Activities

The project group has been involved in the organization of the following seminars and symposia:

XXXIV Linguistic Symposium of Finland. The theme of this annual national symposium, held in Oulu 24-25- May 2007, was Cognitive linguistics and the study of interaction - points of contact and possible common research questions? The invited speakers were Prof. Jonathan Potter, Prof. Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Prof. Tuomas Huumo. In addition their plenary lectures, the program consisted of parallel sessions and workshops, with a total of over 80 papers given. The number of participants at Oulu was around 200 and included participants not only from Finland but also from Sweden, Estonia and Russia. For more information, see http://www.oulu.fi/kielitieteenpaivat2007.

V Finnish Seminar on Conversation Studies Locating stance and affect in conversation: From syntax to prosody to embodiment in Oulu, January 18-20, 2006. The majority of research papers presented at this seminar discuss practices of taking stances and displaying attitudes, affiliation, disaffiliation, positioning, evaluation and affect, whether such practices are manifested in the lexical, syntactic or prosodic encoding of the ongoing action or in its encoding in terms of gestures, gaze or body movement. There are three plenary speakers: Prof. John Du Bois, Prof. Anu Klippi and Prof. John Local. For more information, see http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/keskusteluntutkimus2006/.

Research seminar Embodied, prosodic and linguistic practices in interaction in Oulu, October  31-November 2, 2005. The seminar consisted of lectures by Dr Paul McIlvenny and Dr Pirkko Raudaskoski, and data sessions by Dr Arja Piirainen-Marsh, Leila Kääntä and the project researchers.

Autumn Symposium of AFinLA 2004, Language and Social Action, in Oulu, November 12-13, 2004. The symposium consisted of several sections and workshops as well as plenary presentations by FD Anna Lindström, Dr. Paul McIlvenny and Dr. Sanna Vehviläinen. The project group convened a workshop to discuss stance taking and affiliation. For more information, see http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/afinla.

Tenth Biennial Rice Linguistics Symposium Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity in interaction, organized by Dr. Robert Englebretson at Rice University, March 31-April 3, 2004. The stance project sponsored and gave four papers at the symposium, which brought together an international group of scholars interested in stance taking from a wide range of approaches. For more information, see http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/symposium_2004.html.

Langnet seminar in Oulu, September 10-12, 2003. This seminar was organized in order to give research students in Langnet's subprogram "The structure and use of language" an opportunity to present and discuss their work. Prof. John Du Bois was invited to give a keynote speech. For more information, see http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/stance/seminar2003.html.

Seminar "Stance Taking, Dialogic Syntax, and Interaction - with data from English and Finnish Conversations", Oulu, September 2-10, 2003. The seminar comprised workshops, data sessions and lectures by two invited speakers, Prof. John Du Bois and Prof. Jan-Ola Östman. For more information, see http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/stance/seminar2003.html .

Research seminar, Oulu, May 3-5, 2001. The seminar consisted of lectures and data sessions. The invited speaker, Dr. Paul McIlvenny gave talks on "Rethinking the 'centre' and the 'margins' in studies of talk and conversation" and "New perspectives on agency, identity and desire in discursive practices".

Research visits:

Elise Kärkkäinen

• Department of English, University of Ghent, Belgium. February 16-20, 2004.
• Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. February 22 - March 22, 2002.

Pentti Haddington

• Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. May 15, 2001 - April 28, 2002.

Tiina Keisanen

• Department of Swedish, University of Goteborg, Sweden. May 19-30, 2003.
• Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. January 1 - March 31, 2003.
• Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. January 1 - August 31, 2002.

Mirka Rauniomaa

• Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. January 1 - March 31, 2003.

Maarit Niemelä

• Department of English Language, University of Glasgow. January 1 - February 20, 2004.