4th International Workshop on the HSCR

We confirm that the workshop will take place as planned, i.e. in hybrid form. Some participants will present their contributions in person at the Institute of Phonetics, Prague, while others will connect remotely via Zoom. Please download the appliaction in advance, and check whether your internet connection is stable and ensure that everything works (https://zoom.us/test). There will be a dedicated test session a few days before the workshop. Instructions will be sent soon via email.

The review process has been concluded. In addition to two invited lectures, the organizing committee have received 7 regular papers to be presented at the 4th International Workshop on the HSCR. The programme will be uploaded shortly.

Starting from today, it is possible to register for the workshop. This is done by filling the registration form. Payment will be possible after the registration deadline (June 27).

We are glad to announce that the 4th HSCR workshop has officially been endorsed by ISCA as a satellite event of Interspeech 2021 in Brno (https://www.interspeech2021.org/satellites). The Interspeech conference will be held subsequently from August 30 to September 3, 2021. The HSCR proceedings will be published in print and also stored electronically in the ISCA archive.

We are glad to announce that the 4th workshop on the HSCR will be held in hybrid form. The situation in the Czech Republic is still far from ideal, but there is now reasonable prospect of a gradual improvement coupled with ongoing vaccination of the population. It thus seems quite likely that we will be able to meet in person and participate at the event fully. The small scale of the workshop allows us to implement safety precautions and at the same time not let these precautions disrupt the comfort of the participants. There will also be an option to participate via online access if you experience travel or other problems due to the pandemics. Please check this website for updates and further information. We will reevaluate our decision before the summer, and will stay positive in spirit until then.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers interested in historical aspects of all areas of speech communication research. Contributions on any such topic will be welcome.

What is worth examining, among other things, is the approach of researchers to their material. The special focus will be on the link in linguistic signs between the form (sound) and the meaning (sense) in speech communication research. The phonetic endeavour was often claimed to concern only the form, while meaning was delegated to semanticians (affective psychology, pragmatics or semantics in broader sense). Studying the sound structure of human speech without a regard to communicative meanings is not only one-sided and incomplete, but also difficult to integrate into the wider scientific knowledge. The way researchers managed/refused to ignore meanings (functions) could be quite inspiring today.

Invited speakers are Angelika Braun from Trier University (Germany) with a talk entitled “Leaving the ivory tower: How real-life events have impacted phonetics throughout history” and Tomáš Hoskovec, President of the Prague Linguistic Circle (Czech Rep.) with a talk on “A history of sound, sign, and meaning: The Prague Centre per­spective and prospect”.

The proceedings will be published in the book series Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation at TUDpress (Technical University Dresden).

The aim of the workshop series is to bring together researchers that are interested in historical aspects of all areas of speech communication research (SCR).

Speech has been investigated from different perspectives, which necessitates a range of approaches and scientific methods. Previous contributions analyzed the contextual background of individual researchers or investigated how specific research practices developed over time. However, what is equally worth examination is the approach of researchers to their material. The special focus of the 4^th workshop will thus be on the link between the form (sound) and the meaning (sense) in speech communication research exemplified through its history, particularly the relationship between SCR on the one hand, and affective psychology, pragmatics or semantics in broader sense on the other. After all, studying the sound structure of human speech without a regard to communicative meanings is not only incomplete, but also difficult to integrate into the wider scientific knowledge.

Contributions on other topics from the history of SCR will also be welcome.