37.2896, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and (Im)politeness in Historical Pragmatics (Finland)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2896. Fri Sep 11 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2896, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and (Im)politeness in Historical Pragmatics (Finland)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, 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: 10-Sep-2026
From: Annick Paternoster [annick.paternoster at usi.ch]
Subject: Panel at IPC20 - Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and (Im)politeness in Historical Pragmatics


Panel at IPC20 - Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and
(Im)politeness in Historical Pragmatics
Short Title: IPC 20 Helsinki 2027
Theme: Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and (Im)politeness in
Historical Pragmatics'

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: Annick Paternoster
Contact Email: annick.paternoster at usi.ch
Meeting URL:
https://pragmatics.international/general/custom.asp?page=IPC20Helsinki

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

Efficacious Words: Religion, Speech Acts and (Im)politeness in
Historical Pragmatics
Organisers: Annick Paternoster, Kim Ridealgh and Luis Unceta Gómez
This panel contributes to the next phase of Historical (Im)politeness
Research and Historical Pragmatics: a move beyond segmented studies of
individual periods and languages towards longer diachronies,
contrastive research and renewed theoretical reflection on what counts
as pragmatic action in historically and geographically distant
linguacultures. A central question is how religious beliefs,
institutions and ritual practices have shaped what historical actors
understood words to do in interaction and in social relationships.
We invite papers on any language, period or tradition that examine how
religious frameworks structure pragmatic action. We are especially
interested in words treated as actions able to bless, curse, bind,
absolve, heal, protect, consecrate, excommunicate, prophesy or
exorcise. Such cases challenge current speech act categories and
suggest that, for many past cultures, declaratives and other
efficacious utterances may have occupied a more central place than
modern classifications allow.
A key aim is to connect micro-level, emic analyses with
macro-historical questions about how speech acts emerge and move
between religious, legal, medical, magical and everyday settings.
Papers may ask when pragmatic acts become, or cease to be, religious;
what evidence points to sacralisation, desacralisation or
routinisation; and whether comparable patterns can be identified
across ancient, classical and other pre-Christian traditions,
Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions, and the religious, ritual and
philosophical traditions of East and South Asia.
A particular stimulus for the panel is recent work on verbal efficacy
and ritualised language, including Leslie Arnovick’s Verbal Medicines:
The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms
(2024). This research invites historical pragmatics to take seriously
utterances whose force is curative, protective, exorcistic or
harm-averting. Work on blasphemy and harmful speech is equally
important, showing that words could be evaluated as offensive, sinful
or dangerous because of their perceived capacity to damage persons and
communities.
Possible topics include address to God or other supernatural
addressees; divine or supernatural beings as overhearers, witnesses or
agents in curses, blessings, vows and imprecations; emic discourses on
the power and danger of words; religiously anchored speech acts such
as thanking, apologising, promising, swearing and greeting; and
under-researched pragmatic acts such as oaths, charms, invocations,
healing formulae, exorcisms, prophecies and divinations.
We particularly welcome longer-diachronic, contrastive, multilingual
and multimodal work.



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

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

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

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-37-2896
----------------------------------------------------------