37.2743, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Democracy in Action: Interactional Practices Shaping Participation and Polarization (Finland)

Wed Aug 26 10:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2743. Wed Aug 26 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2743, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Democracy in Action: Interactional Practices Shaping Participation and Polarization (Finland)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================

Date: 24-Aug-2026
From: Elina Salomaa [elina.h.salomaa at jyu.fi]
Subject: Panel at IPC20 - Democracy in Action: Interactional Practices Shaping Participation and Polarization

Panel at IPC20 - Democracy in Action: Interactional Practices Shaping
Participation and Polarization
Short Title: IPC20
Theme: Democracy in Action: Interactional Practices Shaping
Participation and Polarization

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: Elina Salomaa
Contact Email: elina.h.salomaa at jyu.fi
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

Today’s democracies are facing increasing internal and external
threats. Alongside political polarization and widespread
mis‑/disinformation, recent OECD data (2024) indicates a declining
trust in national governments and public institutions, with many
citizens feeling unable to influence public decisions. Simultaneously,
participatory practices – both grassroots and institutionally
organized – are expanding. This tension between decreased democratic
trust and attempts to increase participation highlights a key
challenge: ensuring that citizens experience their participation as
meaningful.
This panel approaches democratic participation from an interactional
perspective, examining how it is enacted, negotiated, and challenged
in the micro‑practices of everyday interaction. Research in settings,
such as participatory forums (Magnusson, 2020; van Burgsteden & te
Molder, 2022), activism (Pütz, 2020), traditional and social media
(Nielsen, 2023; Salomaa, 2020), workplace encounters (Van De Mieroop
et al., 2019; Salomaa, 2024), and health care consultations
(Stevanovic et al., 2022; Logren et al., 2017), shows how
interactional organization of activities like decision-making,
problem-solving and public debate shapes people’s possibilities for
influence. Bringing together researchers working across institutional
and mundane contexts, the panel explores how people with differing
interests and stakes co-create, refrain from engaging in, or constrain
opportunities for voice, influence, and mutual understanding – for
themselves as well as for others.
The panel invites studies on democratic participation and
interactional practices that can either bridge divides or intensify
polarization. Contributions may draw on ethnomethodology, (multimodal)
conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, narrative
and positioning analysis, discursive psychology, interactional
sociolinguistics and related approaches that treat participation as
accomplished through situated sequential practices.
Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website by 15 October
2026. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like further
information about the panel.
Panel organizers: Elina Salomaa, Teija Ahopelto, Simon Magnusson &
Melisa Stevanovic
References:
Magnusson, S. 2020. Constructing young citizens’ deontic authority in
participatory democracy meetings. Discourse & Communication 14(6),
600–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481320939704
Nielsen, S. B. 2023. Orchestration of perspectives in televised
climate change debates. Discourse & Society 34(2), 175-191.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926522111701
OECD (2024), OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions –
2024 Results: Building Trust in a Complex Policy Environment, OECD
Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9a20554b-en.
Pütz, O. 2020. Talking collective action: A sequential analysis of
strategic planning in anti-nuclear groups. Abingdon: Routledge.
Salomaa, E. 2020. Dissertation: In the intersection of television and
Twitter: Social television as a tool for interaction and participation
in a media event. Fachsprache - Journal of Professional and Scientific
Communication vol. XLII 1–2, 72–75.
https://doi.org/10.24989/fs.v42i1-2.1840
Salomaa, E. 2024. Digital facilitation-as-a-process: The mismatch
between promotional text and situated interaction. Discourse, Context
& Media 62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100834.
Stevanovic, M., Weiste, E. & Uusitalo, L. L. 2022. Challenges of
client participation in the co-development of social and health care
services: Imbalances of control over action and the management of the
interactional agenda. SSM - Qualitative Research in Health 2,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100136
van Burgsteden, L. & te Molder, H. 2022. Shelving Issues: Patrolling
the Boundaries of Democratic Discussion in Public Meetings. Journal of
Language and Social Psychology 41(6), 685-715.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X221079615
Van De Mieroop, D., Clifton, J. & Verhelst, A. 2019. Investigating the
interplay between formal and informal leaders in a shared leadership
configuration: A multimodal conversation analytical study. Human
Relations, 73(4), 490-515. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726719895077

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2743
----------------------------------------------------------