Language in Mind and Society

There is a wealth of work on language across all our Colleges at the University of Birmingham. This has resulted in some interdisciplinary collaboration, but there remain huge unexploited opportunities for the university. And there is a particular 'hot' topic for many disciplines which would provide cross-disciplinary opportunities for colleagues across the university. This will be the workshop's central theme.

It is about interactions between the cognition that underlies individuals' use of language with social and cultural factors; including issues such as how social interaction and social/cultural differences affect language, in its external forms, people's related internal cognition, and the very notions of meaning and understanding. It also includes issues such as how language aspects such as metaphor and emotional/evaluative connotations contribute both to social cohesion and social/cultural difference, and how language relates to communicative modes such as gestures, diagrams and pictures. These matters are important for solving practical problems; from government-citizen communication through teaching practice, to computer technology that interacts with people in ways they find congenial. 

The workshop will seek to stimulate discussion on possible collaboration across a wide variety of disciplines: AI, psychology, social sciences, philosophy, medicine, linguistics, to name just a few. It will include brief, idea-seeding presentations by external speakers and plenty of discussion time over the two days, where participants from any part of the university will be encouraged to contribute.

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME:

Thursday 25^th July

Friday 26^th July