[Linganth] VI EDiSo International Symposium - Spain - 28-30 June 2023 - Call for collective contributions

[Perez-Milans, Miguel]

Dear all,

Please see below a call for collective contributions for the VI EDiSo International Symposium to be held in Spain on 28-30th of June, 2023, with the following theme: "Epistemology and knowledge production in research on discourse and society: Interdisciplinarity, (re)appropriations and criticality".

You can find the details on the call for papers, key dates and submission guidelines for the symposium, in the EDiSo's four working languages (i.e. Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish and English), on this website: https://simposioediso2023.wordpress.com. I'm pasting below the English text with the rationale/theme of the symposium as I believe that it could be of interest to some colleagues in this mailing list.

The deadline for submitting collective contributions (panels, roundtables, data sessions, etc.) is the 16th of January, 2023.

Best regards,
Miguel

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Espistemology and knowledge production in research on discourse and society: Interdisciplinarity, (re)appropriations and criticality



Knowledge production is always sociopolitically and discursively situated, tied to shifting forms of validation and legitimation. Currently, we see how, as grassroots anti-establishment movements gain wide traction, their transformative ideas, communicative practices and forms of organisation become both a recognisable model of action for multiple collectives to enact reactions against shared struggles and an object of attention readily available to institutional categorisation, documentation and governance. Under such conditions, socially-oriented research that is epistemologically tuned to the study of processes, semiotic practices and lived experiences is getting more attention from governmental institutions of the State and beyond, including research funding organisations that are now calling for (and channelling resources to) research that better captures logics emerging from the so-called “civil society”.



This is indeed having a particular impact on critical, interpretative and/or ethnographic traditions as they are then read as relevant ways of knowing despite them having been historically marginalised against the background of hegemonic positivist research paradigms. As a result, scholars from a wider range of disciplines are nowadays encouraged to engage more and more with calls for interdisciplinary research programmes. These create spaces for collaborative ways of conducting research that had previously been disfavoured under past pressures to knowledge compartmentalisation and disciplinary boundary-making. And yet, the recent push towards interdisciplinarity comes with its own risks as long-standing hierarchies are now (re)enacted and negotiated through (re)defining, (re)appropriating and technifying notions of research and knowledge production.



This is reflected, for example, in the proliferation of methodological frameworks that at first sight seem to promote/celebrate interdisciplinarity but which are nonetheless felt by others as positivist recounts of previously well-estabished interpretivist perspectives. Simultaneously, we see how in many parts of the world critical research comes under attack for being ‘too political’ and ‘little applied’, including reactions to emerging decolonial work, which is very often produced by marginalised and precarious scholars who are not invested in mainstream views of “valid” research.



In this VI EDiSo International Symposium we would like to engage in discussions about the position(ing) of research on discourse and society under current conditions of exacerbated nationalisms and interlocking crises. We would also like to explore alternative forms of knowledge production across paradigms that do not (de)epistomologise and (de)politicise language, discourse and communication scholarship. We welcome contributions that engage with these issues by way of addressing some of the following guiding questions:



  1.  What are the relevant institutional, socioeconomic, political and funding conditions that shape our knowledge production in the very local settings where we conduct our research?
  2.  What ideas and discourses about epistemology (i.e. ways of knowing) these conditions enable, with what consequences for ourselves and our research participants?
  3.  What opportunities and risks come with trying to inhabit these spaces, with what possibilities for transformative action?
  4.  What kinds of interdisciplinary conversations do we need to engage in to construct research proposals that get funded yet do not force our research into pre-established moulds and categories?



Contributions engaging with other aspects at the intersection of language, discourse and society are also welcome.







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Dr. Miguel Pérez-Milans
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics • IOE • Faculty of Education and Society • University College London • 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK • Room 620a • Co-Editor of Language Policy<https://www.springer.com/journal/10993> and Language, Culture and Society<https://benjamins.com/catalog/lcs> • Co-Presidency of EDiSo Association for Studies of Discourse and Society • https://mpmilans.wordpress.com
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