37.2459, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Handling Different Voices in Science Communication: From Linguistic Polyphony to Artificial Agents (Finland)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2459. Thu Jul 23 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2459, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Handling Different Voices in Science Communication: From Linguistic Polyphony to Artificial Agents (Finland)

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Date: 22-Jul-2026
From: Kerstin Fischer [kerstin at sdu.dk]
Subject: Panel at IPC20 - Handling Different Voices in Science Communication: From Linguistic Polyphony to Artificial Agents


Panel at IPC20 - Handling Different Voices in Science Communication:
>From Linguistic Polyphony to Artificial Agents
Short Title: IPrA Conference IPC20 in Helsinki

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsiki, Finland
Contact: Kerstin Fischer
Contact Email: kerstin at sdu.dk
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Phonology; Pragmatics; Semantics

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

IPrA 2027 Panel: Handling Different Voices in Science Communication:
>From linguistic polyphony to artificial agents
Kerstin Fischer, Annette Lessmöllmann & Francois Nemo
Current societal challenges require complex solutions, and
accordingly, science communication has to resist giving easy answers.
Instead, the complexity and polyphony of societal discourse needs to
be accounted for and represented while avoiding overwhelming the
recipients. This panel integrates two lines of research: On the one
hand, recent technological developments allow for new forms of
dialogical, interactive communication, for instance, through chatbots
or social robots, opening up new opportunities for science
communication; on the other, research on the linguistic and prosodic
dimension of argumentation and on different signalling systems is
evolving, notably in the modelling of polyphony as virtual dialog
within utterances. The panel aims at integrating these two lines of
research to inform science communication methods and processes and to
develop pathways for complex, polyphonic artificial agents useful for
communicating complex lines of argumentation and building polyphonic
argumentative frames.
We therefore invite contributions that address, for instance:
 - communicating complex lines of argumentation about pressing and
controversial societal issues, such as climate change, democracy or AI
 - using artificial agents for science communication
 - designing science communication dialog
 - linguistic marking of polyphony and argumentation
 - prosody, modal particles and other elusive linguistic phenomena as
polyphonic signalling systems
 - cognitive and linguistic framing of comparison sets and questions
under discussion, including prosodic focus and other types of prosodic
modulation.
Confirmed speakers include:
Lotfi Abouda (University of Orléans)
Ali Asadi (University of Southern Denmark)
Hendrik Buschmeier (Bielefeld University)
Kerstin Fischer (University of Southern Denmark)
Kjersti Fløttum (University of Bergen)
Øjvind Gjerstad (University of Bergen)
Markus Gottschling (University of Tübingen)
Monika Hanauska (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Helena Larsen (University of Southern Denmark)
Annette Lessmöllmann (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (University of Manchester)
Francois Nemo (University of Orléans)
Igor Zagar (University of Ljubljana)
Please direct your inquiries at Kerstin Fischer kerstin at sdu.dk,
Annette Lessmöllmann annette.lessmoellmann at kit.edu or François Nemo
francois_nemo at yahoo.fr or submit your panel contributions directly via
the IPrA conference page.



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