Digital Intercultural Communication @ GAL 2021, September, 15 – 17
Call for Contributions (Abstracts)
The Association for Applied Linguistics‘ (Gesellschaft für Angewandte Linguistik = GAL) section 3 will collectively explore intercultural communication in the digital world, discuss how communicative action and the negotiation of meaning at all levels and in all modalities contribute to establishing and displaying affiliation (for instance ”relational needs”, see Baxter 2004) or exclusion in intercultural digital environments. This will include whether and how typical intercultural phenomena – such as multilingualism, negotiation of belonging and negotiation of meaning as well as the questioning of communicative practices that are usually taken for granted – might change in digital spaces and under specific online-offline constraints. Finally, the discourse on intercultural online interactions will further reflect upon popular and academic understanding of “culture” and help to re-evaluate its contours.
Submissions including – but not limited to – theoretical and empirical perspectives and insights on the following topics are welcome:
• Fusion of digital and analogue intercultural communication
• Role and functions of narratives, cues, discourse markers etc. in intercultural communication on the Internet
• Negotiation of identity, positioning and (cultural) belonging in online communication
• Discursive demarcation between ingroups and outgroups
• Digital intercultural business communication
• Specific forms of communication in global online communities
• Language ideologies and language attitudes in the digital space
• Multilingualism in online communication
• ELF (English as lingua franca) in the virtual world
• Online communication from the perspective of critical discourse analysis
Standard format (e.g. 20-minute lecture + 10-minute discussion) and alternative formats (e.g. using technical or interactive elements) are welcome. (Feel free to experiment!) are possible.
Please submit your proposals via Conftool by 15 May 2021 with the following information:
• Abstract of your topic (300-500 words incl. bibliography)
• If your proposal deviates from the traditional format (20 min. presentation + 10 min. discussion), please provide a brief description
• Please indicate whether you can be present in Würzburg (preferably, Covid-19 permitting) or whether you would like to join online (especially for contributors required to travel long distances and/or people at risk of contracting Covid-19)
• Indicate the language(s) in which you would like to contribute (German and/ or English)
• Your contact information
The conference will take place either in presence (@ Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg, Germany) or virtually; online contributions are also possible at a presence event.
Please see the detailed programme here: https://gal-wue21.de/programm-2/.
Contact for any further information:
General contact: redico@uni-mainz.de
Dr. Roman Lietz: rlietz@uni-mainz.de
Dr. Milene Mendes de Oliveira: mendesde@uni-potsdam.de
Contributions can be submitted via the conference management programme Conftool until May 15, 2021:
https://www.conftool.pro/gal2021
