Speakers 2023
Billy Clark Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK
April 20, 2023
9.00 a.m. CEST
Pragmatics, writing and communicative interaction
In this talk, I argue that relevance-theoretic pragmatics is particularly well suited to account for the dynamic and ongoing nature of communicative interaction. On this approach, communication is an interactive process involving ongoing adjustments to the cognitive environments of those involved. Adjustments vary in many ways, with some of them quite subtle, and some continuing to be made during and after interactions. I consider how this approach can be applied in understanding and developing practice in various kinds of written communication and how pragmatic theories can benefit from exploration of writing practice. I illustrate with reference to everyday communication and to examples of creative writing and to discussion by writers.
Professor Billy Clark leads research in linguistics at Northumbria University. His research interests are all concerned with aspects of meaning and communicative interaction, often from the perspective of relevance theory.
Gisela Sosa Lopez University of Barcelona
APRIL 20, 2023
11 a.m. CEST
Social anxiety and L2 speech fluency
Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) is an important sociopsychological factor and a source of individual differences in the acquisition of foreign languages (Teimouri et al, 2019). FLA is known to have a negative effect on language achievement, since it hinders learners’ ability to perform in a FL class successfully (Horwitz et al, 1986). Despite extensive previous research on FLA, L2 speaking anxiety (the feelings of nervousness when speaking the target FL) and its influence on L2 speaking fluency is currently under-researched, even in instructed FL classrooms where learners report speaking-oriented activities, especially oral presentations, to be highly anxiety-evoking (Price, 1991; Young, 1990). Moreover, typically, FLA has been assessed subjectively through questionnaires and interviews, but more recent research (Gregersen et al, 2014) includes physiological measures of emotional arousal, such as the heart rate (HR) and the electrodermal activity (EDA), which are variations in the electrical characteristics of the skin based on the state of sweat glands in the skin. Nonetheless, the relationship between subjective and physiological measures of speaking anxiety are still not well understood. In this workshop, an overview of L2 speaking anxiety will be provided and we will discuss the different factors that generate distress; what has to be considered when designing an experiment to measure anxiety and much more.
Gisela Sosa Lopez is a PhD student with an FPU grant at the University of Barcelona (UB), where she also finished her MA studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts. She also holds an MA degree in Teacher Training in Compulsory Secondary and Upper Secondary School Education, Vocational Training and Languages (UB). Her PhD thesis, which is supervised by Dr Joan C. Mora (UB), aims at exploring the effects of L2 speaking anxiety on L2 speaking fluency, pronunciation accuracy (accentedness) and comprehensibility when performing different oral narrative tasks. This PhD thesis is part of a research project entitled “Pronunciation and phono-lexical representations in Spanish EFL learners: Assessing the benefits of phonetic training and form-focused instructed SLA (PhonLex-iSLA)” (PID2019-107814GB-I00).
Radek Skarnitzl &
Michaela Rabanová
INSTITUTE OF PHONETICS, CHARLES UNIVERSITY
APRIL 20, 2023
1.00 p.m. CEST
Effect of speech rhythm manipulations on native English speakers’ credibility
The aim of this talk is to present our study which examines whether irregular rhythm of speech in English native speakers affects how trustworthy they sound to listeners. Furthermore, the study shows how university students of the English language and people with other university majors differ in their evaluation of trustworthiness in speakers with irregular rhythm. Firstly, we will include a short theoretical introduction about how people make subconscious judgments about us based on the way we talk. Next, we will describe in detail all the methods we used to create the experiment and the perception test that we gave to the listeners. Finally, we will present the results and have a discussion with the participants.
Radek Skarnitzl is a forensic phonetician. His principal interests include two areas lying between phonetics and other sciences. First, it is examining ways of identifying the speaker from the speech signal (forensic phonetics). The second area covers various aspects related to foreign accents, mostly to Czech English.
Michaela Rabanová is an MA student at the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.