Cognitive Poetics and Rhetoric

28 – 30 January 2010

University of Łódź, Poland


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Organized by the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK), with the Chair of the English Language and Applied Linguistics and the Chair of English and General Linguistics at the Institute of English Studies, University of Lodz, Poland.
Poland has a strong tradition of research in cognitive linguistics; particularly in Lodz (the second biggest city in Poland) we have organized a series of well-attended conferences focusing on the main areas in the field. In 2003 the University of Lodz awarded an Honorary Doctorate to Ronald Langacker.

The aim of the present conference is discussing the recent developments in Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Rhetoric. Broadly speaking, Cognitive Poetics (also called Cognitive Stylistics) applies the insights from cognitive linguistics to the analysis of texts. Both the theoreticians and the practitioners of Cognitive Poetics point out its importance for literary studies, where it can become an effective analytical tool; but we firmly believe that it can also give direction to the study of non-literary texts, especially those in which language has been used in some creative way (as in advertising, linguistic humour, etc.), as well as the study of visual images or music.
The organizing committee

  1. Prof. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
  2. Prof. Alina Kwiatkowska
  3. Prof. Krzysztof Kosecki
  4. Dr Sylwia Dżereń-Głowacka
  5. Dr Kamila Ciepiela
Plenary Speakers

The plenary speakers will include:
  1. Gerard Steen, Vrije University, Amsterdam
  2. Joanna Gavins, University of Sheffield
  3. Zoltan Kövecses, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest
  4. Yeshayahu Shen, Tel Aviv University
  5. Kurt Feyaerts, University of Leuven
  6. Charles Forceville, University of Amsterdam
  7. Craig Hamilton, Université de Haute Alsace
  8. Elzbieta Tabakowska, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Areas of Interest

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
  1. metaphor and metonymy as basic cognitive mechanisms (the use of novel metaphors in both literary texts and a range of non-literary discourses in public and interpersonal communication; the literalization of metaphors; synaesthetic metaphors; pictorial and multimodal metaphors; corpus-based studies of metaphorical patterns in texts); the mechanism of conceptual and formal blending;
  2. mental imagery and its reflection in language (the figure/ground distribution of information, and the reversal of the figure/ground pattern; the manipulation of the point of view);
  3. the use of frames, scripts and mental schemas in conceptualization;
  4. the linguistic construal of text worlds;
  5. the novel linguistic categorization of reality; etc.
Close to this approach to texts is Cognitive Rhetoric, which we see as focusing on the study of linguistic devices and strategies used by the authors of literary, political, or media messages with the aim of affecting the readers'/recipients' conceptualizations. We are therefore also interested in the papers examining readers' responses to texts, and the potential of texts to alter our perspective and way of thinking.
Papers

We welcome both more theoretical contributions exploring the different strands in the discipline, and those that offer a detailed analysis of a particular text.

A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published in book form.

The deadline for outline proposals is 15th November 2009. Please send your abstracts of up to 300 words, accompanied by your name and institutional affiliation, in the *.doc or *pdf format, to akwiat@uni.lodz.pl. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 23 November.
Conference fee

The conference fee:
  1. Early registration – until 14th Dec. 2009: General 130 Euro, Grad. students 80 Euro
  2. Late registration – 15 Dec. 2009 – 17 Jan. 2010: General 150 Euro, Grad. students 100 Euro
Contact

For further details please contact akwiat@uni.lodz.pl or sglowacka@uni.lodz.pl.

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