Category: Conferences

CFP Gerbner conf on Comm & Conflict

Call for Papers

The George Gerbner Conference on Communication, Conflict, and Aggression May 30-31, 2014 in Budapest, Hungary

Inspired by the life and work of Budapest native and renowned Communication and Media scholar Dr. George Gerbner (1919-2005), the Budapest College of Communication and Business invites scholars, researchers, practitioners, students, and other interested parties to submit paper and panel proposals for presentation at the George Gerbner Conference on Communication, Conflict, and Aggression. This conference will take place from Friday, May 30 to Saturday, May 31, 2014 in Budapest, Hungary. The goal of the conference is to bring together individuals with a common interest in aggressive communication, antisocial behavior, and conflict so as to foster international relationships that lead to research collaboration and knowledge exchange. The inaugural Gerbner Conference, held in May 2010, and the subsequent conferences in 2012 and 2013, featured presentations by scholars from 14 countries over 4 continents.

This international conference will focus on aggressive communication and behavior, conflict, and other types of antisocial communication and behavior across contexts. Specific topics include, but are not limited to: media violence, media coverage of crime and violence, violence in advertising, political violence, workplace violence and aggression, unethical leadership, aggression in instructional settings, war rhetoric, peace and conflict communication, verbal aggression, crime, oppression, injustice, incivility, assertiveness, argumentativeness, disagreement, bullying, indirect aggression, psychological abuse, anger, frustration, hostility, deception, child abuse, spousal abuse, domestic violence, youth violence, school violence, gang violence, sexual violence, discrimination, conflict styles, conflict resolution, the origins, causes, and predictors of aggression, and the management and prevention of aggression.

Interested individuals are invited to submit an abstract (in English) of 200 to 500 words describing their individual presentation or panel idea to Rebecca Chory by March 07, 2014. Decisions regarding the acceptance of papers and panels for presentation at the conference will be made by April 01, 2014. Completed papers should be sent to Rebecca Chory by May 12, 2014. With the authors’ permission, top papers will be published in the journal Kommunikáció, Média, Gazdaság (Communication, Media, Economics), which is published by the Budapest College of Communication and Business, or in an edited book. One scholar will also be honored with the Gerbner Award. The conference registration fee is expected to be approximately 50 Euros.

Co-organizers of the conference are Dr. Jolán Róka, Vice Rector for Research and International Relations at the Budapest College of Communication and Business, and Dr. Rebecca M. Chory, Professor of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and 2009 Fulbright Scholar at the Budapest College of Communication and Business. For more information, please contact Jolán Róka or Rebecca Chory.

CFP Pragmatism & Communication conference

Conference: Pragmatism and Communication
University of Helsinki
4-5 June, 2014

From the sign-theoretical approach of C. S. Peirce to the pragmatic analyses of Robert Brandom, matters of communication have figured prominently in pragmatist thought. Beginning with John Dewey and Robert E. Park, pragmatism has also directly influenced communication scholarship; and interest in pragmatist ideas is currently on the rise in media and communication studies. But what roles does ‘communication’ actually play in pragmatisms of various stripes? What are the
distinctive contributions of pragmatism to our understanding and study of communication?

This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims to explore these and closely connected questions. The organisers welcome proposals for papers discussing any aspect of the relationship between pragmatism and communication, ranging from philosophical discussions of the nature and scope of communication to applications of pragmatist ideas in communication studies. Suitable topics include (but are not restricted to):

– Different pragmatist perspectives on communication
– The historical/contemporary contribution of pragmatist thought to the development of communication theory
– The relationship between inquiry and communication in pragmatist philosophy
– Limitations of symbolic communication
– Pragmatism and scientific communication
– Pragmatism and deliberative communication
– Pragmatist philosophy of journalism and the media
– Pragmatic grounds for the possibility or impossibility of objective communication
– Pragmatist ethics of communication and media
– The role of communication in democracy
– Criticisms of pragmatist approaches in communication studies

Please send an extended abstract of 500-1000 words to Aki Lehtinen  by 1 March 2014. The submitters of the selected proposals will be informed of acceptance by 15 March 2014. A time slot of 30 minutes will be allotted for each accepted paper.

Confirmed speakers include: Robert T. Craig (University of Colorado, Boulder), Eli Dresner (Tel Aviv University), Klaus Bruhn Jensen (University of Copenhagen), John Durham Peters (University of Iowa), Stephen J. A. Ward (University of Oregon), Merja Bauters (Aalto University), Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (University of Helsinki / Tallinn University of Technology), and Sami Pihlström (University of Helsinki /University of Jyväskylä).

Organising committee: Mats Bergman, Aki Petteri Lehtinen, Henrik Rydenfelt

Co-organised by:
– The research project Pragmatic Objectivity
– The Philosophy of Communication Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association
– The Nordic Pragmatism Network
– The Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

IAMCR 2014 India CFP

REGION AS FRAME: POLITICS, PRESENCE, PRACTICE


Region as frameThe International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites submissions of abstracts for papers and panel proposals for the 2014 IAMCR conference to be held from 15 -19 July, 2014 at Hyderabad, India. The deadline to submit your abstract is midnight GMT on 10 February 2014. This deadline will not be extended. For details about submissions, go to the IAMCR 2014 website. The conference is co-hosted by the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, and the School of Communication, English and Foreign Languages University, both in Hyderabad, India.

Conference Theme:
The breaking down of some the world’s walls has created an uncertainty about the geographies and substantive nature of the regions they had once defined. This includes physical boundaries such as the Berlin wall, ideological ones such as those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, economic ones such as those that had once separated India and other socialist economies from the capitalist West, and cultural ones such as those that had hidden the lives of people in the Middle Eastern and Soviet bloc.

Mobility, migration and disembodied interactions by cyberspace further complicate the notion of region as a conceptual and experiential category. New regional hierarchies, such as the economic power of emerging economies (BRICS) are taking shape, serving to decentre traditional loci of power, while different forms of identity politics are creating fissures in the modern nation state. Corporations have acquired the power to dictate politics through their ownership of forms and channels of expression, and this has created a new urgency to re-think old political economy arguments around media control and dispersal in a regional rather than global framework.

The conference theme seeks to explore the dynamics of media systems, communication patterns and organizational relationships within this new “framing” of region as a physical and conceptual category. The theme thus lends itself to panels and papers dealing with a wide range of specific sub-themes and topics. These may include:

• What are the politics that drive media discourse, organization and economics?

• What kind of presence is at all possible in this redefined regional space, and how does region become a real and imagined construct across new media presences?

• What sorts of practices then become key to media and communication spaces enclosed in or defined by this new frame?

Int’l Colloquium on Comm 2014 Germany

International Colloquium on Communication 2014

University of Muenster (Germany)
Sunday, 27. July 2014, 18:00 h to Friday, 1st. August 2014, 12:00 h

Theme: “Communication as Performance and the Performativity of Communication”
The International Colloquium on Communication (ICC) is an interdisciplinary conference that invites scholars from the U.S. and Europe to present and discuss new results of research on communication. The ICC was founded in 1968 and takes place every other year. A specific feature of the ICC is its small size, with only about 25 participants. Each scholar presents a paper that is followed by a discussion among the entire group. The length of the colloquium allows additional time for interaction and dialogue. The conference will be held in English.
The general aim of the ICC is to discuss current results of research on communication and to emphasize a critical view on institutional and political contexts.

A specific aim of ICC 2014 is to stimulate research on performativity and the performative turn in communication scholarship.  The focus on performance and performativity emphasizes communication as behavior, acting, and event.  This focus brings attention to the material practice of doing communication, what is done in communication, and the difference it makes in our lives and institutions.  The focus on Performance and Performativity can include such topics for presentation as:

(1)  Performance as technical term for “actio” in the field of rhetoric: e.g. research on verbal and non-verbal communication and factors that construct meaning, and  linguistic research on patterns of behavior in communication.

(2)  Performance as cultural performance: to broaden the research on social interaction as cultural performance (Goffman) as well as the research on the concept of habitus by discourse analysis (Foucault, Bourdieu).
a.     Investigations on the role of the Internet and social media such as Facebook and blogs in the performance of the self and social movements.
b.     Investigations in journalism, photography, and in health communication drawing on the performative turn, such as alternative news sites on the Internet, interactive news discussions on the Internet, health care communication through interactive modules, discussion boards, and blogs, performativity and intercultural health communication
c.     Investigations on the performative in political discourse, especially as influenced by the new media.

(3)  Performativity as a linguistic term: research on performative utterances (Austin/Searle) to understand utterances which have performative functions in language and communication.

(4)  Performance and Performativity as terms in theatre and art:
a.     Research on Performance Art from the perspective of Performativity: The “Esthetics of Performativity” (“Ästhetik des Performativen”, Fischer-Lichte) turns the involved audience into participants and brings about a transformation for both, the performer as well as the audience. This is due to the process of their experiencing the performance.
b.     To investigate communication as Performance with the analytical tool of performance analysis used by dramatics (see the keywords “staging – physical presence/ corporeality – perception – representation”) and Performativity as paradigm used by cultural studies to focus on the processes of semiotic expression, action, perception and constructing reality. What new ideas are provided by this paradigm for research on patterns of communication?

(5)  Didactics of communication, connected with “Pedagogics of Performativity” analyzes processes of interaction and dramatic actions as well as physical presence, media, and texture of the materials in education. How does this research influence the understanding of communicative competence?

Those interested in presenting a paper at the ICC should submit an abstract of 150-200 words to the Program Chairs listed below, by 31 January, 2014. U.S. based scholars are asked to submit to Kevin Carragee, while European scholars are asked to submit to Annette Moennich.

Submission opening: 20 January 2014
Submission deadline: 1 March 2014

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Kevin Carragee, Program chair (USA) (Department of Communication and Journalism, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USA)

Dr. Annette Moennich, Conference and program chair (Europe) (Germanistisches Institut, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) 

CFP (Inter)faces of Dialogue 2014 Romania

(Inter)faces of Dialogue: Constructing Identity through Language Use

5 – 8 June 2014
Transilvania University of Braşov (Romania)
International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) Workshop

The way people talk, dress or behave are types of social codes, important ways of displaying who we are; in other words, they indicate our social identity. Each individual wants to build (him)herself a certain identity. There are multiple identities – some of them are wanted, while some others are unwanted – and a speaker faces a dilemma to choose the best identity for a certain situation and this “browsing” of identities may be achieved through dialogue. In approaching the topic of this workshop, we start from the premise that humans are dialogic beings, users and learners of language in various contexts. While acting and reacting in ever-changing environments (interpersonal or institutional), people try “to achieve more or less effectively certain purposes in dialogic interaction” (Weigand 2008: 3).

The academic interest for social relationships and the way they are organized in dialogues can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century, once Malinowski first suggested in 1923 that humans share “phatic communion”. Scholars in interpersonal communication, social psychology and sociology have ever since highlighted that the concept of ‘identity’ is important for studying the organization of social life.

Individuals use language to construct an identity (or a set of identities) for themselves, while communities use language as a means of identifying their members and of establishing boundaries. Once an individual adheres to a group or a community of practice, (s)he will adopt (and sometimes adapt) the existing linguistic conventions of that group.

The workshop aims at looking the ways in which identity is created and reflected in dialogic action games. We are particularly interested in studying the (inter)faces of dialogue from different perspectives and in different – European and non European – languages. The workshop aims to be interdisciplinary and therefore welcomes proposals from scholars from different areas.

We welcome individual paper presentations, panels and posters that explore topics in the following areas, but are not limited to:
*Construction of personal and group identity
*Names and naming practices
*Identity construction and humour
*Identity and representation
*Linguistic variation and the construction of identity
*Construction of  cultural identity in minority languages
*Identity construction and power
*Construction of identity in computer-mediated communication
*Construction of identity through mass-media

Deadline
The abstract submission deadline (including panel proposals) is January 25, 2014 (Extended) and the notification of acceptance will be received by January 20, 2014 (for submissions sent before 15 december 2013).

For more information or to submit your abstract, please contact the organizing committee at this email address or visit the workshop website.

Living your ideal global life summit

For all those who have asked me how to manage to travel and make international connections as I’m currently doing, this online summit may be of interest. It’s organized by a number of people from SIETAR.

Living your Ideal Global Life Summit

Are you living your ideal global life? Join us January 13-17, 2014 for our free virtual “Living Your Ideal Global Life Summit” for ideas, tips, and great conversation!

This FREE online summit is your passport for launching your ideal global life in the New Year!

Who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing can’t hold you back from living the rewarding global life you desire.

During the week of January 13-17, 2014 we will explore how these aspects of your life shape your global journey and the global lives of others.

In exclusive interviews with 20 amazing guests, we will cover a range of topics from the basics of global living to going deep under the surface and exploring the topics everyone wants to talk about, but no one has – until now.

Whether you’re a digital nomad, expat, work-at-home mom, or travel newbie, 2014 is the year to launch your ideal global life.

(Organized by the Small Planet Studio – click on the link for all the details of speakers, topics, and schedule)

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CFP Open Spaces for Interaction & Learning Diversities

CFP
Open Spaces for Interaction and Learning Diversities
27-30 August 2014 – Padova, Italy

Special Interest Groups 10, 21, and the new SIG on Education Theory of the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction (EARLI) are jointly sponsoring the Conference ‘Open Spaces for Interaction and Learning Diversities’.

What are the challenges that global movements and cross-cultural communication continue to pose to many areas of teaching, learning and education? SIG 10 and 21 have devoted their efforts to studying social and cultural interactions and cultural diversity in teaching and learning settings. With increasing dynamics and diversity in most societies (i.e., offline and online mobility, inter-institutional collaborations, migrations and intercultural encounters, individual transitions) this area of research becomes even more important in learning research. Over time, the changes in social, cultural and political contexts result into cultural diversity being ignored or rejected across many countries in Europe. It is the denial or hidden nature of diversity in educational settings and learning processes, reflected in the marginalisation of this topic, that we would like to address. Therefore, we would like to open up spaces to talk, promote and fight for the relevance of addressing learning diversities. This may include current and new directions for theoretical and methodological discussions. These may be spaces of interaction and diversity research across single or multiple moments, different contexts and various time scales.

The focus of this meeting is to examine the dynamics by which practices of learning and their associated institutions evolve. Learners and educators move through different social spaces, meet and interact; whilst bringing with them their languages, bodies of knowledge, values and cultural references. This theme provides ample space for discussion both for the separate SIGs – social interaction in learning and instruction, as well as cultural diversity – and for the SIGs jointly. In addition, special attention will be given to the educational realities and challenges in Italy today. The meeting is continuing the reflection started in Belgrade in 2012 at the Patchwork: Learning Diversities and in Utrecht 2010, at the Moving through cultures of learning meeting.

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Language culture & mind conference Lublin 2014

Sixth International Conference on *Language, Culture and Mind*
June 24-26, 2014 Lublin, Poland

Contact: info@lcm6.umcs.lublin.pl

Deadline for *abstract submission* of individual papers and posters: *Jan 20, 2014*

The Sixth International Conference on Language, Culture and Mind (LCM VI) will be held on *24-26 June 2014* at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. It will be preceded by a *Young Researchers Workshop* on 23 June 2014 (same venue), where young researchers will present their ongoing dissertation projects and other work.

The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue (involving philosophy, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, semiotics and related fields), and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language.

Confirmed plenary speakers:
Nancy Budwig (Clark University, Psychology)
Henryk Kardela (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Linguistics)
Alan Rumsey (Australian National University, School of Culture, History & Language)
Farzad Sharifian (Monash University, Language and Society Centre)
Beata Stawarska (University of Oregon, Philosophy)

The theme for LCM VI is: *Inside/Out: Practice and Representation*
While some focus on the representational nature of language and mind, others regard them as socially embedded and embodied practices. We encourage submissions that further investigate the dynamic between practice and representation and critically examine stereotypical or mainstream conceptions of representations as internal and practices as external.

We invite abstract submissions for oral presentations, posters and symposia. (Please clearly indicate your chosen format with your submission.)

Submission guidelines and formats:
• Oral presentations
Title, name, affiliation, 400 word abstract
20 min presentation + 10 minute discussion

• Posters
Title, name, affiliation, 100 word abstract
1 minute oral presentation in the main lecture hall, preceding the poster session

• Symposia (submissions closed)
Symposium title, name and affiliation of symposium convener, an
introduction of up to 400 words explaining the theme, all symposium
abstracts, in suitable order. 90-minute symposia of 3 papers, allowing time for discussion. Up to two 90-minute symposia may be merged for proposals with 5-6 participants. Papers in each symposium should be thematically linked.

Symposium proposers should indicate whether, if a symposium is not accepted as a whole, they wish the individual abstracts to be considered as individual presentations (oral or poster)

Deadline for abstract submission of symposia: Nov 30, 2013 (closed). Deadline for abstract submission of individual papers and posters: *Jan 20, 2014. Abstracts should be submitted as .rtf, .odt or .doc attachments using EasyChair. In order to submit an abstract you have to use your existing EasyChair account or register using the link above. Detailed instructions can be found on the Language Culture and Mind VI conference website.

Important dates:
• Deadline for abstract submission (symposia): 30 Nov 2013 (*closed*)
• Deadline for abstract submission (papers, posters): *20 Jan 2014*
• Notification of acceptance (symposia): 15 Jan 2014
• Notification of acceptance (papers, posters): *28 Feb 2014*
• Last date for early registration: 30 Mar 2014
• Last date for participant registration: 1 May 2014
• Final program publication: 31 May 2014

****Young Researchers Workshop****
The LCM VI Young Researchers Workshop is a satellite event of the LCM VI conference, aimed at graduate students and junior scholars conducting theoretical or empirical research in language and communication including, but not limited to cognitive, social, affective, embodied and/or cultural perspectives. The workshop aims at providing a forum for presenting results and foster interaction and debate in the context of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Young researchers in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience are invited to share, and thereby enrich, their study of human natural language and communication. A specialist’s comment on each accepted
contribution makes the workshop a unique opportunity to receive expert feedback.

Contact: Roberto Bottini

Abstract specifications:
1 page, 400 words, single-spaced, font size 12 pt, Times New Roman, 2.5 cm margins on all sides. Diagrams must fit in the page.
Heading should include:
– Title of the paper
– Author(s) name
– Author(s) affiliation
– E-mail address of principal author

Abstracts for the Young Researchers Workshop presentations should be submitted as .rtf, .pdf or .doc attachments using EasyChair. A special track for YRW has been created within LCM6 EasyChair account.

CFP ABC Asia-Pacific conference 2014

The 13th ABC Asia-Pacific Conference: Dao of Business Communication
March 27 – 29, 2014
Shanghai, China

ABC logo

The 13th Asia-Pacific Conference of the Association for Business Communication will be held on March 28-30, 2014, in Shanghai, China. ABC Asia-Pacific 2014 aims to provide a high-level international forum as well as a workshop for researchers, teachers, students, and industry practitioners to present and discuss recent advances in the applications of traditional thoughts in modern business communication.

Abstract Deadline:
Please submit a 300-500 word abstract (APA style, Times New Roman 12 point font and double spaced) as an email attachment no later than January 1st, 2014. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by February 1, 2014, and will then be invited to submit a full paper ranging from 5000 to 12000 words by March 1st. All submissions will be carefully reviewed. High quality articles will be selected for publication.

In an increasingly globalizing world, international business has developed more and more without national borders and human communication assumes in more complex and technology-oriented ways. The conference hopes to focus on the diversity and complexity of communication in international business across national boundaries.

Conference Chair: Guanglin Wang

CFP ABC discourse conference Italy 2014

ABC International Symposium on the Ins and Outs of Professional Discourse Research
March 6 – 7, 2014; Modena, Italy

ABC logo

Conference scope
Researching professional discourse is an exciting multi-faceted enterprise, from gaining access and collecting data  to feeding these results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners. This two-day symposium invites contributions which explore these two extreme ends of the scholarly process , investigating written, oral, non-verbal and digital communication in professional settings as both input and output or: the “ins and outs” of business discourse research.

Day  One –  6 March: THE INS (Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali – Modena) focuses on issues of access and data collection: how can we convince practitioners to let us observe, record, interview, survey etc? And what counts as data? How much do we need ? In what shape and form? And how does our research interfere with what we study?

Day Two  – 7 March: THE OUTS (Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia – Reggio Emilia) looks at how results can be fed back to the field in the form of recommendations: how can business discourse research be applied to help shape practice? How do we translate our methods and concepts for the communities that we investigate, including industry, government and non – profit organizations?

The symposium offers an all-plenary format, with ample time for discussion. On both days we welcome data- and case-based, empirical talks, presenting best practices, self-reflections or meta-analyses, drawing on a wide range of qualitative, quantitative and critical perspectives on  professional and business discourse, from ethnography, corpus studies and sociolinguistics to interaction analysis, genre studies and document design.

The symposium language is English.

Symposium contact:: abceuropesymposium AT unimore.it or glenmichael.alessi AT unimore.it

Registration
ABC Members and students: 75 Euros (Late registration: 100 Euros)
Non-members: 100 Euros (Late registration: 150 Euros)