POZVANA PREDAVANJA | PLENARY TALKS
prof. dr. sc. Kees de Bot
Sveučilište u Groningenu, Nizozemska i Sveučilište u Veszpremu, Mađarska | University of Groningen, the Netherlands and University of Veszprem, Hungary
What counts as Evidence in Applied Linguistics?
What constitutes evidence in science has been debated for centuries and some of the leading philosophers have written about it. In this presentation some first thoughts on what is evidence will be presented. A core issue is that in the humanities as opposed to mathematics, we have no proof, only evidence. Following the American philosopher of science Peter Aichinstein, it will be argued that ultimately what matters I whether there is ‘reason to believe’ that particular evidence supports a hypothesis or not. This will be illustrated using the examples three controversial issues: ‘The bilingual advantage’, ‘the role of the non-dominant hemisphere in bilingual processing and learning’, and ‘the effectiveness of early bilingual education’.
dr. sc. Stela Letica Krevelj
Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Ethical issues in language acquistion research
Ethics is considered an essential part of any valid research and it is generally defined as norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. However, the mere existence of numerous official guidelines, in the form of steering documents, and regulatory bodies, such as ethics committees, suggests that there is more to ethics than common sense. There are many disagreements on what constitutes ethically appropriate behaviour in research and some of them are due to different interpretations of the same ethical principle concerning the specifics of a research field and methodology. The aim of this interactive presentation is to help young researchers deal with the ethical dilemmas they are likely to face in preparing and conducting research. Reflecting on ethical issues in the study of language, or multiple languages, we will take the most basic formal tool, informed consent, to introduce researchers to important ethical principles and methods in ethical decision-making. We will discuss issues related to doing research with children and tackle some ethical issues rarely discussed in language research such as deception, participants' voices, and linguistic realities. In the presentation we will use some real cases as examples of issues that may arise and the audience is invited to share their own issues and concerns.
dr. sc. Anđel Starčević
Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
The sociolingustic interview and language ideologies: variables and challanges
The sociolinguistic interview and participant observation (Labov 1984, Tagliamonte 2006) are classical fieldwork methods which nonetheless keep spurring researchers to critical (self-)reflection. This presentation will focus on some of the fieldwork challenges which arose during the author’s research into the bilingualism of a four-person Croatian immigrant family in Toronto, Canada. It will address the following issues: 1) how do we elicit a respondent’s ‘spontaneous’ production in the non-spontaneous interview situation with asymmetrical power relations, and how do we assess the role of the researcher as a factor which influences the respondent’s responses on several levels, 2) how much of the research design should we share with the respondent, considering its possible influence on their production, 3) how do we approach those results in which the respondent’s responses differ from what has been observed by the researcher, and 4) should we allow respondents to listen to the recorded material if they ask to? Since this type of research unavoidably makes the researcher part of the situation which is the object of their study, the decisions which they make about these issues will be reflected in the research results. Given that a respondent’s language ideologies are also a major factor in their language use, researchers cannot afford to neglect this integral part of language behaviour. Typical ideologies in the field include the ideology of the standard language (Milroy 2001), the monoglossic ideology (Wardhaugh & Fuller 2015) and the ideology of the native speaker (Doerr 2009). The second part of the presentation will give an overview of some of the (normative) ideologies which are taken for granted and perceived as ‘commonsensical’ by average speakers, sometimes even by professional linguists. As a result, important information about the field is omitted in linguistic descriptions, which is why it is essential that researchers reflect on their own language ideologies, often normalized as ‘neutral’, ‘scholarly’ views on language phenomena.
RADIONICE | WORKSHOPS
voditelj dr. sc. Nikola Ljubešić
Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Data-driven linguistics: How to collect, process and analyse corpora
In this tutorial we will touch on the three main technical challenges in corpus linguistics: collecting (or borrowing) data for your corpus, processing the collected data with language technologies and analysing corpora with the tools available. In the first part we will consider two possible approaches: collecting your own data by crawling the web or using data dumps and APIs, or reusing data already collected by fellow researchers. In the data processing partwe will make acquaintance with available language technologies, their strengths and especially their weaknesses. Finally, in the analysis part we will primarily focus on the Sketch Engine tool for corpus search and analysis, but will touch on more potent methods such as statistical analysis, inference and data visualisation in R.
voditeljica prof. dr. sc. Višnja Pavičić Takač
Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Osijeku | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek
A Linguist's Foray into Statistics: How numbers help you discover what you want to know
This workshop will provide participants with an overview of most commonly used statistical methods in (applied) linguistic research. It will also include a demonstration of IBM SPSS software as well as examples of studies in which some of the methods were used. Drawing on the presenter's experience in discovering and learning about statistics, the workshop primarily aims at demystifying statistics and showing how it can be utilized as a useful tool in (applied) linguistic research.
voditelj Nikica Gardijan, mag. bibl.
Knjižnica Sveučilišta u Zadru | Library of University in Zadar
Izvori i pretraživanje literature za lingviste
U sklopu ove radionice polaznici će se upoznati s tehnikama pretraživanja znanstvenih informacija s naglaskom na lingvistiku i srodne znanosti. Tokom prvog dijela radionice polaznici će se na teorijskoj razini upoznati s načinima definiranja informacijskog upita – određivanja ključnih riječi za pretraživanje teme i korisnim tehnikama pretraživanja (kraćenje, Booleovi operatori itd.). Osim toga, polaznicima će biti prezentirane i dvije najveće citatne i bibliografske baze podataka (Scopus i Web of Science Core Collection) te Hrvatska znanstvena bibliografija – CROSBI te knjižnični katalozi hrvatskih i svjetskih knjižnica. U drugom dijelu radionice polaznici će se baviti praktičnim pretraživanjima u svrhu usvajanja novih tehnika koje su im prezentirane.
