STAL organizes a monthly seminar on issues related to the study of slurs, pejoratives, and evaluative and expressive terms in general, from less studied languages.
The titles and abstracts of the talks in the 2024-2025 academic year can be seen here.
The titles and abstracts of the 2023-2024 academic year can be seen here.
In the 2025-2026 academic year, the STAL seminar takes place on
MONDAYS, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time.
The next seminar is
DECEMBER 15
Xavier Villalba (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
"Expressivity cross-linguistically: A corpus study of expressive and evaluative adjectives in Romance and Germanic"
Abstract:
In this presentation, I argue that pure expressive adjectives (such as English fucking and damn) represent the final stage in a process of intersubjectivization (Traugott 2010; Traugott & Dasher 2002). This process begins with a descriptive qualifying adjective, moves through a stage of subjectivization—typical of both evaluative adjectives (e.g., pathetic, horrible) and mixed expressive adjectives (bloody, shitty)—and culminates in the pure expressives. This pragmatic shift is linked to semantic bleaching as well as syntactic changes traceable in our corpora. These changes involve features like gradation, function (modifier vs. predicative), and position (postnominal vs. prenominal modification). To support this claim, I will present two corpus studies: 1. A synchronic study designed to identify the most useful features for distinguishing each adjective class in Germanic and Romance languages; 2. A diachronic study, focused on English and Catalan, to trace the historical emergence of these features. The results of these studies will provide a more accurate and comprehensive cross-linguistic understanding of expressive adjectives. Furthermore, they will offer insights into the patterns of change involved and how the speed of this evolution varies across different items and languages.
The schedule for the 2025-2026 academic year is the following:
OCTOBER 27, 2025
Luvell Anderson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Theories of Reclamation"
NOVEMBER 17, 2025
Claire Horisk (University of Missouri)
"Derogatory Speech: Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners"
DECEMBER 15, 2025
Xavier Villalba (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
"Expressivity Cross-linguistically: A Corpus Study of Expressive and Evaluative Adjectives in Romance and Germanic"
JANUARY 19, 2026
Daisy Dixon (Cardiff University)
TBA
FEBRUARY 9, 2026
Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
TBA
MARCH 9, 2026
Leopold Hess (Jagiellonian University)
TBA
APRIL 20, 2026
Robin Jeshion (University of Southern California)
TBA
MAY, 2026
Yim Binh Felix Sze (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
TBA
JUNE, 2026
Mingya Liu (Humboldt University of Berlin)
TBA