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).
