Although the concept of common ground permeates all branches of linguistics, its definition, role and manifestations vary according to the type of data observed and the theoretical framework used. The issues particular to this complex notion lie in the articulation of its two terms, common and ground. 

• Depending on the chosen theoretical framework, the term "ground" can, in a broad sense, cover the familial, social, cultural or historical context of discourse implementation (Clark 2015). It could also encompass the shared knowledge of the world, or in a narrower sense, notions of preconstruction (Culioli 1990; Talmy 1975, 2000), anchoring, topicalization, and even references to a landmark or location.  
• The term “common”, on the other hand, refers to the phenomenon of community, whether real or virtual, constructed in speech or pre-existing.  It can also refer to sharing as well as agreement and expectation, norm and convention, stereotype, and thus of convergence and divergence, of alignment, in relation to intersubjective phenomena. The community can be based on different elements: shared imaginary (Houdebine 1982), rituals (Hanks, W. F., & Bonhomme, J. 2009), or, according to the notion of pre-discourse (Paveau, M.-A. 2006), sharing of opinions, beliefs and knowledge.

The variety of possible French equivalents for the term “common ground” (terrain d'entente, socle commun, point commun, base commune, dénominateur commun, cadre commun, etc.) illustrates the wealth of potential reflections and perspectives relating to this concept.

The 7th edition of the "Mapping Parameters of Meaning" conference aims to define the conditions of emergence or disruption of the common ground between speakers, and to study how this common ground, in turn, conditions the linguistic phenomena that characterize the different types of discourse studied.

We welcome contributions from all areas of linguistics, whether they focus on theoretical aspects or more methodological issues. Presentations can include one or more of the following topics: 

• In the fields of sociolinguistics and sociophonetics, we might think, for example, about the phenomena of accommodation (Communication Accommodation Theory - Giles, Coupland and Coupland 1991; Giles and Ogay, 2007), and the analysis of convergence and/or divergence between speakers, whether it be conscious or unconscious. The ideological, social and symbolic charge of linguistic variables and variants (Blommaert 2010; Candea, Planchenault and Trimaille 2019), with their links to notions of identity (Coupland 2007; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985), community, representation and stereotyping (Giles 1970; Lippi-Green 2012) may also be examined. We could also look at the creation of the common ground necessary for certain forms of communication, such as different types of media (radio journalism, music, cf. Cutler 2015; Giles, 2010; Trudgill 1983), or the modes of communication and codes specific to various groups or communities (Drager and Haye 2012).
• Presentations could also focus on various fields in pragmatics, such as cognitive pragmatics (Moeschler 2021), or else cross-linguistic common ground, and contrastive linguistics (Johansson 2012 ; Guillemin-Flescher 1981).
• In interactional and multimodal linguistics, proposals can cover phenomena of alignment (DuBois 2007; Szczepek-Reed 2010; Graziano et al. 2011), affiliation (Enfield 2008; Stivers et al. 2011), participation in activity organization (Goodwin 2007), preference organization (Pillet-Shore 2017), and participant positioning (Haddington 2007; Kendon 2010).
• In first language acquisition, it will be interesting to consider how the acquisition of shared knowledge (familial and socio-cultural routines or fundamental knowledge about the world) is linked to the developmental path of the mother tongue. The linguistic embodiment (Vygotsky 1962; Sekali 2012) of cognitive processes in common ground construction (Diessel 2004; Slobin 1997; Tomasello 2003) can be observed in corpora of children's spontaneous language.
• The teaching and learning of a foreign or second language in an institutional setting raises questions about the need for common ground within the classroom and its connections to the target language’s culture and society. Here, one may discuss the concept of glocalization or the post-method approach (Dwi Lusianov, 2020). The question of understanding common ground by non-native speakers interacting in a foreign language would also be highly relevant (Baider & Cislaru 2021), especially in the context of the internationalization of higher education and student mobilities, both virtual and face-to-face (Beelen & Jones, 2015; Jauregi & Melchor-Couto, 2017). Of particular interest will be the notions of interculturality and ethnocultural empathy (Maine & Vrikki 2021; Rasoal, Eklund & Hansen 2011), along with their linguistic manifestations.  We would also welcome proposals on the phenomenon of translanguaging (Cummins 1991; Ali 2021) and the role of a syntactic common ground between the L1 and L2 in learning (Deprez, Sleeman & Guella 2011).

Plenary speakers:

Laure Lansari, Université d’Amiens, France.

Janus Mortensen, Copenhagen University

Scientific Committee: 

Emmanuel Baumer, BCL Unice, Nice, France

Maria Candea, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

Georgeta Cislaru, Université Paris Nanterre, France

Maureen Dunn, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Catherine Filippi, Université de Rouen, France

Isabelle Gaudy-Campbell, Université de Lorraine, France

Olivier Glain, Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Étienne, France

Lucie Gournay, Université Université de Paris Est Créteil, France

Raluca Nita, Université de Poitiers, France

Fanny Meunier, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Graham Ranger, Avignon Université, France

With the Centre de Recherche en Études Anglophones (CREA) and the Groupe de Recherche Multimodale sur le Langage et ses Interfaces (GReMLIN)

Abstracts should be submitted on the conference’s webpage: https://common-ground.sciencesconf.org

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, excluding references, in English or in French.

The conferences will be held in English or in French..

Important dates:

• September 16th, 2023: submission deadline
• Deadline extension: Sunday October 1st, 2023
• Decision notification: Early November 2023

Organizers:

Agnès Leroux: agleroux@parisnanterre.fr

Éléonore Chinetti: eleonore.chinetti@uvsq.fr

References

Ali, A. (2021). “Understanding the Role of Translanguanging in L2 Acquisition: ApplyingCummins’ CUP Model”. Journal of Cultura and Lingua 2, no 1 (28 janvier : 15‑25. 

Baider, F., Cislaru G. (2021). « Communication et intercompréhension : regards croisés de lapragmatique interculturelle et de la pragmatique contrastive ». Langages 222, no 2: 7‑24. 

Blommaert, J. (2010) Language Ideological Debates. Walter de Gruyter.

Beelen, J., & Jones, E. (2015). “Redefining Internationalization at Home”. In A. Curaj, L. Matei, R.Pricopie, J. Salmi, & P. Scott (Eds.), The European higher education area: between criticalreflections and future policies. Springer Netherlands, 59-72. 

Clark, E. V. (2015). Common ground. The handbook of language emergence, 328-353. JohnWiley & Sons.

Maria Candea, Gaëlle Planchenault and Cyril Trimaille, “Avant-propos et présentation dunuméro – L’accent qu’on a, l’accent qu’on nous donne, l’accent qu’on est”, Glottopol, No.31, 2019, p. 2-9. Online. URL: http://glottopol.univ-rouen.fr/numero_31.html.

Nikolas Coupland, Style: Language Variation and Identity, Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2007.

Culioli, A. (1990). Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation: opérations et représentations.Collection L’Homme dans la langue. Gap, France: Ophrys.

Cummins, J. (1991). « Interdependence of First- and Second-Language Proficiency in BilingualChildren ». In Language Processing in Bilingual Children, édité par Ellen Bialystok, 1re éd.,70‑89. Cambridge University Press.

Cutler, C. (2015). White hip‐hoppers. Language and Linguistics Compass, 9(6), 229-242.

Deprez, V., Sleeman, P., & Guella, H. (2011). Specificity effects in L2 determiner acquisition: UGor pragmatic egocentrism?. In Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 27-36).

Diessel, H. (2004). The Acquisition of Complex Sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Drager, K., & Hay, J. (2012). Exploiting random intercepts: Two case studies in sociophonetics.Language Variation and Change 24, 59-78.

Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation,interaction, 164(3), 139-182.

Dwi Lusianov, J. (2020). Post-method era and glocalization in language teaching and learning.Advances in Social Sciences, Education and Humanities Research, 509, 360-366.

Enfield, N. J. (2008). Language as shaped by social interaction. Behavioral and brain sciences,31(5), 519-520.

Giles, H., Coupland, N.,  & Coupland, J., (1991). “Accommodation theory: Communication,context, and consequence”, in Contexts of Accommodation: Developments in AppliedSociolinguistics, eds. Howard Giles, Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press., 1991.

Giles, H., & Ogay, T. (2007). Communication accommodation theory. In Whaley, Bryan B.;Samter, Wendy (eds.). Explaining Communication: Contemporary Theories andExemplars. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Giles, D. (2010). Psychology of the media. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Giles, H. (1970). “Evaluative Reactions to Accents”, Educational Review, Vol. 22.

Goodwin, C. (2007). Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse & Society, 18(1), 53–73.

Graziano, M., Kendon, A., & Cristilli, C. (2011). “Parallel gesturing in adult-child conversations”.Integrating Gestures, 89–102.    

Haddington, P. (2007). Positioning and alignment as activities of stancetaking in newsinterviews. Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 283-317.

Hanks, W. F., & Bonhomme, J. (2009). Comment établir un terrain d’entente dans un rituel?.Cahiers d’anthropologie sociale, (1), 87-113.

Houdebine, A-M. (1982). “Norme, imaginaire linguistique et phonologie du françaiscontemporain”, Le Français moderne, Vol. 1. 

Jauregi, K. & Melchor-Couto, S. (2017).  Motivational factors in telecollaborative exchangesamong teenagers. In K.Borthwick, L. Bradley & S. Thouësny (Eds), CALL in a climate ofchange: adapting to turbulent global conditions, short papers from EUROCALL 157-162.Research-publishing.net.

Johansson, S. (2012). Cross-linguistic perspectives. In English Corpus Linguistics: Crossing Paths.Brill, 43-68.

Kendon, A. (2010). Spacing and orientation in co-present interaction. Development ofMultimodal Interfaces: Active Listening and Synchrony: Second COST 2102 InternationalTraining School, Dublin, Ireland, March 23-27, 2009, Revised Selected Papers, 1-15.Chicago.  

Le Page, R. & Andrée Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches tolanguage and ethnicity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in theUnited States, London, New York, Routledge, .

Maine, F., & Vrikki, M. (2021). Dialogue for Intercultural Understanding: Placing Cultural Literacyat the Heart of Learning. Springer Nature.

Moeschler, J. (2021). « Complexité et dynamique du sens : interrelations entre pragmatiquecognitive et pragmatique interculturelle ». Langages 222, no 2.

Mortensen, J., & Kraft K. (2022). « Norms and the Study of Language in Social Life ». In Norms and the Study of Language in Social Life. De Gruyter Mouton.https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501511882.

Paveau, M. A. (2006). Les prédiscours: sens, mémoire, cognition. Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Pillet-Shore, D. M. (2017). Preference organization. The Oxford research encyclopedia ofcommunication.

Rasoal, C., Eklund, J., & Hansen, E. M. (2011). Toward a conceptualization of ethnoculturalempathy. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 5(1), 1-13.

Szczepek Reed, B. (2010). Prosody and alignment: a sequential perspective. Cultural Studies ofScience Education, 5, Chicago, 859-867.  

Sekali, M. (2012) The emergence of complex sentences in a French child’s language from 0;10 to4;01: causal adverbial clauses and the concertina effect. In M. Sekali (ed.) “First-languageacquisition of French grammar (from 10 months to 4 years old)”, Journal of FrenchLanguage Studies, 22, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 115-141.

Slobin, D. (1997). The origins of grammaticizable notions: beyond the indidivual mind, In: D.Slobin (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. V, Expanding theContext. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 265–323.

Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (2011). Knowledge, morality and affiliation in socialinteraction. The morality of knowledge in conversation, 2011, 3-24.

Talmy, L. (1975). “Figure and ground in complex sentences”. In Annual meeting of the Berkeleylinguistics society, 1:419‑30, .

Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics. MIT Press, .

Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition.Cambridge US: Harvard University Press.

Trudgill, P. (1983). “Acts of Conflicting Identity: The Sociolinguistics of British Pop SongPronunciation” On dialect: Social and geographical perspectives : 141-160.

Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.