Conference on Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Processing; March 31 through April 2, 2016; Blacksburg, Virginia

语言随着各种社会层面的不同而不同，如地区、年龄、种族、性别、教育、礼仪和情绪。结果是，当我们交谈时，我们不仅表达了想法，还传达了关于我们身份和立场的信息。当我们倾听时，我们不仅处理语音流的语言内容，还处理关于我们正在听的人的信息。最近的研究表明，语言内容和社会内容在言语产生和感知过程中的认知表征和机制上是相互依存的：我们根据社会语境自动改变我们产生和解释语言内容的方式，反之亦然。例如，如果听者认为说话者是女性，他们会听到“S”和“sh”之间的含糊声音“shod”，但如果他们认为说话者是男性，则会听到“sod”；如果说话者说“Running”而不是“runnin”，那么他们会认为说话者受过更高的教育；如果与亚洲人配对而不是白人面孔，听者会更难理解英语；说话人会根据最近听到的演讲和交谈的话题改变自己的发音。更好地理解社会和语言信息之间的相互联系不仅有助于我们的语言认知理论，而且还可以促进工业和教育中的跨文化交际以及计算机媒介交际的发展。该奖项将支持在弗吉尼亚理工大学(2016年3月31日至4月2日)举行的关于社会语言变异和语言处理的会议。会议将提供一个场所，来自不同背景的领先研究人员将聚集在一起，分享社会和语言处理交叉领域的尖端工作，并讨论这项工作对语言认知和改善沟通的影响。会议将集中于该领域的五个关键发展领域：社会语言学理论、认知理论、社会语音学、社会句法以及该领域工作的应用。会议组织者将促进研究生和本科生的参与。组织者还将通过开发一个网站来传播会议(以及更广泛地说来自这一调查领域)的关键成果，强调加强沟通和跨文化理解的影响，从而促进公众参与。

Language varies along a variety of social dimensions, such as region, age, ethnicity, gender, education, formality, and mood. The result is that when we talk, we are not only expressing ideas, but also conveying information about our identity and stances. And when we listen, we not only process the linguistic content of the speech stream, but also information about who we are listening to. Recent work has suggested that linguistic and social content are fundamentally interdependent in the cognitive representations and mechanisms involved in speech production and perception: we automatically change the way we produce and interpret linguistic content depending on the social context, and vice versa. For example, listeners will hear the same ambiguous sound between "s" and "sh" as "shod" if they think the speaker is female, but "sod" if they think the speaker is male; listeners will rate speakers as more educated if they say "running" instead of "runnin"; listeners will have more trouble understanding English that is paired with an Asian vs. a White face; and speakers change their pronunciation depending on recent speech they heard, and the topic of conversation. Developing a better understanding of the interconnections between social and linguistic information not only informs our theories of language cognition, but can also lead to improvements in cross-cultural communication in industry and education, and computer-mediated communication. This award will support a conference devoted to Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Processing to take place at Virginia Tech (March 31 - April 2, 2016). The conference will provide a venue where leading researchers from a variety of backgrounds will meet to share cutting-edge work at the intersection of social and linguistic processing, and discuss the implications of this work for linguistic cognition and improving communication. The conference will focus on five key areas of development in the field: sociolinguistic theory, cognitive theory, socio-phonetics, socio-syntax, and the applications of work in this area. The conference organizers will promote participation by graduate and undergraduate students. Organizers will also foster public engagement by developing a website to disseminate key findings from the conference (as well as from this area of enquiry more generally), highlighting the implications for improving communication and cross-cultural understanding.