Our online reported speech workshop will exceptionally reconvene for an update session on the 13th of October at 2:30pm CET. If you’d like to participate but haven’t received the meeting link, please get in touch!
Keynote talk at ERAS 2022
Stef will present a keynote talk at the workshop Emerging Research in Australian studies. Please check out the programme, which contains a wonderful mix of topics in the broad field of Australian studies, presented by current PhD scholars, and please join the workshop!
Recent conference talks
In early August, Stef presented a talk, together with Tatiana Nikitina at the Twenty-Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics entited ‘Untold grammar: Paradigm formation with extended reported speech’.
At the 55th Annual Meeting of the European Linguistic Society (SLE) at the end of August Stef organised a workshop on Language in narrative and song, together with Izabela Jordanoska. The workshop featured talks by Stef and Daniela (‘Narrative distributions of extended reported speech’) and by Denys Teptiuk and Stef (‘Interior dialogues: Narrative reported speech and thought in two indigenous languages’).
Related event: Decolonising the anthropocene
Stef will take part in the following panel at the University of Helsinki’s Tiedekulma (Think Corner) next month. It is shaping up to be an exciting event, please help spread the word! (The announcement below was written in collaboration with Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen.)
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Decolonising the Anthropocene: Indigenous and language-oriented perspectives
Thursday April 28th at 13–15
Think Corner, Stage (Yliopistonkatu 4)
The term, the ‘Anthropocene’ roughly denotes the most recent 12,000 years of history in which humans have significantly impacted our planet’s climate and ecosystems. Various starting dates for the Anthropocene have been put forward, ranging from the beginning of the agricultural revolution to the first atomic blast in 1945. Although the term has not yet been formally adopted by the International Union of Geological Sciences, it has gained traction in environmental policy circles.
Indigenous scholars, among others, have questioned the universality of the term “Anthropocene”, considering that its framing is largely Western-biased and anthropocentric. Critics have argued that the term dangerously misrepresents all human actions as being inherently destructive, and that it fails to recognize the long-term positive interactions between Indigenous Peoples and their environments. This event aims to re-conceptualise the Anthropocene by discussing Indigenous views of human-environment interactions, and how such connections have shaped –and continue to shape–our planet’s climate and ecosystems.
The event draws on long term co-research of Indigenous languages, knowledge, and practices. It uncovers the diversity of narratives about humans’ roles in the natural world, and the myriad ways in which human–nonhuman interactions are conceptualised and evidenced in Indigenous languages. In the first year of UNESCO’s Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032), this event also brings together Indigenous Studies scholars addressing the deeply intertwined relations between biological and linguistic diversity.
The speakers include:
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, associate professor of Indigenous Studies. She has worked extensively with Amazonian Indigenous societies, namely Arawakan-speaking Apurinã and Manchineri, addressing Amazonian human-environment complexes, deep past, and Apurinã language revitalization.
Stef Spronck, postdoctoral researcher in General Linguistics. He has worked with several Aboriginal communities in north-western Australia, primarily recording language under the instruction of Ngarinyin elders with the aim of understanding aboriginal ways of talking about speech and thought and contributing to local language teaching.
Outi Laiti, postdoctoral researcher in Indigenous Studies of University of Helsinki. Her field of research is education and computer science with focus on Sámi culture in video games and programming.
Victoria Soyan Peemot, postdoctoral researcher in Indigenous Studies of University of Helsinki. Her research addresses language and bonds of horses and herders in the Sayan-Altai Mountain Region of Inner Asia.
Álvaro Fernandez-Llamazares, HELSUS postdoctoral researcher. His research areas are ethnoecology and biocultural diversity, largely focusing on the study of the knwledge systems of the Tsimane’ people in Bolivia, and the Daasanach community in Kenya.
Aung Si, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Linguistics of the University of Cologne. He is a Myanmar citizen, who grew up in India. He completed Doctorates in Biology and Linguistics at the Australian National University, and currently carries out research on the biological knowledge of small language communities.
Coffee and snacks are served after the event.
Buresboahtin! W E L C O M E !
Welcome to the Think Corner or watch online: https://tiedekulmamedia.helsinki.fi/fi/web/tiedekulma/player/webcast?playerId=99487739&eventId=161395621
Facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/514937466784677
Organised by the projects: Anthropocene in onto-ethico-lingistic perspective in Amazonia and Language endangerment and wellbeing: Questions for a sustainable linguistics.
Call for papers: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Quoting and Speech Reporting (October 2022, Brussels)
We would like to draw your attention to the following call for papers for a conference on Cross–disciplinary Perspectives on Quoting and Speech Reporting to be held in Brussels later this year. The conference includes a workshop on speech reporting in African languages and the event is organised by collaborators and participants of the online workshop series within our Helsinki-based project. It promises to be an exciting occasion!
Because of the overlap in theme we have decided to cancel our planned Summer workshop in Finland and would like to encourage anyone to submit your abstract to the Brussels conference by the 31st of March instead.
The full call for papers, including details on how to submit can be found here: https://old.linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-748.html.
LangNet Winter School Poster Presentation: Extended meanings of Reported Speech
During the LangNet Winter School 2020 I had the opportunity to present the current stage of my research on meaning extensions of reported speech constructions in a poster.
It was a wonderful learning experience and a good opportunity to exchange ideas with my peers and more senior researchers alike. The presentations were held through Zoom, and I received many interesting questions.
The main topics I addressed during my 5min presentation were two examples of languages from my sample that have meaning extensions of RSCs, the methods I use for qualitative and quantitative analysis using an extension package in R, and finally that meaning extensions of RSCs are not limited to geographic areas or language families.
The questions I received addressed the data collection and also how RSCs are classified in my analysis.
This brief presentation and discussion provided useful and constructive feedback that I will implement in my thesis and analysis. Stay tuned! You can access the poster here.
– Daniela