Dear Colleague,



The deadline for submitting papers to the GURT conference on Telling Stories is
*October 15th*. We invite you to consider submitting an abstract or panel for
the conference. Please also circulate the following Call for Papers to other
potentially interested participants. For more information, please go to the
following link:



www8.georgetown.edu/college/gurt/2008



Anna De Fina and Deborah Schiffirn

Georgetown University



CALL FOR PAPERS, GURT 08



Telling Stories:

Building bridges among Language, Narrative, Identity, Interaction, Society and
Culture.



March 14- 16, 2008



Narratives have been studied in many different disciplines: linguistics,
literary theory, clinical psychology, cognitive and developmental psychology,
folklore, anthropology, sociology and history.



The primary focus of GURT 2008 is the linguistic study of narrative, especially
as it has developed within discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.



As our theme suggests, however, studying the language of narrative can take us
far afield to other concerns: the construction of self and identity; the
differences among spoken, written and computer-mediated discourse; the role that
small and big (e.g. life) stories play in everyday social interactions; the
contribution of narrative to social status, roles and meanings within
institutional settings as varied as therapeutic and medical encounters,
education, politics, media, marketing and public relations.



Thus GURT 2008 will be a forum for building interconnections among language,
narrative and social life.



Featured Speakers: William Labov, Jerome Bruner, Richard Bauman



We invite proposals for presentations related to the conference themes:



• the language of narratives: form, meaning and use

• narrative modalities: spoken, written, computer-mediated

• small/short stories in everyday social interaction

• large/long stories in life stories and oral histories

• narrative in and of social institutions, e.g. clinical practice
(therapy,

medicine), education, politics, media, marketing, public relations

• narratives of displacement, resistance and social change



Proposal submission deadline is October 15, 2007. Notification of proposal
acceptance: December 12, 2007. A prize will be awarded to the best student
presentation or poster; no separate application is needed.



Presentation formats include:



(1) Colloquia: Scheduled for 2-hour blocks. Colloquium organizers may divide
time as they choose, but time should be allocated for opening and closing
remarks, presentations, discussion and audience response. Organizers serve as
the liaison between participants and the conference organizers. Organizers may
choose to participate in the panel as a presenter or discussant.



(2) Individual papers: 20 minutes long with a 10-minute discussion period.



(3) Poster presentations: displayed for a 2-hour block of time; an opportunity
to report on work in progress in one-on-one discussions.



Poster and paper submissions will require an abstract of 250 words. Colloquia
submissions will require a 250 word abstract (describing the overall session), a
title and an abstract (250 words) for each paper.



Proposal submission is only through the conference website:
www8.georgetown.edu/college/gurt/2008/



More information about the submission procedure is available under Abstract
Submission.