Second call for papers
Socio-cultural factors in style
The Research Group in Stylistics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (stylistics.elte.hu) is inviting linguists to the international conference ‘Socio-cultural factors in style’, due to take place in Budapest, 5-6. 02. 2014.
The conference is aimed primarily at functional cognitive linguists with an interest in stylistics. Its central topic is the functions of socio-cultural factors in style. Functional cognitive linguistics produces complex usage-based descriptions, foregrounding the motivations behind specific construals of meaning in intersubjective usage events. Fundamental factors of a functionally oriented description of dynamic semantics and grammar include discourse, speech situation, conceptualizer perspective and the dynamic relation between schema and instantiation. The present conference focuses on the stylistic components of linguistic variability.
From a functional cognitive perspective, style is an aspect of discursive meaning derived from particular modes of construal and symbolization. Style can be studied from multiple vantage points and at varying levels of abstraction. Besides the stylistic potential of language and the stylistic structure of particular discourses or discourse types, socio-cultural factors can be explored with a view to the more or less conventionalized social functions of linguistic expressions in a speech community. Looked at in this way, style is a function of the norms of socially based interpersonal relations, and it is attributed to linguistic expressions in specific usage events. Socio-cultural factors of style include the domains of attitude, situation, value (value saturation vs. deprivation), time (archaism vs. neologism), and language varieties.
