VEIP 8
RECENT EVENTS
VEIP8 on Lexicogrammatical variation in world Englishes, convened by Pam Peters (Macquarie University), was held in Brisbane, Australia on 19 June 2023 as a one-day international workshop prior to the ISLE7 conference. The contributors and their teams presented in person and via zoom, spanning time zones across the world.
Morning papers featured lexicopragmatic variation in a single variety, including:
- Pragmatics in SriLankan English (Tobias Bernaisch, Giessen University, Germany)
- Disappearing Anglo-Indianisms in Indian English (Robert Fuchs, Hamburg University, Germany)
- Discourse markers in Cebu English/Bislish (Loy Lising, Macquarie University)
- Changing vocabulary on immigrants and refugees(1970-2020) in Australian English (Adam Smith, Macquarie University)
Afternoon papers compared select lexicogrammatical features across multiple varieties of English in large corpora, including:
- Adverbs of evidentiality (Ben Purser, Australian National University)
- The lexicogrammar of persuasion (Robert Fuchs, Hamburg University, Germany)
- Modal had better(Alessandro Basile, City University of Paris, France)
- Habitual aspect (Sven Leuckert, Dresden University; Jacob Neels, Arne Lohmann, University of Leipzig, Germany)
- Discursive construction of gender: she/he as subjects of verbs (Axel Bohmann, Freiburg University, Germany)
A parallel workshop at ISLE7 convened by Kate Burridge featured contrasting perspectives on Australian slang from “people’s poetry” to “dustbin language”, with papers on its creativity, performativity, and longevity, and comparing modes of swearing by Anglo-Celtic, Chinese- and Italian-Australians.