Telling Stories: Building bridges among Language, Narrative, Identity, Interaction, Society and Culture.

Narratives have been studied in many different disciplines: linguistics, literary theory, clinical psychology, cognitive and developmental psychology, folklore, anthropology, sociology and history.

The primary focus of GURT 2008 is the linguistic study of narrative, especially as it has developed within discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.

As our theme suggests, however, studying the language of narrative can take us far afield to other concerns: the construction of self and identity; the differences among spoken, written and computer-mediated discourse; the role that small and big (e.g. life) stories play in everyday social interactions; the contribution of narrative to social status, roles and meanings within institutional settings as varied as therapeutic and medical encounters, education, politics, media, marketing and public relations.

Thus GURT 2008 will be a forum for building interconnections among language, narrative and social life.