As newly appointed member of the International Scientific Council of IDS, Prof Hirvonen visited the Jahrestagung, on its 61. occasion, for the first time. The topic of the conference was “Deutsch im Wandel” (German in flux). The Jahrestagung offers globally insights to current developments in the study of German, in its past and present varieties and modalities.
The conference provided an overview of current descriptive, theoretical, and methodological findings from the field of language change research and offer an outlook on its potential. The focus was on German varieties of the present and recent history. The conference focused on a variety of topics related to the phenomena, dimensions, and determinants of language change processes:
- Lines and main features of change across language levels
- Linguistic levels of change and their interaction
- Suitability of different data sources and methodological approaches for researching change and its determinants
- Contemporary linguistic reflections of historical change
- Change processes in different varieties of German
- Language change and its theoretical modeling
The second event was the annual conference of conversation analysis in German (24. Arbeitstagung zur Gesprächsforschung) on the topic of responsive behaviour in interaction. Prof. Hirvonen presented a paper with Prof. Arnulf Deppermann from IDS on multimodal resources in interaction between blind and sighted participants, focusing on the use of gaze, nods, and other non-verbal communication by blind participants when they respond with the word “okay” to a particular action (informings).
When asked about the outcome of the conference presentation, Prof Hirvonen replied: “We hope to publish the interesting findings of this analysis in a scientific journal in the year to come.”
We are thankful to Prof Maija Hirvonen for representing Plural and Tampere University at an academic event of such an impressive scale and for being the champion of German studies both at the national and international level.
