37.3505, Confs: Panel at ADDA6 - Believing, Belonging, and Boundary-Making: Belief as Identity Work On- and Offline (Czech Republic)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3505. Mon 26 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3505, Confs: Panel at ADDA6 - Believing, Belonging, and Boundary-Making: Belief as Identity Work On- and Offline (Czech Republic)

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Date: 22-Oct-2026
From: Ana Piroh [anastasiia.piroh at uni-due.de]
Subject: Panel at ADDA6 - Believing, Belonging, and Boundary-Making: Belief as Identity Work On- and Offline


Panel at ADDA6 - Believing, Belonging, and Boundary-Making: Belief as
Identity Work On- and Offline
Short Title: ADDA 6
Theme: Digital Identities and Online Selves

Date: 26-May-2027 - 28-May-2027
Location: Brno, Czech Republic
Contact: Ana Piroh
Contact Email: anastasiia.piroh at uni-due.de
Meeting URL: https://english.phil.muni.cz/adda

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics

Submission Deadline: 30-Nov-2026

Conspiracy theories, myths, supernatural narratives, lifestyle
ideologies, and political worldviews differ considerably in content,
yet they share a reliance on discursive strategies that render
contested claims plausible and emotionally compelling. This panel
explores how beliefs are linguistically and multimodally constructed
across seemingly disparate digital spaces and how they shape identity
at the personal, group, and collective level (Bös et al. 2018). Belief
is thus understood here as “the experience of belonging” (Day 2021:
194), as an ongoing sociocultural identity practice, which is
performed (Butler 1990) rather than possessed.
Believers are viewed as social actors who continuously (re-)produce,
negotiate, display, po-lice, and contest belief in interaction. They
discursively accomplish their belonging through the signalling of
group membership, claiming moral or epistemic authority, establishing
credibility, and drawing boundaries to non-believers. In these
processes, digital and offline environments are mutually constitutive
rather than separate spheres, jointly shaping identities that emerge
through the circulation of discursive repertoires across contexts:
becoming a believer or non-believer thus entails adopting
community-specific practices that negotiate claims to authenticity,
responsibility, truthfulness, and legitimacy.
We invite contributions examining how digital actors establish
credibility by presenting themselves as uniquely capable of
recognising moral, political, or experiential truth, or “stigmatized
knowledge” (Barkun 2015: 115), thereby authenticating their own
identities while undermining competing accounts of reality and
selfhood. Possible foci include, among others, the discursive
strategies underlying conspiracy narratives and alternative
epistemologies; the rhetoric of lifestyle as a marker of identity; the
persuasive language of political be-lief; above all the construction
of authenticity across different platforms and their translations into
analogue contexts.
Those interested in contributing to this panel are invited to submit
their abstracts via the conference website:
https://english.phil.muni.cz/adda/registration/abstract-submission?lang=en
Abstracts should be 250–300 words, including references, and must be
submitted as fully anonymised documents to allow for blind review.
The deadline for submissions is 30 November 2026 (inclusive). Authors
will be notified of the outcome of their individual submissions by 15
January 2027.
References:
Barkun, Michael. 2015. Conspiracy theories as stigmatized knowledge.
Diogenes 62 (3-4), 114-120.
Bös, Birte, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin and Nuria Hernández (eds.).
2018. The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline.
Personal – group – collective. Amster-dam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Butler, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity. New York/London: Routledge.
Day, Abby. 2011. Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in
the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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