V Encuentros de Pragmática Intercultural, Cognitiva y Social (EPICS V)

This edition will be devoted to “Relevance Theory: recent developments, current challenges and future directions”

The research group “Intercultural Pragmatic Studies (English-Spanish): Pragmatic and Discourse Aspects” is pleased to announce the celebration of the Fifth International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS V, the Spanish acronym for “Encuentros de Pragmática Intercultural, Cognitiva y Social”). This Symposium will be held in March 14-16, 2012, at Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain.

After addressing issues related to (im)politeness, intercultural pragmatics or interlanguage pragmatics in previous editions, this fifth edition of the Symposium turns its attention to Relevance-theoretic pragmatics. Under the topic “Relevance Theory: recent developments, current challenges and future directions”, we hope that this 5th edition of EPICS gathers practitioners of Pragmatics and other neighbouring fields to discuss and present works on their latest research in the field of relevance-theoretic pragmatics, as well as to share experiences and suggest new avenues for research within this theoretical paradigm in the near future. EPICS V also wishes to create awareness among graduate students not only of the growing interest in an area of linguistic expertise such as Pragmatics, but also of one of its most vibrant paradigms, namely Relevance Theory.

For this edition, we will be honoured with the presence of Prof Deirdre Wilson and Prof Robyn Carston (UCL, London and CSMN, University of Oslo), as keynote speakers. The titles of their lectures will be announced in due course.