Call for papers
The title and general theme of the Conference is In/Authentic Styles: Language, Discourse and Contexts.
The Conference committee particularly welcomes abstracts that address the notion of authenticity in literary and non-literary texts and text-types. In general terms, an entity can be defined as authentic when it is considered to be real, actual, genuine, original, first-hand, or, in literary and artistic terms, unquestionably proceeding from its stated source, author, painter, etc. Given this definition, the discourse of authenticity makes frequent use of the term ‘representation’: a description or reproduction of facts or situations aiming at realism and, most often, an artistic, cultural or artificial construction intended to convey a particular view and to influence the addressees’ opinions or actions.
Authenticity — and its antonym ‘inauthenticity’ — can therefore have various meanings: the clearly recognisable style of an author conveying their identity; the stylistic features and devices characterising a text-type or period; an (apparently) essential, unrefined, unsophisticated style resulting in a text communicating clear, transparent and comprehensible messages and representing entities in an (apparently again) unbiased way; an addresser textually constructing solidarity, cooperation and friendliness towards their addressees by means of, for instance, informal everyday language or socio-pragmatic strategies; the theme of getting back to one’s cultural roots and representing one’s ethnic, social and even artistic identity; linguistic, discursive and artistic representation as an act of persuading, manipulating and expressing ideology.
We will be interested in any abstracts that address these and similar issues, but also that explore broader areas of stylistics and, in particular, its relationships to other disciplines such as pragmatics, semantics, narratology, literary studies, cultural studies, language teaching, translation and others.
We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations (followed by 10 minutes for discussion). All Conference rooms have a computer, data projector and screen. Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to the Conference email address: pala2016@unica.it.
Abstracts should be sent as email attachments in .doc, .docx or .rtf format and should be named ‘Surname_Abstract_PALA 2016’. They should contain the following structural elements: (a) your full name, academic position, academic affiliation, email address, postal address, (b) a recognisable thesis/statement or research question, (c) an explanation of the methodology, (d) a short reference to emerging results (if applicable), (e) a list of keywords, (f) a short list of key references (max. 5).
The deadline for submission of abstracts is 31st January 2016. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 28th February 2016.