Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-conference workshops program (full version, with abstracts):{LINK}

1. Queer Japanese/Korean Linguistics  (Half day)

Organisers
Claire Maree, University of Melbourne
Thomas Baudinette, Macquarie University
Maki Yoshida, RMIT University

This collaborative workshop explores how researchers and educators in Japanese and Korean linguistics can collaborate to build solidarities across a diversity of settings and develop best practices in Japanese/Korean queer linguistics. The workshop welcomes participants from all career stages – especially undergraduate and postgraduate students and early career scholars – and from across the spectrum of linguistic and other cognate disciplines. Importantly, the workshop explicitly seeks to bring together both linguistic researchers and active language teachers across all educational levels (elementary, secondary, and tertiary). Led by experts working at the forefront of queer theoretical research in Japanese and Korean studies, the workshop adopts an active, roundtable format that aims to engage participants in collaborative discussions. The workshop will focus on exploring the following topics:

  • recent trends in queer linguistics (inclusive of formal/structural, socio-cultural, and applied linguistics) and their development in Japanese and Korean linguistics.
    • recent trends in queer and trans inclusive language education pedagogies.
    • the inclusion and affirmation of sexual, gendered, and other diversities within languages/linguistics research, as both a field and as a practice.
    • reflections on the teaching of queer theory and queer linguistics within both "content courses" and "language courses.”
    • differences and pressures facing Japanese and Korean queer (linguistics) studies.
    • queer linguistics as a (radical) activist practice.

2. Co-investigation of Japanese and Korean local linguistic resources for the ubiquitous problem of modulating conversational actions to particulars of the here-and-now (Half day)

Organisers
Tomoyo Takagi, University of Tsukuba
Emi Morita, University of Singapore

Participants in interaction, regardless of the language, face the ubiquitous challenge of crafting their actions and utterances to suit the particulars of the here and now. Using the methodology of Conversation Analysis as developed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, this workshop examines language-specific resources employed by participants in Japanese and Korean interactions to modulate their conversational actions in real-time.

We particularly focus on the following practices in each language: the turn-internal use of 'un' (lit. 'yeah'), the turn-final use of 'nanka' (lit. 'something'), and disfluency in preferred actions in Japanese; and use of the interjection 'mwe’ (lit. 'what') and the other-repair initiator 'na?' ('me? ') in Korean.

In Japanese conversation, turn-internal 'un' appears to precede a reconfiguration of the unfolding turn to better suit the recipient's concerns or other here-and-now contingencies. Turn-final 'nanka' suggests the completion of the turn/sequence while acknowledging unresolved problems, such as discrepancies with the preceding turn, or that some issues have been left unarticulated. We also argue that various linguistic features typically labeled as "disfluency" can be reinterpreted as the speaker's display of resistance to produce a preferred action.

In Korean conversation, the interjection ‘mwe’ serves two apparently distinct functions: one trivializes the referent or topic it precedes or follows, while the other marks the exemplification or listing of entities, both indicating the speaker’s recognition of divergence from the recipient’s assumptions or commonsense expectations. The respondent’s initiation of repair with “na?” (‘me?’) in Korean in response to a preceding question occurs in contexts where no or minimal misunderstanding regarding the question’s relevance to the recipient is present. This repair initiation functions as a resource to postpone or circumvent answering the question at hand.

Our workshop aims to explore how these linguistic resources and practices are deployed to modulate conversational actions in the immediacy of interaction, while navigating the intricacies of the here-and-now. Through co-investigating these linguistic resources and practices across the two languages, we aim to uncover both their unique language-specific local affordances, as well as those common features reflecting the shared challenge of coordinating and modulating conversational actions under constantly shifting here-and-now contingencies. This comparative co-investigation will enrich our understanding of the localized interactional practices through which intersubjectivity is intricately built and maintained in human interaction.

3. The Korean Language in Australasia: Usage, maintenance, ideologies (Full day)

Organisers
Soyeon Kim (Monash University)
Jiyoung Kim (Monash University)
Daniel Pieper (Monash University)
Lucien Brown (Monash University)

This pre-conference workshop for the J/K Linguistics Conference brings together scholars working on Korean language learning, bilingualism and sociolinguistics to discuss the usage of Korean in multilingual communities in Australasia. The workshop seeks to explore how Korean is used and maintained within migrant Korean communities, as well as the increasing acquisition and usage of Korean by second language speakers in the region. Presentations explore how these patterns of usage, maintenance and acquisition are related to language ideologies, attitudes and motivations. Topics under discussion will include patterns of Korean language maintenance and usage among Koreans in Australasia, attitudes and ideologies regarding Korean (and other languages) prevalent in Korean communities, Korean language usage in public spaces in Australasian cities, motivations and language attitudes of second language learners of Korean in Australasia, and Korean teacher training in the region.