The Call for papers of the International conference on "Generics and stereotypes in discourse: A cross-disciplinary perspective" is now open.
Please be welcome at Leiden University, The Netherlands, on 5-6 June 2025.
The conference is organized by Laure Gardelle, Université Grenoble Alpes & Naomi Truan, Leiden University.
The Conference Aim: The aim of this international conference is to bring together researchers from various disciplines – linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, communication and media studies, marketing, psychology, history, political science, among others – to further our understanding of how and why generics and stereotypes are explicitly referred to in discourse by speakers.
We welcome talks that take naturally occurring generic or stereotypical statements as their starting point. Some points of particular interest could be the following (but the list is not meant to be exhaustive):
1) Why produce a generic statement in a given context? For what kinds of properties,
with what form of the NP (bare plural, a N, the N, other), and with what consequences?
Are there discursive clues for the communicative goal(s) identified?
2) Do these communicative strategies solely concern humans? Even though research
on stereotypes has focused on humans, there are generalisations and harmful
overgeneralisations about other categories as well. One example is sharks, for which a
WWF website tries to disentangle "shark facts" from "shark myths".
3) How exactly are generic or stereotypical (in the harmful sense) statements
phrased? Earlier in this call for papers, we mentioned the contrast between bare plurals
and the quantifier most to present exceptions as negligible or not; what about other
strategies, such as adverbs (sharks rarely ever attack humans) or other forms of
adjustment to generalizations?
4) Is there room for diversity in the phrasing of stereotypes? Knowledge-contributing
statements might make room for variation among the members of a category (trucks
come in all shapes and sizes), but is there a clear distinction between (harmful)
stereotypical ones and mere generic statements?
5) In a given discourse or set of extracts, does a given speaker show fluctuations or
even contradictions in the generalizations or stereotypes they put forward?
Conversely, are there forms of standard statements in a given community of practice?
6) How do addressees react to a generic statement or a stereotype? In interactive
settings, do some trigger agreement statements, or rejections, or other? On what
grounds, and are there identifiable relations to the speaker's initial strategy?
Submission guidelines:
Abstracts of around 300 words (excluding references) should be addressed by email before 15 January 2025 to Laure Gardelle, Naomi Truan, and Ismaël Zaïdi.
More information can be found in the attached CfP and the website: https://www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/events/2025/06/generics-and-stereotypes