Language and Attitude

From February 28 to March 01, 2024 (with satellite events on February 27), the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) hosts the 46th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS).

A total of 14 work shops and 4 plenary talks will investigate language from a variety of perspectives. The theme of confernece – Language and Attitude - focuses on one of the most crucial functions of language. 

Language is one of the most important, probably even the most important means to express attitudes:

• personal attitudes such as desires, needs, or preferences,
• public attitudes such as political beliefs.

Language is used to express such attitudes:

• through explicit attitude expressions, or
• through means of implicit attitude encoding.

Language is also used to influence attitudes, those of our interlocutors or of the general public.

Moreover, language plays a crucial role in shaping and forming attitudes:

• externally as an opinion-shaping tool,
• internally as a factor of psychological manifestation of attitudes.

Also, language is the object of attitudes itself:

• in debates about the “correct” use of language,
• when language itself is to be evaluated (e.g. in school), or
• when we form grammaticality judgments.

The theme thus allows for workshops in all linguistic core areas, sub-disciplines and interfaces.