CFP: BAAHE Common Sense(s) in English Language and Literatures (Belgium) (10/15/05; 11/26/05)

2005 Annual BAAHE Conference

Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education

Date: 26 November 2005

Place: European Business School Brussels, Stormstraat 2, Brussels

Theme: Common Sense(s) in English Language and Literatures

The BAAHE Conference of 2005 and the thematic issue of BELL 2006 will focus
on "common senses". This is, obviously, a broad theme which offers many
possible approaches. First there is "common sense", the idea of a "healthy"
approach to life, and the notion of "native wit". But normality can also
become imperative (and imperialist) in its imposition of a norm.

More specifically in the context of the problematic issue of "Englishness",
contributors may tackle the question of "common sense" as an English
ideology and/or empirical discourse that functions as the 'Other' of
continental/theoretical models. "Common sense" can also be linked to the
idea of a commonweal (state) and its common wealth; the history of the
Commonwealth may fit here too. The concept of commonness also has an
emotional component, as the common can be charming or irksome. Interactions
between the traditional versus the "original" can be envisaged here too. Of
course there is also the tension between the "common" versus the "élitist";
every culture has its in-built hierarchies.

Inspired by the above, researchers in ELT may want to address the following
questions and related issues. How do we delineate or define communality? How
is it formed by certain traits in communication? How do communication and
communion relate? How do the insider and the outsider experience "a common
culture"? How are the reactions to the uncommon pictured, the common and its
liminalities? Researchers in Critical Discourse Analysis are also aware
that "common sense" is problematic as unthematized ideologies are at work in
texts.

The five senses, of course, cover a wide field.
-There is the question of "taste" in its many meanings: when are manners,
arrangements, interactions, in good /bad taste? Though the Romans maintained
that "de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum est", we can and do dispute
matters, not only concerning taste and colours but also in the other senses.
-What about the implied hierarchy in the senses? Is not the optical often
less important than the auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory?
-Sensory perception is a matter of shades; is it possible to delineate
sensitivity, sensibility, sensuousness, sensuality etc?
-The literary space used to be described in terms of topoi, like the
pleasant and the terrible place (locus amoenus, locus terribilis), in which
the senses were very important. Are contemporary authors still inspired by
these motifs?

For linguistics, too, the subject can be approached in many ways.
-One could look at the power of cognitive verbs.
-How do "sense and sentence" relate?
-Working with thesaurus categories can reveal interesting questions;
-the verb or noun sense can be investigated, sense relations, sense and
polysemy
-Saussurean "sense"
-How do we make sense of corpus data ?
-And, finally, the sense of language differences is interesting to us all,
from whichever disciplinary or subdisciplinary point of view, such as
pragmatics, functional grammar, discourse and genre analysis.

The aim is to chart these possible enquiries and assess their importance
from the perspectives of ELT, linguistics and literature.

Please send proposals for papers (a title and 250-word abstract) to Geert
Beheydt (geert.beheydt_at_ehsal.be)

*****Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2005.*******

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Received on Fri Apr 29 2005 - 13:23:09 EDT