DiscourseNet International Congress #1: Discourse: language, society, critique

24 – 26 September 2015

University of Bremen, Germany

While ‘discourse’ has long been an object of investigation in various disciplines, the contours of a new transdisciplinary field of research are now coming to the fore: Discourse Studies. Discourse Studies comprises numerous strands and approaches which deal with the social production of meaning at the intersection of language and society. While opening up critical perspectives on social problems in contemporary societies, research on discourse typically aims to account for meaningful phenomena in their social entanglements: discourse as knowledge and power, discourse as language in use, discourse as text in context, discourse as communicative practice.

One of the challenges in Discourse Studies has been to articulate the epistemological reflexivity and theoretical culture in the humanities with the theoretical resources and the methodological tools of empirical social research, most notably with a background in poststructuralism, interactionism and Critical Discourse Analysis. Given an increasing need for interdisciplinary exchange, the First International DiscourseNet Congress aims to represent the many strands, schools, and perspectives in Discourse Studies, from the humanities to the social sciences, from strictly interpretive to quantifying methodologies.

Reflecting the diversity of topics and approaches in Discourse Studies, the following distinguished guests have confirmed their participation:

Ruth Amossy

Paul Chilton

Tony McEnery

Bob Jessop

Barbara Johnstone

Theo van Leeuwen

Dominique Maingueneau

Ann Phoenix

André Salem

Yannis Stavrakakis

Jef Verschueren

We invite contributions which deal with theoretical and/or methodological challenges in Discourse Studies, preferably with a focus on empirical questions and objects. We especially welcome papers which re-examine existing discourse theoretical frameworks, apply new methodologies and reflect on the critical potentials of Discourse Studies. Papers are invited to focus on studying discourses including but not limited to:

· media discourse

· political discourse

· academic discourse

· educational discourse

· economic discourse

· medical discourse

· discourses of law and justice

And which deal with topics such as:

· knowledge and power

· subjectivity in contemporary society

· critique and reflexivity

· discursive epistemology

· indexicality

· ideology

· bi-, multi- and translingual communication

· discursive logics

· discourse and gender, class, migration

· discourse and discrimination

· formal and informal discourse

· argumentation and rhetorics

· social cognition

· institutional discourse

· multimodal interaction and discourse analysis

· online media formats

· digital culture and digital humanities

· crosscultural interaction, multilingualism and language policy

· multimodality

· corpus

· conversation and interaction

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted through our application form by 15 March 2015. 

The presentations are normally in English. However, you can get in touch with the organisers if you prefer to present your paper in French, Spanish or German. 

Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by 1 May 2015. 

If accepted, the early-bird fee (until 1 July 2015) will be 150 € for fully funded researchers and a reduced fee of 75 € for enrolled students without access to institutional funding. 

For further information please visit the conference webpage: http://dnc1.discourseanalysis.net.

The local organising committee can be contacted at dnc1@discourseanalysis.net