CFP: New approaches to evaluative discourse

CFP: New Approaches to Evaluative Discourse, 10-12th of June, 2024. 

We’re happy to announce the conference New Approaches to Evaluative Discourse that will take place on the 10th-12th of June 2024 at Umeå University, Sweden. 

Description

What distinguishes evaluative discourse from non-evaluative discourse? By virtue of what meaning mechanisms are specific terms and phrases evaluative? What are the similarities and differences between different types of evaluative terms? 

The last twenty years have given rise to a host of new approaches to these issues. For instance, in the discussion of predicates of personal taste, assessment relativism has been developed to accommodate phenomena such as faultless disagreement. In metaethics, a variety of new formal semantic and metasemantic theories have been put forth as a response to embedding problems for expressivism about moral terms. In the surging discussion of slurring terms, socio-linguistic aspects of meaning have been appealed to in order to explain their evaluative force. The aim of the conference is to explore how such new approaches to evaluativity in language can be developed, criticized or generalized to other evaluative domains.  

Confirmed speakers 

Debbie Roberts (University of Edinburgh) 

Dilip Ninan (Tufts University) 

Malte Willer (University of Chicago)

Isidora Stojanovic (Institut Jean Nicod)

Call for papers

There are five to seven open slots that are distributed via a call for papers. If you’re interested, please submit an anonymised abstract of 800-1000 words to [email protected] by the 31st of January 2024. The topic of the abstract should be on evaluative discourse (broadly construed).

The workshop will be held as part of the project The Meaning of Evaluative Language which is funded by the Swedish Research Council. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact [email protected] or [email protected].