33.3748, Calls: Applied Linguistics/Netherlands

Thu Dec 8 05:50:17 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3748. Thu Dec 08 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3748, Calls: Applied Linguistics/Netherlands

Moderators:

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2022 05:49:49
From: Irene Cenni [irene.cenni at ugent.be]
Subject: Language in Webcare: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Full Title: Language in Webcare: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 

Date: 06-Jul-2023 - 07-Jul-2023
Location: Nijmegen, Netherlands 
Contact Person: Rebecca Elektra Van Herck
Meeting Email: rebecca.vanherck at ru.nl
Web Site: https://www.ru.nl/cls/our-research/research-groups/persuasive-communication/symposium-language-webcare-interdisciplinary/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 15-Jan-2023 

Meeting Description:

With the rise of digital business communication, end-users of products and
services can now easily communicate positive and negative feedback to other
customers and organizations on social networking and (micro)blogging sites,
the sheer amount of which is hard for corporations to monitor, let alone
respond to. As negative word-of-mouth on both the issue at hand and the way it
has been tackled may have detrimental consequences in terms of reputation and
sales (Luo, 2009; Sparks et al., 2016), organizations now have to access these
social platforms as well and engage in a very delicate type of online service
encounter (i.e., webcare) with the prime intentions of fostering customer
relationships and monitoring reputation management (Van Noort & Willemsen,
2011). The success of this type of interaction depends on many different
aspects, including the linguistic realization of both the original message by
the customer and the ensuing webcare itself.

However, context-specific knowledge on what constitutes the most appropriate,
effective communicative strategies during critical moments - both from the
customers' and the companies' perspective - is still needed (Darics, 2015;
Darics & Koller, 2018; Lee & Song 2010). In this regard, this relatively new
field has three specific challenges and opportunities. First, in the last
decade, digital business communication became increasingly multilingual.
Consumers and service providers interact online in a multiplicity of
languages, often revealing different discursive habits and preferences
depending on their linguacultural background (Cenni & Goethals, 2021).
Therefore we believe it is important to take into account the cross-linguistic
and cross-cultural dimensions of webcare, especially in a hospitality context
(e.g., on Tripadvisor & Booking.com). We especially look for contributions on
(but not limited to) business discourse focusing on languages other than
English and/or adopting a comparative perspective. Second, the field of
webcare could benefit from recent technological advancements, such as AI and
the use of chatbots. For example, artificial intelligence could be used to
automatically collect large corpora and analyse these with machine learning
tools to detect yet unknown language variation patterns (e.g., Vermeer et al.,
2019). Finally, we, as organizers of this symposium, believe that research
into the communicative challenges of digital business communication would
greatly benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, combining theories and
methods from linguistics, service-oriented marketing, and public relations
(see also Holmqvist et al., 2017; Carnevale et al., 2017). Therefore, this
symposium aims to bring together scholars in language, communication, and
marketing studies who all share an interest in the linguistic and
communicative intricacies of online service management.
With this theme in mind, we would like to invite submissions that focus on
(responses to) consumer reviews and complaints, webcare and/or online crisis
communication from different theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Call for Papers:

We kindly invite abstracts for a 20-minute presentation + a 10-minute
discussion (abstracts of max. 400 words excluding references), written in
English, to be sent in Word-format to rebecca.vanherck at ru.nl (please use the
e-mail subject 'Language in webcare: Abstract submission'). Deadline for
receipt of abstracts is January 15, 2023. You will receive a notification of
acceptance by February 15, 2023.

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3748	
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