Online workshop - Call for papers 

Language Thought and Society: 

an exploration of identities through Cognitive Linguistics

Saturday-Sunday 1-2 February, 2025

Workshop organizer: Dr. A. Vogiatzis

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of English

Email: ltsworkshop365@gmail.com, www.enl.auth.gr/tclr

For live updates: https://ltsworkshop365.blogspot.com/ 

Registration by 20 December 2024 (Registration form)

An issue that has been of extreme interest and has gained momentum the last decades is the exploration of identities in the anthropological and sociolinguistic paradigm. Individuals have challenged the idea of identity and from being characterized by one identity are now bearers and creators of different identities. Identity is viewed as a dynamic trait of an individual, shaped and expressed through language interactions (Deckert & Vickers, 2011), it“is locally situated; who we are is, at least partially, a product of where we are and who we are with”(Schiffrin, 1996:  198).

This online workshop aims to intersect Sociolinguistic research on identities with the Cognitive Linguistic view to language. In terms of cognitive linguistics, the workshop aims to investigate how metaphor, metonymy and other less represented figures in CL research are reflected, or contribute to the creation of a person’s or a group’s identity/ies in different social, economic, political etc., contexts. Apart from figurative language, Cognitive Grammar, image schemas, frame semantics, construction grammar, (Geeraerts, 2006: 2) and political discourse (Lakoff, 2004; Musolff et al., 2022) are also areas of interest for exploration in their interaction with identities. 

The workshop invites researchers from relevant fields who wish to contribute with a presentation of their research, such as those working on cognitive sociolinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, semantics and pragmatics. It also addresses those who already conduct cross-disciplinary research or are interested in getting engaged in it. For this reason, those who are interested in expanding their research domains can ask to be matched with other interested researchers by filling up this form and start a new collaboration at the intersection of Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.

There is provisional agreement with the series Applications of Cognitive Linguistics by Mouton de Gruyter to publish a collective volume with selected papers from the workshop. 

Deckert, S., K. & Vickers, C., H. (2011). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Society and Identity. London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Geeraerts, D. 2006. A rough guide to cognitive linguistics. In Cognitive Linguistics: Basic readings. D. Lakoff, G. 2004. Don’t think of an elephant. Vermont: Chelsea Green. 

Musolff, A., Breeze, R., Kondo K., Vilar-Lluch, S (Eds). 2022. Pandemic and Crisis Discourse. Communicating COVID-19 and Public Health Strategy. Blumsbury.

Schiffrin, D. (1996). Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language

in Society, 25(2), 167–203.