37.460, Calls: 8th Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication (United Kingdom)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-460. Tue Feb 03 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.460, Calls: 8th Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication (United Kingdom)

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Date: 31-Jan-2026
From: Sinéad Kwok [sineadkwok42 at gmail.com]
Subject: 8th Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication


Full Title: 8th Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and
Communication
Theme: The Concept of Language in the 21st Century

Date: 22-Apr-2026 - 24-Apr-2026
Location: London, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Professor Johan Siebers
Meeting Email: j.siebers at mdx.ac.uk

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Computational
Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Philosophy of Language;
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 27-Feb-2026

Call for Papers:
About the Roundtable:
The Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication is an
annual conference launched in January 2019 to encourage discussion
between three paradigms of language and communication theory: the
Integrationism of Roy Harris and his followers, Biosemiotics and
Philosophy of Communication. The Roundtable takes place at Middlesex
University London.
These areas of thought and scholarship share assumptions regarding the
fundamental role played by communicative interaction in the emergence
of signification, meaning and relationality. They also share views of
communication and language that are not limited to the understanding
of language as a code-based domain.
As usual, the Roundtable is a small-scale workshop, with 10-minute
presentations and long conversations (flipped conference style). This
format allows for an in-depth exchange of ideas, open questions,
speculations and considerations and makes the Roundtable an ideal
environment to present and discuss work at the frontiers of research
in our disciplines.
About the Theme:
This year’s theme will be The Concept of Language in the 21st Century.
It is an exciting time in linguistics and philosophy of language.
Developments in the leading paradigms for linguistic research have
generated fundamental questions regarding the (multi-)modality of
language, and developments in computer technology, mainly the
exponential growth of AI in recent years, have brought foundational
questions about the concept of language to the centre of attention.
The relationships between language and cognition, language, social
structure and social interaction, language and non-human communication
systems, language and normativity, as well as the place of the study
of language in the humanities, are all being re-drawn because of the
waning of once dominant theorisations of the nature of language, and
the emergence of new perspectives. Large Language Models present
opportunities to rethink the nature of syntactic explanation and
linguistic structure while the decolonisation of the humanities opens
questions on the ontology of language. Advances in animal
communication studies, the biology of consciousness and genetics
suggest that the boundaries between human language and other
communication systems may be more porous than previously thought,
while also urging renewed reflection on what, if anything, makes human
language a unique phenomenon in an egalitarian world of coexisting and
interdependent species. The question, “What do you mean by language?”
has, once again, become unavoidable. The Roundtable will offer a space
for reflection and exchange of ideas regarding this question and its
impact on language study.
We invite abstracts considering this question, from all theoretical
and philosophical orientations. Please send your abstract (250 words
max) to j.siebers at mdx.ac.uk, by 27 February 2026.



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