Call for Papers

2nd Call for papers with newly confirmed keynote speaker 

STYLISTICS ACROSS DISCIPLINES 
University of Leiden, The Netherlands
June 16-17, 2011 

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 

Prof. dr. Douglas E. Biber, Northern Arizona University (USA)
Prof. dr. Barbara Dancygier, University of British Columbia(Canada)
Prof. dr. Arie Verhagen, Leiden University (Netherlands) 

Stylistics is a field of study that is growing and developing fast. Its central concern is the way cognitive and communicative effects are achieved by means of linguistic choices. It therefore encompasses literary studies and linguistics as well as discourse studies. In spite of the shared, overarching definition of what it is, the field of study of Stylistics is highly fragmented. It mainly takes place within the boundaries of the various, more traditional, domains of study, e.g. literary analysis, rhetoric, (critical) discourse analysis, applied linguistics, etc. As a result, a comprehensive understanding of the wide variety of interests and foci of attention in stylistic studies, as well as exchange of knowledge between these research domains, is developing relatively slowly. 

In recent years, successful attempts have been made to take an integrative, cross-disciplinary perspective on Stylistics, focusing on the shared research object: language use. An example is the expanding body of studies associated with the International Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). Especially fruitful has proven to be the developing area of 'cognitive poetics', a field closely allied with the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics, which includes attention for contextual factors and the inherently 'subjective' basis of language in linguistic analysis. This Stylistics across disciplines conference links up with these developments and intends to offer a platform for exchange of ideas and to stimulate fruitful collaboration among linguists, literary scholars and discourse scholars studying 'style'. 

We invite participants from all relevant fields to participate in the Stylistics across disciplines conference to discuss the opportunities and problems regarding the development of Stylistics as a coherent and methodologically sound research discipline. We welcome papers on (but not limited to) the subject of:

*     Possibilities and limitations of an interdisciplinary perspective: what can literary scholars learn from the way style is studied in linguistics or rhetoric, and vice versa?
*     Opportunities and problems of a 'linguistic stylistics'
*     Methodological issues: qualitative (interpretive analysis) or quantitative methods (digital humanities, corpus stylistics) and different research methods (corpus analysis,  experimental effect studies) in relation to various research contexts
*     Development of theoretical notions and analytical tools especially suited for stylistic analysis
*     Context-sensitivity of stylistic patterns and analysis: how does stylistic choice interact with contextual factors such as institution, genre characteristics, etc.?
*     Language specificity and culture specificity of stylistic phenomena and analysis 

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION AND IMPORTANT DATES 

Please submit your abstract (in Word or PDF format, containing the title of your paper, author's  name(s) and affiliation(s), max. 500 words) to stylistics@hum.leidenuniv.nl. The deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2010. Notification of acceptance will be by February 1, 2011. 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE 

Suzanne Fagel
Maarten van Leeuwen
Ninke Stukker
stylistics@hum.leidenuniv.nl 

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE 

Jaap Goedegebuure (literary studies)
Ton van Haaften (language and communication)
Jaap de Jong (rhetoric)
Arie Verhagen (linguistics) 

The Stylistics across disciplines conference is organized by researchers from the NWO research project Stylistics of Dutch (Leiden University 2007-2012).

Website: http://www.stylistics.leidenuniv.nl/.