting words together to form noun compositions, and second, that it plays a role in relating world concepts, the culturally shared knowledge we have of our world. Evidence for the first hypothesis, that the ATL processes basic syntax, mainly comes from fMRI and MEG studies on healthy people. Patients with Semantic Dementia, who have lesions localised to the ATL and (as a result) who have impaired world knowledge give, however, much evidence for the second hypothesis. But there is a problem with this second hypothesis- the neuroimaging techniques that are supposed to record (surface) ATL activation when healthy people relate concepts do not record any activation. So what does the ATL do exactly? There seems to be important evidence for both these hypotheses! Could the ATL not be engaged in both activities? Perhaps the ATL processes simple syntactic combinations on the more superior areas of the anterior temporal cortex and furthermore, it has a function in connecting world concepts too. The latter occurs more ventrally, in more inferior and ‘profound’ layers of the cortex, which explains why neuroimaging fails to record ATL activation for concepts. References: Humphries, C., Love, T., Swinney D., Hickok G. (2005). Response of anterior temporal cortex to syntactic and prosodic manipulations during sentence processing. Human Brain Mapping, 26 (2005), 128 –138. Patterson K., Nestor P. J., Rogers T. T. (2007). Where do you know what you know? The representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain. Nature Reviews, 976-988. Max Dunn University of Edinburgh Neuter, not Neutral Does the language one speaks have an affect on their thinking? This question of linguistic relativity has pervaded the cognitive sciences, but a clear consensus about it has not come to light yet. Research by Boroditsky (see Boroditsky et al., 2003 for a review) has suggested that the language a person speaks can influence their cognition. In particular, Boroditsky (2002) in an unpublished experiment found that grammatical gender systems in languages can affect the descriptions that people give to objects. In this experiment, German and Spanish speakers were given 24 object names that were opposite in gender between German and Spanish, and were tasked with writing down the first three adjectives that they thought of to depict these items. While Boroditsky did find an effect of grammatical gender on this task and attributed this to linguistic relativity, several methodological flaws make taking this result at face value dubious. The effect found may be due to the fact that grammatical gender in German and Spanish is related to natural gender, and therefore participants may have merely associated object’s specific grammatical gender with the natural gender found within it. The nature of reading an object name as a word, which is a linguistic task, also may have primed participants to think of the object in terms of its grammatical gender and inflate the effect. My experiment addresses the flaws present in Boroditsky’s study. Native English and German speakers were tasked with a similar paradigm to Borodistky’s experiment, except object pictures were used to elicit adjective descriptions instead of words to lessen linguistic priming effects. Objects in the neuter grammatical gender class as well as the feminine and masculine class in German were used to control for the issue of natural gender. If grammatical gender categories do affect the descriptions for objects, the objects in the German neuter category may also show descriptive differences from these objects in English where there are no grammatical gender categories. Preliminary results have failed to replicate Boroditsky’s findings, and no grammatical gender effect has been found, suggesting that grammatical gender categories do not affect object description and cognition more generally. Junyan Song Beijing Foreign Studies University The Interface Between Morphology and Syntax in Chinese Compounds Chinese is quite rich in its compounds which brings much paradoxes about compounds quite obvious in Chinese. Such paradoxes can be observed especially on the interface between morphology and syntax. This presentation is going to talk about such paradoxes found in Chinese compounds and tries to find a new way to solve the problem. Maria Dokovova University of Edinburgh Bulgarian Voice Onset Time: at home and abroad Voice Onset Time (VOT), measured as the distance between the onset of a consonant and the beginning of vocal fold vibrations, is a useful tool for categorising consonants in languages in terms of voicing contrast. However, it has been shown that VOT can undergo significant changes as a result of proficiency and long exposure to languages with different VOT patterns. Bulgarian is a “true voicing” language, which contrasts between prevoicing (negative VOT) and short-lag (positive VOT) consonants, while English is an “aspirating” language, which contrasts short-lag and long-lag consonants. In this study the VOT of Bulgarian stop consonants was measured for two groups of native speakers – living in Bulgaria and living in Scotland. Preliminary results show that Bulgarians living abroad produce shorter prevoicing than those who are based in Bulgaria, which corresponds to data reported in the literature. It remains to be seen if the short-lag category in Bulgarian is also affected by contact with English, which uses aspiration (long lag) for the corresponding category. Simone Peschek University of Aberdeen Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Language Policies: An Investigation into Sámi Language Rights The individual right to speak the language of one’s ancestors as well as the collective right of a speech community to use and practice their language has been a topic of discussion in works such as Paulston (1997), Skutnabb-Kangas (2000), May (2001, 2005) and Wee (2011). Whereas previous research has given the theoretical framework to the discussion of language rights, this paper aims to give a comparative overview in terms of language policies and language rights regarding the Sámi people in the three Nordic countries Norway, Sweden and Finland. The Sámi people are an indigenous people whose homeland has been divided by the borders of modern states. The three nation-states in question are generally seen as very progressive in terms of human rights, having ratified several international treaties and conventions such as the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As well as revising literature and previous research on the topic, this paper will address the actual policies stated in the constitutions and relevant government acts of the respective countries. The aim is to provide a presentation of the current situation and to draw on areas of improvement, as well as highlighting changes in policies which occurred in recent history. The paper will show that even though the Nordic countries have aimed to reverse their previous policies of assimilation, segregation and neglect and have provided the necessary legal background for the Sámi languages to prosper, several areas of concern still need to be addressed. These would include a lack of support for the revitalisation of the languages, for example through providing services in the education system. Moreover, there is a concern regarding the self-governance and autonomy of the established Sámi parliaments and a need for support of the Sámi languages not only on a regional, but also a national level. James Konrad Puchowski University of Edinburgh Researched and composed with the assistance of Hayley Ricardo (undergraduate student, Scandinavian Studies, University of Edinburgh). With thanks to Dr. Guy Puzey and Dr. Arne Kruse. The Norwegian Nynorsk written language is one of many products originating from the foundation of the Norwegian state, where the ideals of language representing the soul of a nation were fundamental to policy on language planning and standardisation in the country. We observe Nynorsk's own history and journey until today as it functions for many as a platform to conduct their social and political points of view – particularly left-wing radicalism and Norwegian civic nationalism in an attempt to avoid social hierarchy in Norwegian society. As Nynorsk usage, outside of where it is enforced by law, appears to be increasingly irrelevant in centres where the dominant Norwegian Bokmaal standard now dominates, the platform needs to be reinforced with other arguments where political radicalism no longer appears to play a role in 21st century urban society. This presentation provides a very brief overview of recent events in Norwegian language politics where pedagogical arguments have been introduced to encourage its usage outside of its western, rural heartland, with appeal to sociolinguistic research topics. Christopher Cox University of York The Prosody of Pre-modified NPs in Information Structural Focus Domains in Danish The study examines the prosodic realisation of Danish pre-modified NPs in broad and narrow information structural focus domains. For the purpose of this study, a pre-modified NP is defined as a constituent consisting of a Det-Adj-N sequence such as a blue book or the early morning. The prosodic levels under investigation are intonational phrasing, pitch and accentuation. In order to investigate the prosodic variables with experimental means, the study examines speech data from spontaneous interviews in Danish. Data annotation is completed by adhering to (Paggio, 2006)’s annotation heuristics for information structure. Earlier studies on the interaction between Danish prosody and information structure have tentatively postulated that deaccentuation may be associated with a narrow focus. The aim of this empirical study is to explore the extent to which prosodic variables realise pre-modified NPs in different focus domains. Jessica Dealey University of Cambridge Embodiment effects and L2 learning; whether embodiment effects can be enhanced by method of teaching. The following research provides an assessment of the link between embodiment effects and L2 learning. The study analyses the accessibility of embodiment effects within low proficient speakers after learning L2 verbs with and without actions. With language embodiment only being evidenced within those speakers who acquired the words alongside actions, support for embodiment effects as enhanced by teaching method is provided. Not only this, but an explanation for the unanswered question of how the embodied connections between language and sensory motor systems arise can be provided. Following the notion of Hebbian learning ‘what wires together, fires together’ the imperative role of experience in what constitutes semantic representation is exposed. Language grounding is proven to be accessible within the L2 after minimal exposure, dependent upon the prior teaching method employed. Disputing disembodied approaches to cognition, the relation between language and experience is clarified; the role of exposure is shown to be integral not only in accessing embodied representations, but also within the process of grounding itself. Bartosz Brzoza & Agnieszka Lijewska Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland SPOKEN-WORD RECOGNITION OF PROBLEMATIC L2 VOWEL CONTRASTS: AN EYETRACKING STUDY Spoken-word recognition in L2 is a highly dynamic process, marked with a powerful activation of similar L1 forms or L2 forms resembling those of L1 (Weber and Cutler 2004). Because of the cross-linguistic interference, Polish learners of English frequently confuse English /æ/ with vowels closer to /e/ and/or /ʌ/ (cf. Rojczyk 2011). One of the strategies facilitating this difficult discrimination task may be to undertake a pronunciation training in L2. To investigate how phonetic training affects speech recognition in Polish-English bilinguals (before and after phonetic training), 2 eye-tracking visual world paradigm studies were conducted (cf. Heuttig et al. 2011). In the experiments we compared the processing of confusable vowel contrasts (/æ/ vs. /e/ and /ʌ/) with the non-confusable vowel contrasts (/ɒ/ vs. /ɪ/ or /iː/). In each experiment, we monitored participants’ eye movements when they saw sets of 4 pictures and clicked on one of them. The critical sets consisted of 1 target picture whose name had the critical phoneme /æ/ or /ɒ/ (e.g. backpack, bottle), 1 competitor – a picture whose name overlapped with the target on the initial CVC sequence but with a changed critical vowel (e.g. /ʌ/ in bucket, /i:/ in beetle) and 2 unrelated pictures. By comparing the proportion of fixations on all pictures we tracked the dynamics of spoken-word recognition of problematic contrasts in bilingual speakers before and after phonetic training. Huettig, Falk, Joost Rommers and Antje S. Meyer. 2011. “Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: A review and critical evaluation”, Acta Psychologica 137: 151-171. Rojczyk, Arkadiusz. 2011. “Overreliance on duration in nonnative vowel production and perception: The within lax vowel category contrast”, in: Magdalena Wrembel, Małgorzata Kul and Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (eds.) Achievements and Perspectives in SLA of Speech: New Sounds 2010, Volume II. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Weber, Andrea and Anne Cutler. 2004. “Lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition”, Journal of Memory and Language 50: 1-25. Bartosz Brzoza & Stela Manova (University of Vienna) Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland The combinability of derivational suffixes in the mental lexicon: A psycholinguistic study There is much research on how people process words but it has not been investigated whether pieces of words such as suffix combinations play a role in the mental lexicon. Thus this study is the first attempt at discovering the representation of combined suffixes in the mental lexicon. A derived word may be further derived to create another word of the type BASE-SUFFIX1-SUFFIX2, e.g. lead-er-ship. Bulgarian, Russian, English, and Italian data have shown that in such derivations SUFF1 relates to SUFF2 in specific ways and the combinations of the derivational suffixes are either fixed or predicable (Bagasheva and Manova 2013, Manova 2011, 2015, Manova and Talamo 2015). Fixed combinations are those in which SUFF1 is always followed by only one SUFF2 of a major lexical category (noun, adjective, verb). In a predictable combination, SUFF1 is followed by more than one SUFF2 of a lexical category but one of the SUFF2 suffixes dominates over the others, i.e. it derives a great number of words, whereas all other SUFF2 suffixes derive a very limited number of words; or different SUFF2 suffixes of the same lexical category derive different semantics, e.g. an object and an abstract noun. To uncover the status of derivational suffix combinations in the mental lexicon we conducted a psycholinguistic experiment on the processing of existing and non-existing combinations in Polish, a language that is similar to the aforementioned languages with respect to combinability of derivational suffixes. The experiment consists in identification and discriminating between existing and non-existing suffix combinations. Non-existing suffix combinations were generated by manipulating letters or changing the order of the suffixes from the legal suffix combinations. The paper will report on the results of the experiment and discuss what those results reveal about the organization of the mental lexicon. Bagasheva, A. and S. Manova. 2013. “Semantically-conditioned two-suffix constructions in English and Bulgarian.” Paper presented at the 3rd annual workshop of the European Network on Word Structure NetWordS, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 19-20 September. Manova, S. (ed.). 2011. “Affixes and Bases”, Word Structure 4:2. Thematic Issue. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Manova, S. (ed.). 2015. Affix Ordering across Languages and Frameworks. New York: Oxford University Press. Manova, S. and L. Talamo. 2015. “On the significance of the corpus size in affix-order research”. (to appear in SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics) Jerzy Skwarzyński Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Och, awa' wi' you. British Workin’ Class Pronunciation Spelled ‘n’ Translated into Polish 'The Queen and I' by Sue Townsend is a significant piece in terms of the discussion about the class inequality in the UK as it describes the confrontation between the realm of the wealthiest group in the country, i.e. the Royalty, and the reality of a council estate where the working class lives. This satirical work portrays the majority of the most important class differences and it exhausts every possibility of showing these disparities in a funny but respectful manner. For this reason The Queen and I poses a considerable challenge for translators. It is necessary for a translator to convey all of the culture-related puns so that the translated text evokes the same reaction from a translation reader as the original does from a British reader. This task becomes almost impossible to complete when it comes to the subject of scenes based on social peculiarities that do not appear in the target language culture. In this paper I would like to focus on translation problems which emerge from expressing in the book, by means of spelling, specific pronunciation by representatives of the British working class, e.g. Oo left the bleedin' door open?. This feature of working class language has been stressed for a number of reasons: to draw readers’ attention to social differences between characters, to manifest their ethnical affiliation and to create them (Hejwowski 2010). These aims lead to the main goal which is to depict social class differences (in this case: those of linguistic nature) in understanding the world in a humorous way. The Polish ‘class division’ is more ambiguous. Although there are cultural features that mark the difference between sophisticated, well-educated people and those literal-minded and not welladjusted, firm pronunciation differences do not exist in Poland except for the differences stemming from belonging to various ethnic groups (e.g. Silesians), in which case the difference is not educational but merely geographical. Attempts to convey the aforementioned peculiarity by using varieties of pronunciation would seem artificial. In the only translation of the book into Polish, this problem has been solved in various ways. The aim of this paper is thus to compare her suggestions with the original text, evaluate them, examine applied translation techniques such as foreignisation and domestication (Venuti 2008), provide alternative solutions and contribute to the general debate of content lost in translation. References: Townsend, S. (2002). The Queen and I, London: Penguin Books. Townsend, S., (1992). Królowa i ja (Hanna Pawlikowska-Gannon, Trans.)., Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Książka i Wiedza. Hejwowski, K. (2010). O tłumaczeniu aluzji językowych, In R. Litwiński (Ed.), Przekład-JęzykKultura II (pp. 41-56). Lublin, Wydawnictwo UMCS. Venuti, L. (2008). The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation, Abingdon: Routledge. Wen Cai University of Manchester Social Mobility, Geographical Relocation and Linguistic Change across Lifespan Apparent-time data has been extensively used in sociolinguistic research, which is based on the hypothesis that individuals’ language system is largely stable after the critical period of language acquisition (cf. Labov 1964; Labov 1972). However, a number of real-time studies argue that linguistic modification in adulthood is not only possible but significant (e.g. Sankoff & Blondeau 2007; Sankoff 2004). This longitudinal study aims to contribute to the general project of discovering the nature of individuals’ abilities of linguistic modification after the critical period and seek for possible explanations. The research subject is the renowned AfricanAmerican talk show host, Oprah Winfrey. We focus on her linguistic changes in terms of two variables, F1/F2 formant values of the BET vowel /e/ and the unstressed /ɪŋ/ syllable (i.e. the alternation of apical [ɪn] and velar [ɪŋ], as in havin’ or having). With regard to the first variable, linguistically, Oprah’s native dialect was influenced by both Southern American English and African American English (AAE). According to Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006), AAE is known to share some common linguistic features with the Southern dialect (e.g. the fronting and raising of the BET vowel, the monophthongisation of /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/). As for the variable (ing), Trudgill’s (1974) study showed that there is a clear distinction between working class and middle class in terms of the use of [ɪn] and [ɪŋ]. Specifically, people from higher social class are less likely to use the nonstandard form [ɪn]. The results of our research indicate that after moving to the northern city Chicago and lived there for 25 years, Oprah moved toward a more standard vowel pronunciation (i.e. the lowering and backing of /e/). In addition, she increasingly used the variant [ɪŋ] in accordance with her higher social class. Hence, the present study indicates the possibility of individuals’ linguistic modification after the critical period. However, as Sankoff & Blondeau (2007) stated, ‘this evidence should not be interpreted as a blow against the reality of the critical period, but as an indication for greater attention to be focused on the degree and kind of lability that occurs in later life’ (583). In fact, Oprah’s significant modification to her linguistic behaviour in the adulthood can be largely explained by her unique personal experience (i.e. upward social mobility and geographical relocation). In the real world, most of us do not have such experience, which is why the critical period hypothesis has been confirmed and widely accepted in the literature. The majority’s ability of linguistic modification in adulthood requires more research and discussions. Fiona Preston York St John University Is there a need for more recognition and attention to be given to comorbidity in assessment and diagnosis? A longitudinal case study of a child with multiple speech, language and hearing difficulties, exhibiting numerous symptoms of certain neurodevelopmental disorders. This current paper investigates the literacy outcomes of a child with multiple speech, language and hearing difficulties along with exhibiting numerous symptoms of certain neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). More specifically it focuses on the issues of NDD’s sharing symptoms and overlapping diagnostic criteria. This has posed difficulties in giving a categorical diagnosis from professionals, highlighting a possible need in clinical practise for more recognition and attention to be given to the phenomenon of comorbid disorders. A single longitudinal case study was used in order to demonstrate the detailed qualitative information that can be derived from his neuropsychological and educational profiles from primary school years 1-5, to show the manifestations and changes of overlapping symptoms overtime as well as the possible implications this has had on literacy outcomes and intervention treatment plans. Sarah Fawcett University of York PEPS-C: a comparison of autistic and L2 prosodic features I am researching the reliability of current computer software, specifically the PEPS-C test, which is used as a research tool to assist therapists and teachers in remedial intervention of people who have prosodic deficits. Prosody is a little-investigated aspect of speech, concerning not what you say but the way you say it: the effect of intonation, emphasis and phrasing on meaning. Prosody is frequently disordered in people with autism and learners of second languages. I propose that the PEPS-C software lacks in its ability to reliably distinguishing autistic speech from foreign accents due to similarities in prosodic features. As a result of completing this research I hope to propose a way in which to improve such software, thus enabling better targeting of intervention for clients with autism. Hannah Purnell York St John University Meme Culture: a study of memes and how they help to establish identity within Communities of Practice on Tumblr The term 'meme', as first coined by Dawkins in 1976, has changed greatly in its practical meaning over the intervening years. Through looking at the concept of the internet meme, in all its myriad forms, we shall see how notions of identity and engagement are demonstrated, not just through the presentation of personal information in an online setting, but through communal engagement in establishing the longevity, or the rejection, of memes. Alex Robertson University of Cambridge A solution to the problem of identifying historical spelling variants in texts Because written texts are “the first-order witnesses to the more distance linguistic past” [1], electronic corpora have revolutionised historical linguistics. By automating tedious compilation and basicanalysis, they have “freed us from months and years of painstaking pencil work” [2]. However, many of the corpora in use today had to be manually compiled due to the spelling variation found in historical texts. For example, the PCEEC [3] took three years to parse and tag with syntactic information, whilst the ICAMET Letter Corpus [4] took several years to manually normalise the spelling to modern forms. By comparison, any modern text can be tagged and parsed automatically and analysed using computational linguistic processes (i.e. sentiment analysis, topic identification, entity extraction) within a matter of minutes. Present approaches involve treating historical spelling variation in exactly the same way that word processors treat spelling errors. In this presentation, I will argue that this is inappropriate and I will propose a new approach and describe a computational method for identifying historical spelling variants in text. I will demonstrate the method by applying it to the Paston Letters, a collection of written correspondence from the 15th century, and questioning the claim made by Lass [5, Chapter 3] that the Great Vowel Shift was well underway in the 15th century, creating the conditions for a pull-chain. References [1] Roger Lass. Historical Linguistics and Language Change (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics). Cambridge University Press, 1997. [2] Matti Rissanen. “The world of English historical corpora”. In: Journal of English Linguistics 8.1 (2000), pp. 7–20. [3] Ann Taylor et al. Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. 2006. url: http://wwwusers. york.ac.uk/~lang22/PCEEC-manual/ (visited on 01/07/2015). [4] Manfred Markus. Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts. url: http://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/projects/icamet/ (visited on 02/05/2015). [5] Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2000. url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521264761. SUNDAY ABSTRACTS Ben Edwards York St John University Free Pizza: a sociolinguistic investigation into the achieved audience design through comments made on a customer driven, public forum by an anonymous community of practice By default, public forums are available to everyone in a variety of mediums. They are used in a variety of ways, whether to communicate, express opinions or perhaps employed as a space to be linguistically creative. Although humans’ communicative competence is perhaps becoming more consumed with digital devices, the ever-growing world-wide-web and social networking, it is nevertheless resourceful, and is as much expendable with unrefined forms. In a public forum sense, walls have socially historic status from hieroglyphic inscriptions in Egyptian pyramids to colourful graffiti ubiquitously located around today’s network rail. Some are utilized as an appropriate area to scrawl numerous remarks of various nature and they are there for anyone to see. What this project pursues is the sociolinguistics happenings when an anonymous community of practice is provided pens and a wall to write on. It looks at a publicly available feedback wall where a diverse number of comments are made and aims to bring into focus as much of the story said comments tell. Ultimately it hopes to identify what is being done to achieve audience design. Although the feedback wall is designed for constructive comments, what is written isn’t always the case. Sally Finn York St John University And I’m like, ‘who even uses be like?’: A Study into the Production and Perception of Quotative BE LIKE in Hull, UK Be like has been spreading from the US across the English speaking world since the 1990s, with a range of research tracking its usage. Previous studies have investigated its presence in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There is minimal research into be like in the UK, and little into perceptions. This study fills gaps in this knowledge: it documents both the production and perception of be like among Hull speakers aged 16-23. Participants were interviewed in order to establish their use of be like, followed by a questionnaire which examined their overt attitudes towards the quotative. The findings show that be like is prevalent among these speakers, accounting for 68% of quotatives, and females were found to use it more. Be like has been reinvented from its original form in the US: these speakers use it mainly in the past tense and use it to quote speech more frequently than thoughts. It was also used to introduce hypothetical speech and facial expressions/reactions. The results from the questionnaire highlight how self aware the participants are since they all stated that they use be like. Participants claimed to associate be like mainly with both genders, the US, working and middle class and adolescents and young adults. Be like was overtly associated with both negative personality traits such as ‘unintelligent’, ‘uneducated’ and ‘unambitious’, and positive traits such as ‘exciting’, ‘pleasant’ and ‘kind’. This study provides an original take on be like: it documents Hull speaker’s particular use of be like, in addition to their attitudes which have been not been explored in depth. The findings contribute to the ongoing research into be like and its use and perception, and provides new evidence as to how it is used in the UK. Sarah Muller University of Glasgow Language Ideological Debates and the Role of Language as a Marker of National Identity in Luxembourg Luxembourg is a country with a diverse demographic and linguistic landscape. Its multilingual situation was officially regulated for the first time in 1984, granting official status to French, German and Luxembourgish. However, linguistic practices on an everyday level are much more complex than the language law might suggest. Indeed, there are regularly emerging discourses regarding language practices, often targeting the usage of French as a lingua franca between Luxembourgers and foreign passport holders. Linked to this, discourses of endangerment predict the loss of Luxembourgish and, with it, the disappearance of the “real”, ethnic Luxembourgers. It is this process of identification, linking together a language variety and its speakers, that is of particular interest to this research. Conducted as part of an undergraduate dissertation, it examines the instrumentality of language in constructions of national identity by studying language ideological debates. To this end, the project uses the language orientation framework as laid out by Ruiz (1984), as well as concepts such as cultural capital brought forward by Bourdieu (1991, 1977). Furthermore, the inclusion of concepts such as ethnicity and nationalism enhances the understanding of the role that languages can play as markers of national identity. This project is one of the few to study language ideologies in Luxembourg from a bottom-up manner using empirical, qualitative methods. The aim was to gain in-depth perspectives by conducting 9 semistructured interviews with 14 Luxembourgish speakers. Participants discussed their beliefs in language ideologies and constructed language as a resource, a problem, a right and a duty. The findings suggest that participants exploit two competing models of national identity, based on Luxembourgish and the trilingual ideal respectively. However, the ‘one nation, one language’ ideology was found to be dominant overall, suggesting that Luxembourgish functions as an essential marker of national identity. Jack Joyce York St John University A partial sketch of membership categorisation devices in initial interactions Conversation analytical studies of personal relationships between newly acquainted interlocutors have rarely been conducted (Svennevig, 1999; Stokoe, 2010; Haugh & Carbaugh, in press). This paper examines the process through which relationships are formed in initial interactions via a corpus collected by Sibthorpe (2008) of 20 British speed-dating encounters between self-declared heterosexuals in which talk orients to accounting for current relationship status and the demonstrable categorisation of one another so to become usable participants. The analysis of these initial interactions aids to sketch the design features of membership categorisation devices, the apparent rules for application and the wider consequences for Conversation Analytical practices in dealing with identity. Membership Categorisation Analysis provides the framework for this analysis, this field of study has recently encountered a resurgence of sorts after falling by the wayside post Sacks’ death. The primary proponents of Membership Categorisation theory that provide the basis for analysis here are Stokoe (2003; 2004; 2008; 2009; 2012), Schegloff (2007) and Fitzgerald (2012). This paper accounts for the usage of categorisation devices in the getting acquainted process. By the nature of ‘getting acquainted’ the devices are used prevalently due to a lack of both solidarity (Haugh & Carbaugh, in press) and common ground (Clark, 1996; Stokoe, 2010). Here then, the examination of membership categorisation devices serves to expand the existing literature by providing a framework of analysis in the categorisation of categories whilst also exploring the ‘getting acquainted’ process in further detail. References: Fitzgerald, R. (2012). Membership categorization analysis: Wild and promiscuous or simply the joy of Sacks?. Discourse Studies, 14(3), 305-311. Haugh, M. & Carbaugh, D. (in press). Self-disclosure in initial interactions amongst speakers of American and Australian English. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of pragmatics, 39(3), 462-482. Sibthorpe, S. (2008). Fast-Tracking Affection. Exploring the constraining influences of unacquaintedness, obligatory affect and time limit on speed dating interactions. Unpublished BA (Hons.) dissertation. York St John University. Stokoe, E. (2004). Gender and discourse, gender and categorization: Current developments in language and gender research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1 (2), 107-129. Stokoe, E. (2008). Categories, actions and sequences: Formulating gender in talk-in-interaction. na. Stokoe, E. (2009). Doing actions with identity categories: complaints and denials in neighbor disputes. Text & Talk-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 29(1), 75-97. Stokoe, E. (2010). “Have You Been Married, or…?”: Eliciting and Accounting for Relationship Histories in Speed-Dating Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(3), 260-282. Stokoe, E. (2012). Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies, 14 (3), 277-303. Special issue on Categories and social interaction: Current issues in membership categorization. Svennevig, J. (1999). Getting Acquainted in Conversation: A study of initial interactions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Christopher Bacon University of Aberdeen Is Peter Svenonius’ Syntactic Account of Adjective Order Satisfactory? Peter Svenonius (2007), following Cinque (1994) and Scott (2002), proposes an account of adjective order whereby APs merge in [Spec, XP], where X is some functional head relating to the noun. More specifically, the account states that adjective order is constrained by a functional structure consisting of KiP, SORTP, DegP, nP, and √P. The role of this functional projection in AP order is the following. Focussed APs merge in [Spec, KiP]. The element SORT determines the mass/count distinction, with Deg optionally merging in [Spec, SORTP] as a degree modifier; if an AP merges in SORT or Deg, then the AP is interpreted is subsectively. On the other hand, n constrains AP interpretation to be intersective. Finally, √ is the root element, where any AP merged in [Spec, √P] is interpreted idiomatically. This account provides an explanation as to why certain adjective ordering restrictions appear to hold—such as the subsective > intersective constraint (Truswell, 2009)—but, as we shall argue in this work, it is empirically inadequate for English. The argument for this claim is that the insertion of a plural marker is most plausible at SORT, due to the link between the mass/count distinction and plural marking. However, this forces noun movement from √ to SORT, leaving APs that have merged in a position c-commanded by SORT (namely, those in nP and √P) to incorrectly become post-nominal adjectives, such as *the houses red or *the rice wild. This problem cannot be overcome through movement of nP, as this would violate the anti-locality condition on movement (Abels & Neeleman, 2012); nor through movement of √P, as this would still leave nP in an incorrect post-nominal position; nor through [Spec, nP] or [Spec, √P] movement, as this would violate the subsective > intersective distinction. With none of these movement options available, the account fails. Jonathan Stevenson University of York “Send it me later”; investigating geographical variation in the use and acceptability of the THEME-GOAL Ditransitive The THEME-GOAL ditransitive ”send it me” is a well known but socially and geographically illdefined syntactic feature of British dialectal English. It contrasts to the more widely used GOALTHEME ditransitive “send me it” and prepositional dative “send it to me”. The first part of the study focuses on use. By mapping Twitter data using the web service MapD and Google Docs application ‘TAGS’, the aim is to establish the areas in which the different forms of the ditransitive are used, and the variation of use within those areas. The second part focuses on acceptability. Using an online survey the aim is to gather data on geographical variation in grammatical acceptability of the TGD in different syntactic environments. The project successfully demonstrates the workability of novel methodologies of data gathering using Twitter to establish the geographical spread of syntactic features and extends the literature on variation in the acceptance of the different forms of the TGD. The study also shows how grammaticality judgement tasks can be used effectively online and as such gather data with increased speed over traditional methods. The results of the Twitter analysis clearly show TGD use clustering within a well defined geographical area that corresponds to SED maps from the 1950s and aligning with well established historical dialect borders. These results indicate the resilience of syntactic features to change over time. The results of the survey provide data useful to both variationist sociolinguistics and formal syntactic theory as well as information structure. The data shows variation occurring where it is permitted by the syntax, and in so doing, casts light on what is permitted by the syntax as optional and what is disallowed at some deeper level. Sandy Rushton University of Cambridge Unaccusative verbs in the Icelandic New Construction: The grammaticality judgement task in practice Icelandic is a language famed for its linguistic conservatism. Yet, over the last 40 years an innovative construction has begun to spread through the language: the New Construction. In Maling and Sigurjónsdóttir’s pioneering survey of the construction (2002), a number of syntactic features of the New Construction were investigated. One particularly interesting result was the variability of acceptability judgements given for the unaccusative verbs which were tested. The causes of this variability have not been thoroughly explored, though semantic differences have been suggested as an explanation. This year I investigated the relationship of unaccusative verbs with the Icelandic NC through a new survey. The results of this survey have consequences for hypotheses regarding the syntactic nature of the NC. In my presentation, I will provide some background of the significant properties of the New Construction and outline the two major hypotheses regarding the nature of the Construction: the passive analysis and the impersonal active analysis. Then, I will give a brief discussion of the nature of unaccusativity and Sorace’s Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy before outlining the aims and methodology of my survey. The methodology of my survey will serve as the main focus of my presentation. I used a grammaticality judgement task in order to obtain data from Icelandic native speakers about the acceptability of the New Construction with particular unaccusative verbs. The grammaticality judgement task is often used in syntactic research and I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this methodology with regards to my own research. Looking critically this methodology will bring up ideas about how we as linguists can go about doing syntactic research and what the pitfalls are for linguists doing undergraduate research on a foreign language using this sort of task. I will conclude by summarising the results of my own research and reiterating some of the questions that come out of the scrutiny of the grammaticality judgement task in order to start a fruitful discussion: How useful are native speaker judgements? How can this kind of data be interpreted? What does this kind of data tell us about change? Anna Wallace University of Durham Can there be a Science of Grammaticalized Thought? ‘The fact of the matter is that we have very little (or really no) idea of how the stuff of thought relates to the stuff of brains, in the case of… language- and in any other case.’ (Poeppel, 2013). Following Hinzen and Sheehan (2013), we will suggest that the structure of language is synonymous with that of thought, thereby rejecting the traditional Cartesian contention in favour of an UnCartesian research programme. By thought, we mean the mental world unique to humans, with its ability to create propositionality, whereby a notion of truth arises as distinct from appearance or belief; a helpful term is grammaticalized thought. Following Crow (2002), the evolution of language was, then, the speciation event for the species Homo sapiens. This is the proper starting point for a theory of Universal Grammar, such that the Chomskyan (1995) notion of a language module that is distinct from and interfaces with a separate locus of thought is rejected. We note, then, given the proposition that grammaticalized thought must have its genesis in work done by evolution on the structure and functioning of the human brain, the lack of work in neurobiology to explain the connection between the features of grammaticalized thought and its physical instantiation. Our main task here will be to explore whether there could be a science of language and thought that allows us to understand the organisational principles of grammar as embedded in observable neurological structures and events. We ask, firstly, if we are doomed to interdisciplinary cross-sterilization when we try to understand the relationship between the brain, language and grammaticalized thought. Following Poeppel and Embick (2005), this might well be the case due to the granularity mismatch problem which arises due the ontological differences in the object of inquiry and conceptual toolkits in neuropsychology versus linguistics. We also note that both of these disciplines have little to say to the philosophy of mind. These authors contend that if there is a naturalised science of language, the mediation between the two areas of inquiry must be found in the conceptual toolkit of computational neuroscience with its inquiry into the information-processing aspects of neuronal activity. This may go some way to remedying the problem of ontological incommensurability. Physical limits to the computation of neurons, then, may be the limits of language. We will caution, though, that a project that tries to elucidate the features of languages needs to take care to focus on that which is integral to the cognitive phenotype of Homo sapiens, rather than be distracted by features which arise due to externalisation and therefore can and do vary crosslinguistically. When we recognise that these are a mirage, we realise that it becomes more difficult to speak about the content of grammar in such a way that lends itself to the ability to underscore the importance of different aspects of language, like the distinction between word classes, or morpholexical distinctions. Rather, the grammatical is properly spoken of as the condition for the possibility of predication, where this predication might indeed be realised by a distinction between the parts of speech. A naturalised science of thought becomes problematic because grammar is a relational concept, pertaining to the relationship between a subject and a predicate, rather than speaking to any fixed and essential entities. The notion that languages have a ‘parts list’ that has to be mapped onto what we know about the realm of the neurological is misplaced. It might seem that a computational paradigm lends itself to adequate emphasis on of the relations between entities and the outputs generated, rather than focussing on the nature of the units of computation. There must, however, be fixed entities upon which algorithms do their work, and this misrepresents that which we can properly call Universal Grammar. As such, it is not clear that there can be a naturalised science of grammaticalized thought that seeks ontological reduction to the biological. References Chomsky, N. (1995) ‘The Minimalist Program’ Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Crow, T. J. (ed.) (2002) ‘The speciation of modern Homo sapiens’ Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hinzen, W. and Sheehan, M. (2013) ‘The Philosophy of Universal Grammar’ Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poppel, D. and Embick, D. (2005) ‘Defining the relation between linguistics and neuroscience’, in Cutler, A. ed. 'Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones', Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Poeppel, D. (2013) ‘Linking language and cognition to neuroscience via computation: Report from the NSF Workshop held May 23-24 Arlington, VA.’ Lewis Hallett University of Central Lancashire Emotional Appeals in Advertising and Humanitarian Campaigns: A Critical Approach Traditionally, emotional appeals in argumentation have been treated as ‘fallacies of relevance’. On this view, a particular view (standpoint) should not be defended by appeals to emotion (fear, pity) but by appeals to reason. Appeals to emotion are said to be irrelevant to the claim they are meant to support, and ‘better’ , more ‘rational’ arguments should be used instead. However, in recent decades the role of emotional appeals has been re-evaluated, with argumentation theorists (Walton 1992) arguing that they can often provide acceptable argumentative support, moreover that they can clarify what is at stake in a situation, and thus provide stronger and more persuasive arguments. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1992, Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999, Chouliaraki 2013), this paper investigates the role of two types of emotional appeals, appeals to fear and appeals to pity (compassion) in two distinct sets of texts: 1) a corpus of adverts used in recent antismoking campaigns, which depict very graphically the harm that smoking does to health; 2) a corpus of charitable appeals (printed leaflets and online campaign material) that attempt to persuade people to donate money for various charitable causes (homeless people, famine and disease in Africa, etc.). I analyze the argumentative structure of these short texts, including the rhetorical role played by the images being used, and argue that the appeals to fear and pity make these texts not only more persuasive but also more rationally persuasive, stronger and better arguments. I am also comparing these two corpora in order to argue that, unlike anti-smoking adverts which appeal to biological fears of disease and death, humanitarian campaigns also appeal to a sense of solidarity and justice. In this way, these arguments are no longer just based on emotional appeal but on widely shared political values, and the emotional appeal contributes to making the argument more persuasive, more effective. Ilona Suviranta University of Aberdeen From Invisibility to Marginalisation: A Comparison of LGBTQ Representations in Sex and Relationship Education Materials in Finland and England Positive Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer representations have been shown to benefit the lives of LGBTQ youth in earlier studies. In a context such as secondary school, where homophobic bullying is still at large, these representations can make LGBTQ students feel more comfortable and included. As school textbooks hold an authoritative status in the lives of the students, they also play an important part in the recreation and presentation of heteronormative social structure. In my study I will be looking at how LGBTQ representations differ in the subject of sex and relationship education (SRE) in two different countries, England and Finland. The comparison, which is first of its kind, will give us two very different insights on the representations of LGBTQ people in educational materials, ranging from clear marginalisation and invisibility in England to a more normalised picture of individual sexuality in Finland. I will use two different sets of physical, sexual, health, and economic education (PSHE) books from each country to see how sexual and gender minorities are framed and presented in them, focusing on the topics relating to sex and relationship education. In order to get a thorough comparison I will use critical discourse analysis with the help of corpus linguistics. The study shows us how sexuality in its all forms are handled differently in different countries, and even how vast the differences can be in the same educational system as will be the case with England. The focus on LGBTQ representations assures the inclusion of the often ignored part of the acronym – trans representations. As it is now, the English textbooks in my analysis do not mention trans people or trans issues once, and the Finnish books do so only in a paragraph each. I hope that this study will give us new insights to ensure the representation of LGBTQ people and the inclusion of all youth in school textbooks. Eleonore Schmitt UCL/ University of Hamburg „Is this even a word?“- Variation, linguistic insecurity and language attitudes Variation in language may result in linguistic insecurity. For instance, coexistent weak and strong forms of certain German verbs might lead to doubts by native speakers, whether they should use "gewunken" (strong inflection) or "gewinkt" (weak inflection) as participle of "winken" (to wave). The case of winken is particularly interesting to look at, as "winken" is one of the few weak verbs which gain features of strong verbs. Far more often it is the other way round: A strong verb becomes weak. The case of "winken" is widely discussed in internet forums. These forums are a useful corpus to look at for investigating the perception of variation and stigmatization of variants as well as language attitudes of discourse participants: For native speakers both forms – "gewunken" and "gewinkt" – share the same function and therefore lead to confusion about which form should be used. This confusion is directly connected to the idea of a standard variety. With a standard variety the idea of correct and incorrect variants is born (Milroy/ Milroy 1991). Furthermore, its high prestige leads speakers to think the standard is the only (proper) variety of their language (Davies/ Langer 2006). This attitude is reflected by the title quotation, which is taken from an internet discussion about "gewunken" and "gewinkt". The question only makes sense in terms of a variant not belonging to the standard variety and therefore not considered to be a (proper) word. As the standard variety does not allow two variants, one variant is considered to be non-standard and stigmatized as being wrong. Variation and standard variety put together can lead to linguistic insecurity, because native speakers are not able to decide which variant is considered to be correct in the standard variety and therefore fear to use a wrong variant. Therefore, the coexisting variants lead to an interesting contradiction: While challenging the idea of a pure, stable standard, they preserve it, because speakers assume one variant to be non-standard as the standard in their view only allows one variant. This talk looks at the "winken"-phenomenon from two perspectives. Firstly, an explanation for the newly acquired strong features of "winken" is provided. Thereafter, the consequences of the variation will be investigated. In order to do this, the discussion about the variants "gewinkt"/"gewunken" in internet forums will be analysed. This analysis aims at showing general language attitudes and conceptions of language and grammar. References Cameron, Deborah (1995): Verbal hygiene. London/New York: Routledge. Davies, Winifred (2000): Linguistic norms at school. A survey of secondary-school teachers in a central German dialect area. In: Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 67/2, 129-147. Davies, Winifred V./Langer, Nils (2006): The making of bad language. Lay Linguistic Stigmatisations in German, Past and Present. Frankfurt a. M. (u. a.): Peter Lang. Haugen, Einar (1966): Language conflict and language planning : the case of modern Norwegian. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Milroy, James (2001): Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. In: Journal of sociolinguistics 5 (4), S. 530-555. Milroy, James/Milroy, Lesley (1991): Authority in language. Investigating language prescription and standardisation. London/New York: Routhledge. Andreea Piciu University of Aberdeen When You Play the Game of Thrones, You Either Win or You’re ‘A Dumb Bitch’: Discussing Gender Expectations in an Online Community of Practice This research looks at how gender expectations, norms and stereotypes come across in the language used by an online forum in discussing the characters in George R. R. Martin's fantasy series 'A Song of Ice and Fire', and its TV adaptation 'Game of Thrones'. This research establishes the forum as an online community of practice and positions it within a culture of fandom framework. This focus allows for an investigation into the words, expressions and gendered slurs used to describe female characters as opposed to male ones. A mixed-method approach is used to analyse the data which consists of written discourse on each of the four sample characters; the quantitative approach to interpreting the data is facilitated by the AntConc software, with reportings on keywords and frequency lists, while the qualitative analysis focuses on areas of interest highlighted by the AntConc findings. This research aims to position discourse on fictional writing within a larger world context, particularly in the way gender is perceived and discussed, and the extent to which it influences the perception and judgement on different characters. Beth Griffiths York St John University Face-work in an online forum The theory of face is significantly well recognized within the field of linguistics and there has been much research on the impact this awareness has on how interaction occurs. However, there would appear to be a lack of sufficient research regarding the impact that face has in online interaction, whereby the repercussions of face-threatening acts, should they occur, are less immediate than in other contexts. Therefor, the research to be presented here is an exploration of this. The analysis is grounded in various existing concepts and ideas surrounding the use of face-work, and the relevance that these may hold in an online forum. The data was collected from a public domain help forum and shows what is argued as a face-threatening post from a user of the website who seeks advice from the other users regarding a personal predicament. In addition to the analysis of this post, the research includes examples of the replies which the poster receives in order to better demonstrate how different discursive techniques may be used to either give or save face. The analysis for this research project draws on theoretical framework such as the usage of politeness, agency, imperatives with regards to advice giving, and expressions of solidarity and positive regard relating to face-work. It could be argued that whilst the online context of the interaction and the unfamiliar relationship between the participants under these circumstances may alter the way that face-work is carried out, this is not always the case. The project concludes that further research on the use of face-work in an online context is required in order to gain a greater understanding of the motivation behind why these attempts at face-work are being made, given that there would be appear to be less of an obligation to do so. Rhys Sandow University of Sussex Onomasiology as a Sociolinguistic Variable The purpose of this research is to demonstrate that onomasiology is an appropriate phenomena to be studied within the variationist paradigm of sociolinguistics. Contrary to the claims of Labov (1972), and the consensus that has hitherto prevailed in sociolinguistics, Geeraerts (2005, 2011, 2012) and Robinson (2010, 2011, 2012) propound the applicability of variationist sociolinguistics to lexicological variation. Robinson (2012) persuasively and lucidly demonstrated that semasiologythat is, a plurality of concepts denoted by a single lexical sign- can be analysed within the variationist paradigm. Robinson (2012), echoes Geeraerts’ assertion that the other main branch of lexicology, onomasiology- that is, a single concept denoted by a multiplicity of lexical signs- should also be investigated within variationist sociolinguistics. This research challenges the validity of the sociolinguistic convention that eschews lexicology from sociolinguistics. Preliminary findings suggest that word choice is distributed in a predictable manner in relation to age, class, and gender. The data has manifested itself in a way that is analogous to traditional sociolinguistic studies, i.e. stable and overtly prestigious variants are used more frequently by females, the middle-classes, and older participants. Thus suggesting that the patterns of onomasiology are consistent with that of more established sociolinguistic variables. This research not only develops the sociolinguistic applications of onomasiology, but also investigates the sociodemographic spread of the use of the Cornish dialect. This is also interesting because Cornish is a rich isogloss in linguistic heterogeneity, and is a severely under-researched dialect. Methodology in this area is profoundly underdeveloped. The lexical elicitation procedure involves simple naming and discourse complete tasks. This dissertation aims to nurture a nascent methodological and conceptual approach to sociolinguistic onomasiology that has implications for much wider and deeper research in the future. This research challenges the hitherto ubiquitous tradition of lexicology being ostracised from quantitative sociolinguistic analysis. If the results are statistically significant it will add weight to the growing argument for the sociolinguistic study of onomasiological variation. This research has widespread future implications, as its kaleidoscopic socio-demographic intricacies, and nuances are still under-researched, which leaves a gap in linguistic knowledge that needs to be filled. Chris Robson York St John University Language is used for doing things: An investigation of MIGHT Benefits in interaction This paper explores the concept of ‘MIGHT benefits’. Firstly, how the term came to be realised and named (Heider, 1958) is discussed and thereafter, developments from linguistics (Merrison et al. 2012; Wilson et al. 2013; Langford and Merrison, 2013) in 'OUGHT' theory (from which this research stemmed) are examined. The paper will take theory based approach to explaining the phenomenon of serendipitous value, highlighting the complexity of intentionality and the ubiquitous nature of value in interaction. Also to be discussed is how we understand each other, the short answer being that: “WE DON'T UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER, WE CAN'T, WE NEVER CAN!”. Which may seem paradoxical, but in reality all we can do is make our best guesses on another person's intention through context, the speaker(s) and your own relationship with said person(s) (Merrison, Turner and Davies, in prep). The term 'MIGHT benefits' has not been previously discussed, and to be explained simply it refers to the possible value of speech acts and interaction when intentionality is at a minimum. The concept of altruism shall also be considered, including discussion of whether or not it is possible for truly selfless acts to exist, including the idea of in-the-moment altruism. Based on research developing theory on ‘OUGHT’, this paper aims to demonstrate the concept of there being a possibility of value for us in everything that we do, both accidentally and on purpose. It is ultimately the way in which things are perceived by interactants which determines the outcome as being overall positive or negative. Jack Joyce York St John University Value in Interaction: Interactional (in)equitability Over the past few decades, philosophers have sought to understand what value is and how it is used in order to achieve what a person sets out to do (Attfield, 1987). The focus has largely been on the wider usage of the morality of value and the exchange of knowledges in wider social terms. Very few philosophers and even linguists have been concerned with value in the moment-bymoment interactional events. This paper therefore begins to redress that imbalance. In politeness theory, to manage ‘face’ involves claiming positive social value through the exchange of certain types of values in interaction (Goffman, 1955). And these values are used to (co)construct identities through joint interactional activities. Previous theories often pertain to value either as being instrument (a tool to be used to achieve satisfaction) or as value having intrinsic properties (in that an individual has an inherent moral code). Linguistic theories, on the other hand, orient to value being an interactional resource which participants use to both explicate meaning and to seek progressivity in conversation. The overlap between the two approaches is apparent: value is a tool but it can certainly be used to build identities, exhibit power relations or aid in the sharing of knowledges. This presentation reflects on this synthesis of philosophical theories (notably Nerlich, 1989; Nagel, 1970) and linguistic analysis (Jackendoff, 2006; Mondada, 2011; Asmuß, 2011) on value systems and morality in language. This is achieved by analyzing examples of actual interactional data taken from loci such as spoken interaction and online discussions. The proposed synthesis between the two approaches will be explained by focussing on how the joint activities of participants are carefully managed tasks in which they purposefully emphasise certain types of values to achieve their end goal(s).
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