Symposium: Political Narratives and their Use in Political Discourse.
Venue and date: Université Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, Lyon (France). 16 May 2025.
Proposal submissions: 23 September to 15 December 2024.
Organised by The Centre d’Études Linguistiques – Corpus, Discours et Sociétés (University of Lyon – Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
Keynote speaker: Philip Seargeant (Open University).
Operating within the prolific fields of narrative studies and discourse analysis, this one-day conference aims to contribute to our understanding of how narratives frame the political debate in today’s democracies. As “one verbal technique for recapitulating past experience” (Labov & Waletzky 1967: 13) narratives constitute a cognitive activity (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012: 5) that is partly subjective and may have an emotional (Reisigl 2021) and persuasive (Polletta 2006) effect on the story recipient. This perlocutionary effect of the narrative format makes it highly relevant to the study of political discourse.
Scholars have long recognised the special relationship between narratives and politics (De Fina 2017; Seargeant 2020). Atkins and Finlayson (2012) explain that, over the past 40 years or so, narratives have become ubiquitous in political rhetoric. Shenhav (2006) defines a “political narrative” as “one that emerges from a formal political forum, such as a parliament, a cabinet, party meetings or political demonstrations, or as narrative produced by politicians and public officials in the course of their duties”. De Fina (2017) claims there are two main trends for the study of such narratives, and these will constitute the main axes of the conference, though other approaches can be envisaged:
- One approach is interested in the “master narratives” underpinning political discourse, which reveal the “overarching structures that underlie and organize discourse and interpretation”. These narratives help influence the way our brains interpret important political issues and thus frame the way we perceive reality (Seargeant 2020). Political debate can be envisaged as a battle of narratives (Spencer and Oppermann, 2020) in which the ultimate goal is to effectively “control the narrative”. Papers dealing with the construction of such narratives, with ways of assessing their influence, or with specific methodologies for their study as well as the integration of the concept of narrative into existing discourse analysis frameworks, as proposed by Forchtner (2020) for instance, are welcome. The analysis of narrative boundaries (Cordero and Frei 2024) and the creation of discursive identities, by celebrating the in-group and denigrating the out-group (Wodak 2015), are also of great interest to this conference.
- The other approach deals with political narratives as “a set of everyday discourse practices” (De Fina 2017: 233), or anecdotes, which are favoured in political discourse today because they are “seen as representing a non-argumentative, more common sense and therefore more grass-roots inspired mode of conveying political views” (Ibid: 239). We invite contributors to discuss the discursive and emotional influence of such narratives on political communication in general but also on the construction of a powerful ethos for leaders who can depict themselves as caring about the lives of other people, or as having overcome difficulties – and learned from them – and thus as being entitled to the status of hero/ leader/ guide of a community.
In addition, many linguists (Wehling 2016; Richardson 2004; Reddy 1993; Palmer 1981) have contributed to our understanding of how political narratives make use of captivating metaphorsthat shape both thought and communication in the political realm. Their works are fundamental for anyone interested in the intersection between linguistics, cognitive science, and political science, which is why all these topics may be addressed as well under the aegis of “perlocutionary power”. In their classic study Metaphors We Live By (1980) Lakoff and Johnson highlighted how metaphors structure our understanding of complex political concepts. A generation later, Charteris-Black (2005; 2007) analyzed how political figures resort to metaphorical language to influence voters by “telling the right story”. Thus, conference papers may wish to examine how metaphors nurture political narratives in salient examples of “master narratives”, “anecdotes”, and political life-writing (memoir and biography) in the Internet age.
In line with the research interests of the CEL’s “Socio-political discourse analysis” branch, this one-day conference intends to question the persuasive power of political narratives and we therefore welcome theoretical as well as methodological proposals, but also case studies (UK and US 2024 elections, European elections, populist discourses in Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.), which will broaden our understanding of this holistic and ubiquitous rhetorical device, and how they might constitute important conveyors of political ideologies, often unnoticed or underestimated because of the narrative format. A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of the journal ELAD – SILDA (Studies in Linguistics and Discourse Analysis).
Submissions should include an abstract (up to 500 words, excluding references) as well as a short biography and should be sent to:
- Mela-Pissa Martin-Kemel <melissa.martin-kemel@univ-lyon3.fr>,
- Bérengère Lafiandra <berengere.lafiandra1@univ-lyon3.fr>,
- Jon Delogu <christopher-jon.delogu@univ-lyon3.fr>,
- Almierre Bonnet <alma-pierre.bonnet@univ-lyon3.fr>
Key dates:
- Submission: September 23 to December 15, 2024
- Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2025
- Registration: March 2025
- Conference: May 16, 2024
Language: English or French
CFP
For further details and references, please check the original call inserted below.
CFP Political Narratives 2025-1(Posted 27 September 2024)
19th International Conference on Contemporary Narratives in English: The Relational Turn in the Literary Anglosphere: Writing Connection and Interdependence.
Venue and dates: Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Zaragoza, Spain; 21-23 May 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 October 2024.
Organisers: Bárbara Arizti & Silvia Martínez-Falquina
Presentation
The past few decades are witnessing the demise of the myth of human autonomy, self-sufficiency and self-referentiality graphically and beautifully represented by Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. This iconic image of western civilisation —a naked male figure inside a protective bubble— has not withstood the test of findings in the hard and soft sciences that depict human beings as a complex node of relations. His normative masculinity has been contested by feminism and the prevalent focus on intersectionality to define identity, and his cool aloofness has also been shattered by the inescapable reality of human dependence on the environment made manifest by recent ecological developments. It is clear that we are in urgent need of updated icons for our contemporary times, icons that reconsider the limits of the traditional western conception of the subject. Whichever symbols eventually come to be representative of the current age, there is hardly any doubt that its defining quality will be relationality. This is the key value that characterizes the current phase of Transmodernity, our way of referring to this era’s socio-cultural paradigm, prompted by recent crises such as the climate emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic, non-stop migratory flows or protracted and new armed conflicts. Relationality is also the only possible response to other systemic risks and insidious forms of trauma caused by sexism, homophobia, violence against women, racism, xenophobia, aporophobia, the threats of new technologies and the long-lasting effects of colonialism.
This emphasis on relationality unveils porosity where we used to see limits, and it helps us see and value the interdependence of the various dimensions of the human being and the radical interconnection of existence. This is a way to give due visibility and attention to the change in mentality we observe, for example, in the recent emphasis on humility, vulnerability, or empathy behind the call for an ethics that includes not only the human but the more-than-human. We are now more open to appreciating and learning from the Indigenous values and ways of being in the world, thus delving into the still needed revision of western-centric attitudes. We are also ready to learn from pre-modern values as well as to relate to the world as an enchanted space and access its subtler realms, pointing to a new ecological enlightenment.
As firm believers in the pivotal role of literature in detecting and recording these changes as well as in its power to promote transformation, we invite contributions on these and related topics: 1. Relationality and literary form (networked fictions, the fragmented novel, limit-case autobiographies, Aboriginal/Indigenous realism, African/Indigenous futurism, short story cycles, -generic hybridity, cli fi, feminist dystopias, ordinary life narratives, etc.). 2. Relationality and theory (pluriversal cosmologies, transmodern feminism, material feminism, multidirectional memories, epistemic arrogance and its discontents, ecocriticism, storied places, thing theory, etc.). 3. Relationality and the human (vulnerability, narratives of care, emotional truth, affective knowledge, implicated subjects, etc.); 4. Relationality and the more-than-human (Indigenous place-thought, climate hope, eco-anxiety, spatial traumas, the geography of perception, food studies, the reenchantment of reality, etc.).
Website address
Contact details
Contributions to: limlitconference2025@gmail.com
Bárbara Arizti Martín barizti@unizar.es
Silvia Martínez Falquina smfalqui@unizar.es
CFP
For further details please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 16 July 2024)
Interdisciplinary Conference: Performativity and Agonistic Pluralism in a Mediatised Age: Towards a Synthetic Approach.
Venue and dates: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Prague; 23-25 May 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 30 November 2024.
Organiser(s)
Professor Martin Procházka, MAE
Presentation
Website address
to be announced
Contact details
(Posted 16 May 2024)