Seminar für Deutsche Philologie (Alt)

Fall School


Shifting Perspectives
Non-canonical Forms of Reported Discourse in Spoken and Sign Languages


Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Courant Research Center "Text Structures"

October 01-05, 2012

Organization:
Annika Hübl and Markus Steinbach
German Department and CRC Text Structures

Venue:
Jacob-Grimm-Haus
Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
Room 1.245 (second floor to the right)


Languages use several non-canonical forms of reported speech that are far from being investigated satisfactorily. Sign languages, for instance, show a modality-specific strategy of reporting thoughts and utterances that is referred to as role shift (see Lillo-Martin to appear, Herrmann/Steinbach 2007, Quer 2005). Moreover, literary texts make use of free indirect discourse, which seems to be a specific form of reported speech only found in literary narration (see Banfield 1982, Schlenker 2004 among others).

Although eminently different at a first glance, apparent parallels in the analyses of both phenomena can be discovered since keywords such as “shifting contexts”, “shifting perspectives” and “shifted reference” are highly relevant for role shift and for free indirect discourse.

This interdisciplinary fall school aims at bringing together scholars from the fields of linguistics and literature as well as experts of empirical and theoretical research in order to analyze role shift, free indirect discourse and other non-canonical forms of reported speech in the two modalities of spoken and sign languages. For this purpose, we cordially invite researchers to share their expertise in the following topics during the fall school:

  • the semantics and pragmatics of free indirect discourse (theoretical linguistics)
  • experimental studies on free indirect discourse (psycholinguistics)
  • (psycho)narratological foundations of free indirect discourse (literary studies)
  • role shift and constructed action in sign languages (sign language linguistics)



The fall school addresses advanced students (Ph.D. or M.A. level) in linguistics, psycholinguistics, literary studies and related fields. Every class includes 4 lessons of 90 minutes from Monday, October 1st, to Thursday, October 4th. On Friday, October 5th, a one-day workshop closes the fall school. At this workshop, the invited speakers as well as the participating students will present their current work.