On April 20, 2023, the Department was honored to digitally receive three foreign guests as a part of the annual April linguistic workshop Lingpril. Professor Billy Clark of the Northumbria University introduced workshop participants to the depths of pragmatics. Students and others were especially intrigued by the concept of “mindreading” in the pragmatic sense of the phrase. Professor Clark introduced it on the example sentence “I can’t see how to share”. Though formally distinct, on the recievers’ end, this sentence causes the same reaction as the sentence “I would like you to help me to share [my screen]”. If you would like to learn about this concept and much more, watch the workshop recording here.
Gisela Sosa Lopez from the University of Barcelona talked about anxiety and its influence on L2 speech fluency. She showed how she uses modern digital devices (e.g., smart watches) to measure stress in recording students’ English language production.
The third workshop dealt with speech rhythm and its impact on perception of speakers’ credibility. This was the research topic of Michaela Rabanová’s bachelor thesis, produced under the supervision of Radek Skarnitzl at the Charles University in Prague. The recording of their workshop can be found here.
You can read more about the workshops, each attended by approximately 30-40 participants, at the official website: https://www.lingpril.kaa.ff.ukf.sk/
