Expressivity: Variation and Change (Ex:VaC)

Expressivity is a category in natural languages that concerns the direct expression of emotions and attitudes (in contrast to their description). Expressive meaning can be conveyed at all linguistic level: by lexical expressions, special syntactic constructions, intonation or on the pragmatic level by expressive speech acts.

While there has been made tremendous progress in our understanding of the semantics, pragmatics, and (to a lesser degree) syntax of expressive language, the great majority of this work has focused on individual languages from a synchronic view. Hence, our understanding of the variation of expressivity between languages is very limited and mostly concerns aspects in which expressivity does not vary much between languages. And while there are some hints at variation within a language (see e.g. Gutzmann/Turgay 2015 on expressive intensifiers), this has not been studied systematically. And on the broader typological level, we do not even have a good idea of what the parameters are along which expressivity may vary between languages. Similarly, there is not much dedicated diachronic work on expressivity, so that the little that there is mostly borrows from grammaticalization and/or pragmaticalization theory (e.g. Davis/Gutzmann 2015, Müller 2024), leaving us without much insight into how expressive language actually and systematically emerges and evolves.

This workshop aims at filling this gap by encouraging and bringing together research on variation and change in expressivity. Questions that may be addressed at the workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:

• With respect to which parameters/aspects does the expressions of expressivity vary across languages and which aspects are rather stable (and may point towards universals regarding expressivity)?
• What are intra-language variations regarding expressivity? Are there, e.g., inter-speaker factors that influence the expression and use of expressive meanings (such as age, region, gender, and other sociolinguistic aspects)? 
• How do expressive expressions emerge and evolve over time? Are there regular patterns that can be attested? Can existing theories of semantic change explain these or are there specific ways in which expressivity arises and changes?

Contributions are encouraged to take broader views (and are invited to be a bit speculative in their conclusion), but studies on single expressive phenomena in languages that are understudied with respect to expressivity are also welcome.