Title:The lagging of theoretical linguistics vs the broad prospect of transdisciplinarity research

Speaker:Professor Ping Chen,Department of language and Culture, University of Queensland, Australia

Time:25th December, 2019 16:00-17:30

Location:Beijing Language and Culture University, Adm Building, 329

Organizer:Department of Linguistics of BLCU

Speaker:

Ping Chen is achair professorfrom Departmentof Language and cultureofUniversity of Queensland, Australia. He holds a master’s degree in modern Chinese from theDepartment of Linguistics ofGraduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and master’s and doctorate degrees in linguistics fromthe Department of Linguistics ofUCLA. He has taught and researched at UCLA, the University of Oregon, theLanguage Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the City University of Hong Kong.Later on, Hehasworkedat the University of Queenslandtill now. ProfessorPing Chen’s mainresearchareas are functional grammar, discourse analysis, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics.

Thelectureswillfocus on three main topics:

1.The theoretical linguistics represented by the Generative Grammar of the 1950s is quite different from the formerdominantstructuralism in terms of philosophical basis, object of study, purpose and methodologhy.Itappears to bea revolutionwhichhas led to the emergence and development of some other linguistic schools. After nearly three decades, thisrevolution reached a bottleneck at 1990s. In the past 30 years, theoretical linguistics, including formal grammar, functional grammar, cognitive grammar and discourse analysis, hasn’tdeveloped as fast as its early stage.

2.Starting with the 1970s, the applied linguistics and the transdisciplinarityresearchesdeveloped rapidly.It conformedthe historical trend of interdisciplinaryresearch ofnatural sciences, engineering, society and the humanities to solve increasingly complex natural and social problems.Itwasalso the natural result of linguists seeking for new subjects, new fields and new breakthroughs as the subject matured. In the past 20 or 30 years, applied research, including language studiesand transdisciplinary studieshave become increasingly mainstream. We will also review the development of linguistics in China over the past 100 years, showing that applied research and transdisciplinarity not only contributed significantly to social progress, but also played an important role in the development of language theory.

3.How to adapt to the situation mentioned above in terms of the curriculum and scientific research planning of the linguistic major (including Chinese, Foreign Language and international Chinese education).