Conference on Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Processing; March 31 through April 2, 2016; Blacksburg, Virginia

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

Language varies along a variety of social dimensions, such as region, age, ethnicity, gender, education, formality, and mood. The result is that when we talk, we are not only expressing ideas, but also conveying information about our identity and stances. And when we listen, we not only process the linguistic content of the speech stream, but also information about who we are listening to. Recent work has suggested that linguistic and social content are fundamentally interdependent in the cognitive representations and mechanisms involved in speech production and perception: we automatically change the way we produce and interpret linguistic content depending on the social context, and vice versa. For example, listeners will hear the same ambiguous sound between "s" and "sh" as "shod" if they think the speaker is female, but "sod" if they think the speaker is male; listeners will rate speakers as more educated if they say "running" instead of "runnin"; listeners will have more trouble understanding English that is paired with an Asian vs. a White face; and speakers change their pronunciation depending on recent speech they heard, and the topic of conversation. Developing a better understanding of the interconnections between social and linguistic information not only informs our theories of language cognition, but can also lead to improvements in cross-cultural communication in industry and education, and computer-mediated communication. This award will support a conference devoted to Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Processing to take place at Virginia Tech (March 31 - April 2, 2016). The conference will provide a venue where leading researchers from a variety of backgrounds will meet to share cutting-edge work at the intersection of social and linguistic processing, and discuss the implications of this work for linguistic cognition and improving communication. The conference will focus on five key areas of development in the field: sociolinguistic theory, cognitive theory, socio-phonetics, socio-syntax, and the applications of work in this area. The conference organizers will promote participation by graduate and undergraduate students. Organizers will also foster public engagement by developing a website to disseminate key findings from the conference (as well as from this area of enquiry more generally), highlighting the implications for improving communication and cross-cultural understanding.