Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), 8-9 May, 2025
Website: https://eventos.usal.es/go/varisig2
E-mail: varisig2@usal.es
This event aims to develop the line of scientific exchange and collaboration started at the I International Symposium on Grammatical Variation and the Construction of Meaning, which took place at the University of La Laguna in November 2022, with the attendance of numerous international researchers. The focus of interest is variation in language, chiefly at the morphosyntactic and discourse levels, and explicitly taking into account its connections with the various levels of meaning.
The functional and cognitive theoretical models of linguistics are by no means incompatible with communication-based disciplines. In fact, in recent years significant progress has been made in understanding the relationships between the supposed internal and external levels. Language should be conceived as the result of the interaction between social and cognitive demands (Schmid 2020: 10). In the field of the (socio)linguistics of variation, such advances have shown the need to overcome the structural-formalist view of variants as alternating forms whose differences are at most of social and situational distribution (Chambers 2013: 5). For years now, constructivist approaches that view variants as ways of creating personal identities and group insertions have been gaining weight (Coupland 2007; Eckert 2012, 2018; Hernández-Campoy 2016; Edwards 2017, among many others), even if, in most cases, the focus has tended to remain on the phonetic-phonological phenomena that traditionally interested variationism.
However, the development of approaches within functional and cognitive linguistics, such as Usage-based Grammar (Bybee & Hopper eds. 2001; Bybee 2010), Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006; Gras 2021) or studies at the Columbia School (Garcia 2009; Otheguy & Shin 2022), makes it possible to go much further. These approaches assume, in one way or another, that grammar is inherently symbolic and that the structure of languages is inseparable from their use for the organization of thought, its transmission and its negotiation. Each form or construction employed in discourse involves the choice of certain meanings, which will interact with other semiotically relevant elements in the discursive context and the situation (Hoffmann 2022, Ungerer & Hartmann 2023).
Based on the preceding considerations, oral presentation proposals are requested, in English or Spanish, that present the results of research on morphosyntactic or discursive variation in any language. These proposals should adopt some kind of theoretical and methodological approach whereby the use of linguistic forms is understood as the construction of meanings in specific communicative contexts, and which thus contribute to the development of the scientific study of linguistic variation and communication.
The deadline for sending proposals through the corresponding form (https://forms.gle/VRnfkWtrF8UGjgy16) has been extended until November 25. The decision of the scientific committee will be notified before the end of November.
Together with the ordinary presentation sessions, the Symposium will feature an opening plenary talk by Ricardo Otheguy (The City University of New York) and a closing one by María José Serrano (Universidad de La Laguna).
The organization of this symposium is part of the activities of the research project “Formalización e integración de dimensiones estilísticas en el análisis de la elección gramatical en español. Los continuos del punto de vista y la modalidad del discurso” (PID2020-113474GB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. It has also received funding from the Facultad de Filología and the Centro Internacional del Español (CIEUSAL) at Universidad de Salamanca.
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