International Pragmatics Association, IPrA, July 9-14, 2023
Panel, July 10
Pragmatic Variation in Pluricentric Languages
J. César Félix-Brasdefer & Klaus P. Schneider
Research on linguistic pluricentrism has mostly concentrated on national varieties of a language, as well as on dominant and non-dominant varieties (Schneider & Félix-Brasdefer 2022). Pluricentric languages, such as English, German, French, Swahili, Dutch, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish, have been generally defined as languages having different national varieties, each with a standard codified register. Intra-lingual pragmatic variation is systematically studied in variational pragmatics (Schneider & Barron 2008; Schneider 2020). This approach is focused on the intersection of pragmatics and dialectology and examines differences that can be correlated with macrosocial and microsocial factors that influence communicative language use. Relevant macrosocial factors include region, gender, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, while microsocial factors include social distance/degree of familiarity, social power, and situational variation. Region, whose impact on language use has received more attention in research than any of the other factors mentioned here, has been theorized as a multifaceted concept pertaining to five levels in geographical space: supranational, national, subnational, local, and sublocal (Schneider & Barron 2008). Region is, therefore, not limited to the traditional understanding in dialectology, but used here as “an umbrella term for a hierarchy of spatial entities” (Schneider 2010, p. 248).
This panel examines pragmatic variation at the level of national varieties of seven different pluricentric languages, i.e., languages with several interacting centers and norms of their own (Clyne, 1992). The languages covered are Arabic, Chinese, English, German, French, Spanish, and Swedish, among them two non-Indo-European languages and some understudied Indo-European languages. The national varieties also include three postcolonial varieties (Namibian English; Nigerian English; Cameroon French). We investigate and problematize to what extent place plays a role in pragmatic variation. The panel focuses on the analysis of language use at different levels of analysis such as the formal, actional, sequential, interactional, organizational, stylistic, and prosodic levels. Methodological principles and methodological choices are also discussed, specifically data types and data collection instruments. The panel is organized in three sessions, with a total of nine presentations, including Q & A for each presentation. There will be opening remarks and a final discussion.