Every year, the SSA holds a workshop at the SAES conference.
• The next SAES conference venue will be in Aix-en-Provence (6-8June 2019) on the following topic: “Exceptions” (see call for papers below)
Please send your proposal (of about 300 words) to Sandrine Sorlin by November 1st, 2018.
Call for Papers:
Exceptions, the exceptional use of a marker, the out-of-norm remarkable phrase, the exceptionally inventive figure of speech, i.e. all that escapes pre-conceived rules, are bound to appeal to the stylistician concerned with the norms and margins of a language.
If the exception must be thought in relation to a rule, one can ask if exceptions can have their own rules, following the example of the rules of the so-called non-standard dialects, which are themselves often predicated on those of the standard – making one wonder whether one can get out of the hierarchical classification that makes the standard the yardstick by which non-standard varieties are assessed. The term « exception » can indeed take on ideological connotations as soon as the national standard conceives itself as the norm to follow and thus “inevitably” marginalises everything that does not conform to it.
Being relegated to the status of an exception is not to fit in any linguistic theory (yet). Embodying the “remainder” of language, what remains “unresolved”, exceptions still await a more encompassing theory that could account for them. But this “remainder” can be meaningful especially when it takes the form of small “a-grammaticalities” (Deleuze 1989, Lecercle 2008) “figuring” a semantic and pragmatic supplement (Jenny 1990) or expressing what could not be said otherwise. The breaching of Standard English could thus cease to be construed as a deviation from a preconstructed norm (there is no such thing as a unique norm anyway) but could be perceived as « an acknowledgement of the potentialities inherent in language » (Gardes Tamine 2010). The exception can also be perceived as a phase on its way to standardisation, as what is exceptional now may become tomorrow’s norm.
To take exception or to be the odd one out can be purposeful in literature/fiction as well as in politics, in essays or on social networks: it can aim at denying imposed standards or established cannons.
In discourse analysis, a speech deviating from the generic norms that are supposed to support it is worth studying as it enables to spot out the markers of rupture with the generic norms and grasp what remains and what emerges, thus heralding a possible renewal of a genre.
The (non-exhaustive) following topics could be addressed:
– exceptions as deviations, as marginalised items or as inherent to language ?
– linguistic, pragmatic, stylistic infringements/ violations and their effects in context
– the play on linguistic, generic and ideological norms/rules
– exceptional styles, their features and challenges
– breach of styles and meaning in literary or artistic movements
– the new styles of communication
– stylistic eccentricities
– the grammaticality of a-grammaticality
– exceptions and standardization
– the representation of non-standard dialects in fiction
– exceptions to a specific genre
– the style of exceptional women and men
• Previous workwhops and programs
Nanterre 2018: stylistic workshop – Paris Nanterre 2018
Reims 2017 : stylistic workshop Reims 2017
Lyon 2016: Stylistics workshop Lyon 2016