First call for papers

Methods XVII invites submissions for paper and poster presentations, as well as proposals for special sessions. The conference will take place from August 3-7, 2020. It will be hosted by the Department of English and Linguistics (JGU Mainz) and held at the Erbacher Hof in Mainz.

Methods in Dialectology is a triennial conference that traditionally alternates between Canada and Europe. Originally a forum for the discussion of methodological issues in dialect research, Methods conferences have progressively extended their topical range and now include the whole spectrum of regional, historical, and social language variation. The Methods series welcomes contributions investigating any of the world’s languages.

• Jenny Cheshire (Queen Mary, London)
• Karen Corrigan (Newcastle)
• Damaris Nübling (Mainz)
• Sali Tagliamonte

We invite special session proposals for Methods XVII, which will be held throughout the conference. Special sessions may either be concerned with particular methodological instruments, technological innovations or special themes, or they may have a particular focus on a language group or a specific topic.

Each proposal should include an overview of the topic and its importance, in no more than 500 words. The proposal should also state the relevance of the special session to Methods XVII.

If you would like to organise a special session, please submit your proposal with a complete list of speakers and all abstracts (4-8 slots available per special session, 2-4 hours in total) by September 1, 2019. Potential organisers of special sessions are responsible for calls and peer-review prior to submission of the proposal to Methods XVII.

Submit your special session proposal here: www.umfrageonline.com/s/methodsviispecialsessionsubmission

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of October 2019.

We invite abstracts for the following presentation formats:

• full paper (20 + 10 mins discussion)
• poster (incl. a 5-minute presentation in the Poster Pitch Session)

Abstracts must be anonymous and not exceed 500 words. References do not count toward the word count. Abstracts should clearly state the research question(s), approach, method, data and (expected) results. Please submit anonymous files in pdf format. When submitting, please specify whether you would prefer your abstract to be considered for acceptance as a paper, poster, or both (note that selecting ‘both’ will not reduce a submission’s chances of being accepted as a paper). Authors are allowed to submit two abstracts if at least one paper is co-authored.

We accept submissions through www.umfrageonline.com/s/methodsxviisubmission until November 15, 2019.

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the end of March, 2020.

Registration information will be made available by that time.

For more information, please visit our website at www.methodsxvii.uni-mainz.de, or contact the organizing committee at methodsxvii@uni-mainz.de.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Mainz!

The local organising committee

4-6 March 2020 in Hamburg

Under the concept of linguistic diversity, various forms of linguistic variation are explored. These include socio-cultural, ethnic, cognitive or media-specific variation as well as individual and societal multilingualism in the past and present. In order to study linguistic diversity, pre-existing (primarily) written sources are consulted or new data is collected using different methods (e.g. oral or written questionnaires, interviews, experimental tasks etc.). However, the availability of appropriate data continues to be one of the greatest challenges to empirical research.

Despite the fact that lexicography is one of the oldest linguistic sub-disciplines and began to compile extensive corpora early on as the basis for dictionary work, dictionary articles and the corpora underlying these have been used much less frequently for the study of linguistic diversity. This is surprising given that most dictionaries do not only contain simple information about word meanings and grammar, but also deal with variation and diversity in many ways, such as: regional distribution, style level, language contact (e.g. borrowing), language change or pragmatics.

This section explores the potential utility of lexicographical data in the study linguistic diversity. We therefore invite contributions with a lexicographical/practical or a meta-lexicographical/theoretical focus that deal with different dictionary types for different target groups (e.g. dialect dictionaries, historical dictionaries, contemporary dictionaries, prescriptive and descriptive dictionaries) as well as dictionary corpora as a resource for research. Possible research questions are:

• How is linguistic diversity treated in lexicography?
• How is linguistic diversity represented in dictionaries or in different dictionary types?
• Which levels of a language system (in addition to lexis and semantics) can be studied by using lexicographical data?
• Which methods can be used to access lexicographical material beyond the dictionaries?
• Which tools are available?

Organizers:
Philipp Stöckle, Sabine Wahl (Vienna) 

• Sarah Ogilvie (University of Oxford)
• Stefan Engelberg (IDS Mannheim)

We invite abstracts for 30-minute oral presentations (ca. 20 minutes presentation time + discussion) relevant to the workshop theme. Abstracts should not exceed one page (A4, 12-point font, single spaced) and must be anonymous. Please submit your abstract through EasyAbs (linguistlist.org/easyabs/DAC2020). Selected papers will be published.

Abstract Submission Deadline: 17 August 2019
Notification of acceptance: 6 September 2019

Please note that the regulations of the DGfS do not allow that workshop participants present two or more papers in different workshops. However, they may be named as co-authors in several presentations. Likewise, organizers of other workshops at the same conference are not allowed to present a paper in this workshop.

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