36.3764, Confs: Language in Fantastic Film Worlds: Exploring Fictional Telecinematic Discourse (Germany)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3764. Mon Dec 08 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3764, Confs: Language in Fantastic Film Worlds: Exploring Fictional Telecinematic Discourse (Germany)

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Date: 07-Dec-2025
From: Dr. Christian R. Hoffmann [christian.hoffmann at uni-a.de]
Subject: Language in Fantastic Film Worlds: Exploring Fictional Telecinematic Discourse


Language in Fantastic Film Worlds: Exploring Fictional Telecinematic
Discourse
Short Title: LiFFi 2026

Date: 19-Mar-2026 - 20-Mar-2026
Location: Chemnitz, Germany
Contact: Dr. Christian R. Hoffmann
Contact Email: christian.hoffmann at uni-a.de
Meeting URL:
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/sections/edling/research/filmwords.php

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

We are pleased to announce that the workshop: Language in Fantastic
Film Worlds: Exploring Fictional Telecinematic Discourse will take
place at the University of Chemnitz, Germany (+ online) from March 19
and March 20, 2026. The workshop responds to the ongoing trend in
contemporary film and television productions to depict alternative
realities and fantastic universes. In fact, films and television shows
with a fantastical theme are among the most popular genres worldwide,
as underlined by the status of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) as the
highest-grossing movie to date (imdb.com).
Such films commonly show linguistic creativity and innovation,
including idiosyncratic language use by exotic characters, so that
these pop cultural discourses are a highly promising subject for
linguistic study (Mandala 2010). The attribute fantastic is
conceptualized here in a wide sense, referring to all genres that
portray fictional characters in settings that blatantly deviate from
everyday reality in a framework of “estrangement” (Adams 2017).
Accordingly, the workshop is interested not only in science fiction
(Rüdiger & Lange 2023) and fantasy (Castro 2024), but also in mystery,
superhero, fairy tale, and horror movies (Schubert 2020), as well as
in animated films and movie adaptations from comics
(Sanchez-Stockhammer 2020). Although telecinematic research has been
gradually gaining momentum in linguistics (see, for instance, Piazza
et al. 2011; Beers Fägersten 2016; Bednarek et al. 2021;
Sanchez-Stockhammer & Hoffmann, to appear 2024), fantastic films and
their discursive characteristics have received surprisingly little
attention as yet.
Filling this intriguing gap in research, this workshop aims to probe
various facets of language use in fantastic films and TV shows
(Bednarek 2018; Kozloff 2000). More specifically, we argue that four
linguistic subdisciplines are particularly relevant for an in-depth
exploration of language in the worlds of fantastic films:
i. Cinematic stylistics investigates meaningful linguistic choices and
stylistic markers that can be associated with fantastic genres and
achieve specific contextual effects (Hoffmann & Kirner-Ludwig 2020).
ii. Pragmatics is concerned with innovative character speech and
characterization with respect to (im)politeness, communicative (non-)
cooperation, conversational structure, or implied meaning (Locher &
Jucker 2017) that transcend everyday situational contexts.
iii. Sociolinguistic studies may concentrate on creative varieties of
English (Boberg 2021; Hodson 2014) or on the stereotypical
representation of social or ethnic groups in fantastic settings.
iv. Multimodal studies reveal how visual storytelling is a
constitutive part of telecinematic discourse and is often co-deployed
with verbal language to create significant cinematic effects (Janney
2012; Wildfeuer 2014), such as suspense (Schubert 2023) or humour
(Frobenius & Gerhardt, to appear 2024), and for the purpose of
characterization (Bednarek 2023; Reichelt 2018).
While the workshop will centre on case studies of selected films and
television shows within the fields and approaches outlined above, we
also welcome contributions approaching the topic from a theoretical or
methodological perspective. The format will be 20-minute talks
followed by 10-minute discussions.
Please access the conference website (see meeting URL above) to find
out more information about the conference, take a glimpse at our
conference program as well as our book of abstracts and consider all
options for on-and offline participation, including registration fees.



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