The purpose of this transdisciplinary colloquium is to bring together PhD students and Early Career Researchers from a wide range of disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences with a common interest in the role of language in shaping discourse(s), culture, and society.

Through language, we create meanings, power relations, identities, and interpersonal ties. Given its social function, it is unsurprising that many researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences examine aspects of culture and society through a linguistic or discursive lens. This event aims at creating bridges between different research strands of and approaches to discourse in a wide sense. It will also function as a platform and networking opportunity for academics who are at beginning of their careers (doctoral students and ERCs). We therefore encourage submissions from a wide range of discourse-theoretical approaches.

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

  • Any theoretical or methodological approach to (Post-Structuralist) Discourse Analysis or Critical Discourse Studies
  • Conversation Analysis
  • Interactional Sociolinguistics
  • (Interpersonal) pragmatics/discourse-pragmatics
  • Intercultural, cross-cultural and societal aspects of pragmatics
  • Discourse and identity, gender, ethnicity, class, etc.
  • Diachronic studies of any of the above aspects

The colloquium is funded by the Eastern Academic Research Consortium and organized by doctoral students at the University of Kent. It is further supported by the Centre of Critical Thought and the Centre for Language and Linguistics of the University of Kent.

Plenary speaker: Professor Jonathan Culpeper (University of Lancaster)

Abstract submission
Abstracts for oral presentations (20 minutes) will be submitted via EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pradiso2018). You will be asked to enter your title, abstract (max. 300 word excluding bibliography), and keywords into text fields as well as to upload a PDF file. The PDF file should contain: the title and abstract of your paper and up to five keywords. Please make sure no author information (i.e. name or affiliation) is contained in the PDF file.

All presentations will be in English.

Key information
Event date: Monday, 16 July 2018
Extended submission deadline: Monday,  16 April at 23:00 GMT
Notifications of acceptance: by early May
Registration deadline: 2 July 3018
Registration fee: £15, covering lunch and tea/coffee breaks, conference pack, wifi;
Conference Venue: University of Kent, Canterbury Campus

Contact information
Website: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/pradisco/
Email: pradiso@kent.ac.uk
Twitter: @PraDiSo2018

Organisers
Isabella Reichl: PhD candidate in Linguistics and GTA, School of European Culture and Languages
Recep Onursal: PhD candidate in International Conflict Analysis and GTA, School of Politics and International Relations