36.573, Calls: Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies / Germany

Wed Feb 12 11:05:08 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-573. Wed Feb 12 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.573, Calls: Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies / Germany

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Date: 12-Feb-2025
From: Tobias Paul [asymcom-conference at hu-berlin.de]
Subject: Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies

Full Title: Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies

Date: 16-Oct-2025 - 17-Oct-2025
Location: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Contact Person: Tobias Paul
Meeting Email: asymcom-conference at hu-berlin.de

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): Akkadian (akk)
                     Ancient Greek (to 1453) (grc)
                     Egyptian (Ancient) (egy)
                     Latin (lat)
                     Sumerian (sux)
Language Family(ies): Afroasiatic; Hurro-Urartean; Indo-European;
Nilo-Saharan; Turkic

Call Deadline: 30-Apr-2025

Conference Theme
The study of communication in ancient societies provides valuable
insights into the sociocultural dynamics, hierarchies, and
interactional practices of the past. This conference aims to explore
the concept of asymmetric communication, focusing on contexts where
power imbalances, status differences, and socio-cultural hierarchies
influenced modes of interaction. The term asymmetric communication
describes situational conditions in which the interaction between
interlocutors is not at eye level, i.e., it is unbalanced or uneven in
respect to socio-cultural factors. In that respect, one may
investigate aspects such as identity and number of
participants/interlocutors as well as their characteristics, social
roles, and statuses.
We invite studies based on ancient/historical texts, images, and
image-text compositions from diverse cultural settings. As for written
sources, these may concern the formulation of requests, commands or
prohibitions, and the systematic choice of vocatives, epithets or
idiomatic expressions, among other devices. Pictorial sources on the
other hand may raise questions regarding size, orientation, and
grouping of represented individuals as well as their attributes and
insignia, actions and gestures. Communicative constellations can be
analyzed in two dimensions: the production and reception of a text by
historical persons (text-external dimension) and the communication
between protagonists represented within the story world (text-internal
dimension).
Departing from the field of ancient studies and building on advances
in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and multimodal analysis,
we invite contributions that examine the linguistic, visual, and
contextual aspects of asymmetric communication across ancient
societies. The goal is to better understand how power, agency, and
status were negotiated, maintained, or challenged through
communicative acts. How interlocutors navigate in such communicative
settings and what strategies, e.g., politeness vs. impoliteness, they
employ, is of primary interest here.
Topics of Interest
We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following
topics:
- Theoretical frameworks for analyzing asymmetric communication in
historical contexts across cultures and languages
- Case studies on hierarchical communication in ancient written or
visual corpora
- The role of status, power, and authority in shaping communicative
practices
- The occurrence and underlying motivations of biases in the
representation of social constellations
- Language and register variation in its connection to asymmetric
communication
- Multimodal perspectives: interaction of text and imagery in
conveying power dynamics
- Diachronic perspectives on the evolution of communicative
asymmetries in ancient societies
Research Questions
The following research questions may be considered:
 - Which recurring asymmetric social constellations can be identified
in ancient texts and artifacts across cultures and languages?
 - To what extent are these representations realistic or on the
contrary stylistically exaggerated or even reversed (e.g. by use of
polemics, satire, parody, etc.)?
 - What phenomena (linguistic, visual, etc.) are characteristic of
asymmetric communication in different sociocultural contexts?
 - How can balanced or peer-group communicative situations in ancient
societies be identified and distinguished from asymmetric ones?
 - In what ways do the materiality and visual design of artifacts
contribute to asymmetric communication?
 - What are the implications of asymmetric communication for
understanding broader social structures and hierarchies in ancient
cultures and societies?
We invite scholars from diverse disciplines (e.g., Egyptology,
Assyriology, Oriental Studies, Classics, Historical Linguistics,
Archaeology, and Art History) and contributors of all experience
levels studying historical and ancient languages and texts, images and
iconography, material culture and contexts to join us in discussing
any of these main topics or to propose other research questions based
on their work.
Abstract submission
Abstracts of approximately 300 words (excluding references), outlining
the research objectives, methodology, and main findings should be
submitted in English or German to the following email address by April
30, 2025: asymcom-conference at hu-berlin.de. Notification of acceptance
will be sent by May 30, 2025. For inquiries, please feel free to
contact the above-mentioned email address.
Format
The sessions will be held in person. Speakers are expected to give an
oral presentation of 20-25 minutes.
Silvia Kutscher – Dina Serova – Svenja K. Damm – Tobias Paul – Amnah
El-Shiaty

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