The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty: linguistic, psychological, philosophical aspects

3 – 5 October 2012

University of Macerata (Italy)

The Certainty or Uncertainty of a piece of information communicated by a speaker plays a significant role both in building knowledge or beliefs in the interlocutor’s mind and in choosing the appropriate linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour during and after verbal interactions.

The Conference focuses on how interlocutors express their individual degrees of Certainty or Uncertainty towards the piece of information they are giving hearers/readers during the communicative process, i.e. at the time when (= Now) and in the place where (= Here) communication occurs. This topic may be related, more or less directly, to what in the linguistic literature is called epistemicity and evidentiality.

The Conference topic can be approached from different perspectives and in different – European and non European – languages.

Proposals are invited for papers mainly on linguistic, psychological and philosophical aspects of the communication of Certainty and Uncertainty. The Conference aims to be interdisciplinary and therefore welcomes proposals from scholars from different areas.

We are particularly interested in studying the communication of Certainty and Uncertainty in dialogue; we are interested in how it evolves during the interactional sequences between at least two interlocutors, how an interlocutor switches from Certainty to Uncertainty and vice-versa, how a content communicated as Certain or Uncertain is disrupted or argued, negotiated and co-constructed by the interlocutors. This may also be approached from a non-verbal communication standpoint.

Deadline for abstract submission : 30 April 2012

Notification of acceptance: 15 June 2012

Click on “read more” for more information or download the Call for Papers [PDF]

Conference website

Registration

Early bird by 31 August 2012

Regular after 31 August 2012

Registration fee

Regular: € 120 (early bird) – € 140 (regular)

Students: € 60 (early bird) – € 70 (regular)

Website: http://www.unimc.it/cuc

Contact: conference.cuc@unimc.it

Convenors

Andrzej Zuczkowski (University of Macerata, Italy)

Sibilla Cantarini (University of Verona, Italy)

Anita Fetzer (University of Würzburg, Germany)

Plenary speakers

1. Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp, Belgium)

2. Franz Hundsnurscher (University of Münster, Germany)

3. Werner Abraham (University of Vienna Austria)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Certainty or Uncertainty of a piece of information communicated by a speaker plays a significant role both in building knowledge or beliefs in the interlocutor’s mind and in choosing the appropriate linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour during and after verbal interactions.

The Conference focuses on how interlocutors express their individual degrees of Certainty or Uncertainty towards the piece of information they are giving hearers/readers during the communicative process, i.e. at the time when (= Now) and in the place where (= Here) communication occurs. This topic may be related, more or less directly, to what in the linguistic literature is called epistemicity and evidentiality.

The Conference topic can be approached from different perspectives and in different – European and non European – languages.

Proposals are invited for papers mainly on linguistic, psychological and philosophical aspects of the communication of Certainty and Uncertainty. The Conference aims to be interdisciplinary and therefore welcomes proposals from scholars from different areas.

We are particularly interested in studying the communication of Certainty and Uncertainty in dialogue; we are interested in how it evolves during the interactional sequences between at least two interlocutors, how an interlocutor switches from Certainty to Uncertainty and vice-versa, how a content communicated as Certain or Uncertain is disrupted or argued, negotiated and co-constructed by the interlocutors. This may also be approached from a non-verbal communication standpoint.

Possible related topics

– Lexical and morphosyntactic markers of evidentiality and epistemicity

– Decision making

– Deceptive communication

– Counterfactual thought

– Knowledge and Beliefs

– Probability, Possibility, Reliability, Likelihood, Plausibility

– Language and Cognition

– Language acquisition and development

– Discourse analysis (literary, political, journalistic, scientific etc.)

– Mitigation and hedging

– Politeness

– Speech Acts

– Temporal dimensions and verbal tenses

– Epistemic future

– Types of sentences

– Awareness, Emotion and Memory

– Language and Power

– Argumentation and Persuasion

– Artificial Intelligence

– Embodied agents

Organizing committee

Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ilaria Riccioni, Ramona Bongelli, Carla Canestrari: Research Centre for Psychology of Communication, University of Macerata, Italy.

Sibilla Cantarini: Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Italy

Anita Fetzer: Lehrstuhl für englische Sprachwissenschaft, University of Würzburg, Germany.

Scientific committee

Karin Aijmer (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Luigi Anolli (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy), Lawrence Berlin (Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, USA), Ramona Bongelli (University of Macerata, Italy), Carla Canestrari (University of Macerata, Italy), Giovanni Gobber (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milano, Italy), Franz Hundsnurscher (University of Münster, Germany), Wolf Peter Klein (University of Würzburg, Germany), Alessandro Laudanna (University of Salerno, Italy), Vincenzo Lo Cascio (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Giuseppe Mininni (University of Bari, Italy), Francesco Orilia (University of Macerata, Italy), János Sándor Petöfi (University of Macerata, Italy; University of Pécs, Hungary), Ricardo Pietrobon (Duke University, North Carolina, USA), Isabella Poggi (University of Roma 3, Italy), Ilaria Riccioni (University of Macerata, Italy), Christoph Schubert (University of Vechta, Germany), Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen (Ghent University, Belgium), Marcello Soffritti (University of Bologna, Italy), Stefania Stame (University of Bologna, Italy)