37.1868, Confs: Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences (Italy)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1868. Fri May 22 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1868, Confs: Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences (Italy)

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Date: 21-May-2026
From: Dottorato in Lingue, Letterature e Culture Comparate (University of Florence) [convegnosilenced.unifi at gmail.com]
Subject: Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences


Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences

Date: 26-Oct-2026 - 27-Oct-2026
Location: Florence, Italy
Contact: Dottorato in Lingue, Letterature e Culture Comparate (PhD in
Languages, Literatures and Comparative Cultures; University of
Florence)
Contact Email: convegnosilenced.unifi at gmail.com
Meeting URL:
https://www.dottoratolinletcult.unifi.it/upload/sub/News/CallForPapers_Silcenced_UNIFI%20(1).pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Discourse
Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics
Subject Language(s): Italian (ita)

Submission Deadline: 15-Jun-2026

Silence has crossed disciplines, historical periods, and forms of
expression, taking on different meanings and functions. It may appear
as emptiness, pause, interruption, or absence; yet at the same time,
it can constitute a form of latent presence — a trace of what has been
removed, censored, or rendered invisible.
Silence may also represent a site of resistance and possibility: from
being an instrument of control to becoming an effect of individual or
collective trauma that resists verbalisation; from empty spaces in
archives to omissions in historical narratives and official documents.
Indeed, silence can function as a strategy of withdrawal, an
expression of dissent, and a gesture through which meaning is produced
and negotiated.
Creative and interpretative frameworks entail processes of selection
that generate dynamics of silencing — voices, experiences, and
perspectives that remain unexpressed, unrecorded, or marginalised.
Interrogating silence therefore also requires reflecting on the
conditions of knowledge production from a dual perspective: silence as
an ontological condition, and silence as the product of discursive and
material processes of suppression. Who or what is being silenced?
Which voices remain at the margins? In what ways can silence produce
meaning, or become a space for debate and elaboration?
In some cases, however, silence may also elude practices of control or
forms of passive dissent. It can manifest through modes of
representation that, while placing subjects in the foreground,
ultimately erase or distort their voices through processes of
othering. Visibility itself may intensify the violence of enforced
silencing. The exposure of bodies and differences emerges in phenomena
such as ridicule, stereotyping, or mystification, obscuring the lived
experiences of represented subjects.
Narratives are marked by gaps, absences, or frustrated forms of
visibility that are never neutral. What does not appear, is excluded
and forgotten — or, conversely, is overemphasised to manipulate its
framing — often reveals what is preserved and transmitted. In this
sense, silence may be understood as a presence that traverses
documents, testimonies, and representations, opening particularly
productive critical spaces.
In literary studies, silence can manifest both formally and
thematically. It may take the shape of ellipsis or the silencing of
specific collectives and social groups. Moreover, in non-mimetic
genres such as the fantastic, silence functions as a constitutive
narrative element or as a mode of representing otherness. In
linguistics, silence may be articulated as a pragmatic-discursive
strategy and examined through multimodal approaches, conversational
implicatures, and ideological discourse, including Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA). In philology, silence may appear as gaps or losses in
textual transmission resulting from scribal omissions, the
deterioration of material and writing supports, or processes of
selection and censorship. In the visual arts, silence may emerge
through absence, subtraction, or the suspension of the gaze, while in
music and sound composition it becomes an integral component of the
work itself. Finally, in cinema and performance art, silence assumes a
strong expressive and political charge. Across all these fields,
silence is not merely absence, but a device that shapes meaning and
orients experience in its entirety.
Thematic Areas:
The doctoral conference Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied
Presences aims to stimulate reflection on silence not only as the
absence of voice or sound, but as a device that structures narratives,
archives, memories, and processes of knowledge production.
The conference primarily welcomes contributions in the fields of
philology, linguistics, literatures, and comparative cultures.
However, submissions from other academic disciplines are also
encouraged in order to foster interdisciplinary dialogue.
Possible thematic axes include (but are not limited to):
 - Silence and power: censorship, removal, marginalisation, and
silencing practices
 - Archives of silence: gaps, omissions, and documentary voids
 - Silence and memory: trauma, repression, and testimony
 - Silence and language: prosody, the unsaid, the implicit, the
unspeakable
 - Silence and the body: gestures, absent presence, performance
 - Silence as resistance: strategies of withdrawal, refusal, and
dissent
 - Ecologies of silence: soundscapes, absence of sound, and
environmental transformations
 - Silence and spirituality: contemplative practices, rituals, and
symbolic dimensions
 - Silence as pathology: interactions between medicine and the
humanities
 - Silence and technology: configurations of silence in the digital
age
Submission Guidelines:
The call for papers is addressed to PhD candidates and early-career
researchers interested in contributing to the conference debate.
Proposals, in either Italian or English, must be submitted by 15th
June 2026 to the following email address:
convegnosilenced.unifi at gmail.com
The submission template can be downloaded on the University of
Florence website.
The submission, in PDF format and saved as
Surname_ConvegnoSilenced_UNIFI must include:
- title of the proposal
- abstract (maximum 300 words)
- 5 keywords
- 5–7 bibliographic references relevant to the topic
- a brief biographical note (maximum 150 words), written in the same
language as the abstract and keywords
Authors are also required to specify:
- institutional affiliation
- disciplinary field
- language of presentation (Italian or English)
Submissions will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 20th July 2026.
Each speaker will have 20 minutes for their presentation.
The conference will take place in person on Monday 26th and Tuesday
27th October 2026 at the University of Florence. Further information
regarding the venue and organisational details will be communicated
upon confirmation of participation.
Participation in the conference is free of charge. Please note,
however, that the organisers are unable to cover travel,
accommodation, or subsistence expenses.



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