37.1788, Confs: English Exposed: Vulnerability and Hope in Culture and Language (Estonia)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1788. Mon May 18 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1788, Confs: English Exposed: Vulnerability and Hope in Culture and Language (Estonia)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, 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: 14-May-2026
From: Alpo Honkapohja [ahonkapo at tlu.ee]
Subject: English Exposed: Vulnerability and Hope in Culture and Language


English Exposed: Vulnerability and Hope in Culture and Language

Date: 08-Oct-2026 - 10-Oct-2026
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Contact: Julia Kuznetski
Contact Email: tlu.english.major at gmail.com
Meeting URL:
https://www.tlu.ee/en/ht/english-exposed-vulnerability-and-hope-culture-and-language

Linguistic Field(s): Ling & Literature
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Submission Deadline: 15-Jun-2026

In a world marked by overlapping crises—wars, epidemics, climate
catastrophe, democratic erosion, technological acceleration, and the
growing entanglement of artificial intelligence with everyday
communication — vulnerability has emerged as an increasingly
recognised condition. English, as a global language of culture,
education, governance, and digital mediation, is deeply implicated in
these processes: it both exposes subjects to new forms of precarity
and offers resources for articulation, resilience, care, and hope. How
to think about vulnerability in today’s world? Is it to be resolved or
can we conceive of it as a condition to be accepted and embraced? Is
it helplessness and lack of agency or is it a relational, affective
and ethical condition? How can it be reconceptualised and recognised
for its potential to generate new forms of creativity, solidarity, and
critical hope?
This symposium invites scholars working across literary studies,
cultural studies, linguistics, and language education to explore how
vulnerability manifests in the world and is represented in and through
English and Anglophone cultures today. Drawing on recent theoretical
work on fear (Han 2024a), survival societies, pain (2020) hope (Han
2024b), critical attention (Citton 2017, Ganteau 2023, 2024), and
narrative engagement beyond the human (Caracciolo 2021, 2024), the
symposium asks how cultural and linguistic practices respond to a
present marked by anxiety, exhaustion, and exposure. How do literary,
artistic, cinematic, and discursive forms register contemporary
vulnerabilities? How does English function simultaneously as a site of
domination and of shared agency, whether in local, global, or
intercultural lingua franca contexts? What kinds of
futures—pedagogical, political, aesthetic—can be imagined from within
conditions of vulnerability? We particularly welcome contributions
that engage vulnerability not only as a theme but as a method, stance,
or practice, including creative-critical and interdisciplinary
approaches.
Possible thematic areas include (but are not limited to):
 - Vulnerability, precarity, and exposure in contemporary literature,
film, and culture
 - Fear, crisis, and “survival societies” in cultural and linguistic
imaginaries
 - Hope as disruption, refusal, and collective practice
 - Reimagined communities, solidarities, and the “we” of hope
 - English as a global language: ownership, inequality, and risk
 - English as a lingua franca and the vulnerabilities of global
communication
 - AI, automation, and the transformation of linguistic and cultural
attention and agency
 - Narration, storytelling, and art as practices of care, repair, or
healing
 - Creativity, innovation, and aesthetic experimentation in vulnerable
times
 - Vulnerability, attention and hope



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

********************** 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:

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-37-1788
----------------------------------------------------------