37.2406, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Intercommunity Interaction, Meaning-Making, and the Role of Pragmatics (Finland)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2406. Mon Jul 20 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2406, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Intercommunity Interaction, Meaning-Making, and the Role of Pragmatics (Finland)

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Date: 17-Jul-2026
From: Gulab Chand [potter.linguistics at gmail.com]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: Intercommunity Interaction, Meaning-Making, and the Role of Pragmatics


Panel at IPC20: Intercommunity Interaction, Meaning-Making, and the
Role of Pragmatics
Short Title: 20th IPrA (IPC20)
Theme: Intercommunity Interaction, Meaning-Making, and the Role of
Pragmatics

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland

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

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

The current communication pattern worldwide is marked by two key
features: digital connectivity and civic unrest. Communities
co-produce meaning through nuanced, often contested communicative acts
that range across generational, cultural, and ideological boundaries.
This panel proposes that intercommunity interaction is not merely an
exchange of information but a dynamic space of pragmatic negotiation,
in which utterances are determined by context, implicature, and social
intent (Levinson, 2023).
Drawing on contemporary socio-pragmatic theories, we argue that
understanding how meaning is constructed across communities
(especially during activism) requires an intergenerational focus.
Intergenerational interaction occupies a unique communicative space
where pragmatic competencies diverge most visibly. Community members
from different age brackets bring distinct epistemic abilities to
shared discursive events, whether in town halls, online forums, or
protest marches. Coupland (2014) demonstrates that intergenerational
talk is frequently marked by misaligned presuppositions and divergent
relevance structures, producing what he terms “pragmatic friction.”
Far from being merely disruptive, such friction becomes generative: it
compels interlocutors to renegotiate shared meaning, producing new
discursive norms that neither generation could have practiced alone.
Activism in any society mobilizes language to reframe injustice, build
solidarity, and provoke institutional response (Wodak & Meyer,
2016). Regularly, many intergenerational activist coalitions are seen
in recent climate justice and anti-austerity movements. The pragmatic
challenge underscores the need for elder activists trained in
deliberative rhetoric to co-construct meaning with younger
participants who are comfortable with digital multimodality and ironic
intertextuality (Zappavigna, 2022). The result is a hybrid activist
register that is neither wholly traditional nor entirely emergent.
Meaning-making in intercommunity contexts is further complicated by
what Blommaert calls “truncated repertoires”, the partial, uneven
linguistic resources that participants bring to interaction (2010).
Pragmatic inference in multicultural and intergenerational activist
spaces is locally renegotiated rather than universally assumed,
demanding metalinguistic awareness from all participants (Eckert,
2017; Kecskes, 2023). This panel will examine how communities develop
what we call “pragmatic solidarity”, a shared commitment to
interpretive charity and meaning co-construction, even across
significant communicative distance. Ultimately, it repositions
pragmatics not as a descriptive tool but as a civic resource. The few
themes include, but are not limited to:
 - Intergenerational Pragmatics and Negotiation
 - Activist language and Community mobilization
 - Intercultural pragmatics and meaning Co-Construction
 - Pragmatic solidarity and Collective sense-making across communities
 - Multimodality and emergent Intercommunity discourse
References:
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511845307
Coupland, N. (2014). Age in social and sociolinguistic theory.
In Sociolinguistics and social theory (pp. 185-211). Routledge.
Eckert, P. (2017). Age as a sociolinguistic variable. The handbook of
sociolinguistics, 151-167.
Kecskes, I. (Ed.). (2023). The Cambridge handbook of intercultural
pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, S. C. (2023). Gesture, spatial cognition and the evolution
of language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, 378(1875).
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2016). Methods of critical discourse
studies (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Zappavigna, M. (2022). Weaponising quotation for humorous ridicule:
Ambient affiliation, evaluative hashtags, and parodic resonance in
political social media discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 191, 98–112.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.12.003
We think this is a contemporary area for research discussion and
welcome all proposals for contributions to the panel.
Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2026
Abstracts for oral presentations should be around 300 words (minimum
250; maximum 500). Panel slots will be 30 minutes (20 minutes
presentation with 10 mins Q&A). Full details on how to submit your
abstract can be found on the IPrA webpage.
Please email Urjani Chakravarty (urjaiimidr at gmail.com) & Gulab Chand
(potter.linguistics at gmail.com) if you have any queries or would like
more information.



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