37.2319, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Positioning in Mediated Political Talk (Finland)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2319. Mon Jul 13 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2319, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Positioning in Mediated Political Talk (Finland)

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Date: 10-Jul-2026
From: Alessandro Stephan [stephan at ids-mannheim.de]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: Positioning in Mediated Political Talk


Panel at IPC20: Positioning in Mediated Political Talk

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Germany
Contact: Alessandro Stephan
Contact Email: stephan at ids-mannheim.de
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20Helsinki

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

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

In mediated political talk, participants continuously position
themselves and others in relation to each other as well as to broader
political discourses that shape and constrain their interaction.
Through such positioning practices, situated interaction becomes
interwoven with and related to wider (trans-situational) discursive
formations. This panel invites contributions that explore this
intersection between interaction and discourse by focusing on
positioning and stancetaking (cf. Du Bois 2007) in mediated political
talk. Drawing on conversation analytic and discourse analytic
approaches, the panel examines how participants use linguistic and
multimodal resources to negotiate social relations, identities, common
ground, and stances across political media formats such as televised
debates, interviews, podcasts, or live streaming.
Special attention will be paid to the role of indexicality in
political positioning. Linguistic forms are not merely used to convey
propositional content but simultaneously index social identities,
evaluative orientations, historical references, and future projections
(cf. Silverstein 2003). Such indexical practices are not static;
rather, they are shaped by the mediality of the communicative setting
(cf. Dang-Anh 2024; Luginbühl/Schneider 2020). Participants negotiate
their positions within complex media settings conditioned by multiple
audiences, layered addressivity, and political interests that may
extend beyond the situated interaction. The fundamental mechanisms of
face-to-face interaction (sequence organization, turn-taking, repair)
are accordingly reconfigured by the affordances of the respective
media formats (cf. Albert 2024; Clayman/Heritage 2002).
By integrating positioning theory and stancetaking research with the
concepts of indexicality and mediality, this panel aims to develop a
nuanced understanding of how political positioning operates across and
beyond the boundaries of situated interaction.
We invite empirically based contributions that address, among others,
the following questions:
- How are positioning and stance-taking accomplished by linguistic
means and multimodal resources in different mediated political formats
and, further, shaped by their mediality?
- In what ways are knowledge and common ground discursively
constructed, negotiated, or contested in mediated political
interaction?
- What kind of characteristic interactional phenomena do we find in
mediated political talk with regard to general conversational
mechanisms or different political styles (e.g., conversational
behavior of populists)?
- What are particular methodological challenges in analysing
audio-visual data of mediated political talks and how can we solve
them?
Please submit your abstract (up to 500 words) via the conference
website (https://ipra2027.exordo.com/) by 15 October 2026. In step 4
(‘Topics’) of the submission process select the panel ‘Positioning in
mediated political talk’. Further information on submitting abstracts
can be found in the IPC20 Call for Papers
(https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027). Please note that an
active IPrA membership is required to submit an abstract. If you have
any further questions regarding the panel, please feel free to contact
us directly.
Contact:
Georg Albert (RPTU Landau), georg.albert at rptu.de
Mark Dang-Anh (IDS Mannheim), dang at ids-mannheim.de
Myriam Goll (RPTU Landau), m.goll at rptu.de
Alessandro Stephan (IDS Mannheim), stephan at ids-mannheim.de
References:
Albert, Georg. 2024. Playing one’s part within a medial procedure: A
talk show host’s role-specific interaction. In Luginbühl,
Martin/Schneider, Jan Georg (eds.), Media as Procedures of
Communication, 98–123. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Clayman, Steven E./Heritage, John. 2002. The news interview:
Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: CUP.
Dang-Anh, Mark. 2024. Handling signs medially: On mediality and
indexicality in semiotic media practices. In Luginbühl,
Martin/Schneider, Jan Georg (eds.), Media as Procedures of
Communication, 220–245. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Du Bois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson
(ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse, 139–182. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Luginbühl, Martin/Jan Georg Schneider. 2020. Medial Shaping from the
Outset. On the Mediality of the Second Presidential Debate, 2016.
Journal für Medienlinguistik 3(1). 57–93.
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of
sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23(3–4). 193–229.



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