Call for papers: 5th Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (August 15-17, 2024 / Lund, Sweden)

https://konferens.ht.lu.se/iacs-5/

We invite proposals for theme sessions and abstracts (see below for instructions) for IACS-5, on topics that include but are not limited to:

Consciousness and semiosis (meaning making)
Perception and representation
Language and other semiotic systems
Developmental and evolutionary aspects of semiosis
Universal and culture-specific of semiosis
Intercultural and interspecies communication
Potentials and dangers of technology
Narratives across media and semiotic systems
Metaphor and metonymy across media and semiotic systems
Polysemiosis and multimodality
Intersemiotic translation and transmediation
Epistemology and truth
Agency and subjectivity

The conference theme is “Crises of Meaning”

Currently we face not only social, political, environmental, and scientific crises but also – and arguably underlying these – crises in how we make sense of ourselves and our world. Husserl diagnosed a general “Crisis of the European Sciences” nearly a century ago, leading us to oscillate between the extremes of positivism and relativism. We witness how this has only deepened, given increasing gulfs between science and the humanities, between technology and spirituality, between “civilizations”, and between conflicting “narratives”, and even “truths”. Our plenary speakers (and other speakers, as far as possible) are asked to address some aspect of this meaning crisis from the perspective of their own research. In this way, cognitive semiotics can hopefully make a contribution to the situation in our troubled world!

Plenary speakers

Merlin Donald, Queen’s University (https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/merlin-donald)
Hans-Georg Moeller, University of Macau (https://fah.um.edu.mo/hans-georg-moeller/)
Cornelia Mueller, Europa-Universität Viadrina (https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/en/lehrstuhl/sw/sw0/professurinhaberin/index.html)
Jamin Pelkey, Toronto Metropolitan University (https://www.torontomu.ca/llc/people/faculty/jamin-pelkey/)
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/philosophy/people/academic-staff/komarine-romdenh-romluc)
Morten Tønnessen, University of Stavanger (https://www.uis.no/en/profile/morten-tonnessen)

Submissions and key dates

Theme session proposals: Deadline: 15 December, 2023: Please send a 500 word proposal that is related to the conference topics, and preferably also the theme of the conference, to iacs5@sol.lu.se Specify if you are planning for a short session (4 talks) or long session (8 talks). If accepted, prospective participants will need to submit abstracts as indicated below.
Oral presentations: These will last 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for questions and movements between rooms (Deadline: January 15, 2024)
Posters: There will be a poster session for up to 30 presentations (Deadline: January 15, 2024)

Abstracts for oral presentations and posters are to be submitted through Easychair (https://www.easychair.org/account/signin). One page abstracts (at most 400 words, excluding title and references), written in English, should be uploaded to the EasyChair website by January 15, 2024. Abstracts will then be reviewed by two members of the Scientific Committee, and notification of acceptance will be sent by March 15, 2024.