ONLINE Session of SYFLAT Research Methodology Seminars 2023/2024
The program
09:25-09:30: Opening
09:30-10:30: Keynote Speaker 1:
Prof. Ali Dabbagh – Gonbad Kavous University, Iran
Title: Cultural Linguistics: Past, Present, and Future
Abstract: Following the interest in investigating the language and culture nexus, a number of models have been proposed, including linguistic determinism (Whorf, 1956), linguistic relativity (Sapir, 1929, 1995), SPEAKING (Hymes, 1962), linguaculture and languaculture (Agar, 1994; Friedrich, 1989; Risager, 2015) among others. On the other hand, conceptualization of the term ‘culture’ has witnessed great shifts from structuralist perspective to post-structuralist approach (Kramsch, 2014). These developments led to the introduction of a new area of research that investigates the interaction between imagery emerged from social interactions and language, termed by Palmer (1996) as cultural linguistics. Farzad Sharifian, in a series of publications (Sharifian, 2003, 2015, 2017), expanded Palmer’s ideas through giving his work a multidisciplinary perspective, benefiting from cognitive linguistics, distributed cognition, and complex adaptive systems. He introduces the notion of cultural conceptualizations, a collective term to refer to cultural schemas, distributed cognition, and complex adaptive systems. He introduces the notion of cultural conceptualizations, a collective term to refer to cultural schemas, cultural metaphors, and cultural categories, and opens new horizons to the study of language and culture through Cultural Linguistics, written with initial capitals to be distinguished from Palmer’s ideas.
In this keynote, I will elaborate on the significance of Cultural Linguistics in current research on language and culture. In so doing, I will critically review research on Cultural Linguistics and explore the current status in this area of inquiry, providing a research taxonomy emerged from the past and present publications, including my own research.
The presentation will conclude by discussing potential future research directions within Cultural Linguistics in interaction with other neighboring disciplines, including language education, language assessment, language policy and planning, and critical language studies.
10:30 – 11:30 – Keynote Speaker 2:
Prof. Elena Bonta – University of Bacau, Romania
Title: Language Autobiography
Abstract: Our research in the field of language autobiography has grown within the framework of the wider context of personal research in the area of verbal interactions (in their oral or written form), pragmatics, interpersonal communication and the didactics of the English language. The topic of language autobiographies is not entirely new in the framework of Romanian research, but the literature in the field is scarce. This is why, through our work, we have intended to bring into focus the language autobiography, as a worth studying field of research, and to contribute with theoretical, practical and bibliographical elements to its study and analysis, from the perspective of an interdisciplinary approach
The investigation within the topic deals with linguistic behaviour as part of a life story narrative, a discursive presentation of the individual’s language practices, considering that any process of language learning implies development (of knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviour), ‘a variety of transitions, bridges, precipices, unseen mismatches, obstacles and accelerators.’ (Agapova, 2014) and it is an informant for the pedagogical field about the diverse factors that influence language learning and acquisition, in order to allow teachers to refine strategies and techniques, to find solutions that are meant to raise intrinsic motivation in language learning and to develop new competencies.
