| The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty: linguistic, psychological, philosophical aspects |  |
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| Friday, 21 October 2011 19:33 |
| 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. (more…) |
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