Archive for March 2023

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[Commlist] Fifth Middlesex Round table on Signs, Language and Communication

Mon Mar 20 13:27:33 GMT 2023




*Fifth Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication*

*27-28 March 2023*

*/Indeterminacy/*

The /Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication/ <https://www.mdx.ac.uk/our-research/research-groups/language-and-communication-research-cluster/roundtable-on-signs-language-and-communication>is an annual workshop launched in January 2019 to encourage discussion between three paradigms of language and communication theory: the integrationism of Roy Harris and his followers, biosemiotics and philosophy of communication.

These areas of thought and scholarship share assumptions regarding the fundamental role played by communicative interaction in the emergence of signification, meaning and relationality. They also share views of communication and language that are not limited to the understanding of language as a code-based domain.

This year’s Roundtable will focus on the topic of indeterminacy as it is played out in integrationism, biosemiotics and philosophy of communication.

***

The Roundtable will take place at Middlesex University on 27 and 28 March 2022 in room WG34

As usual, the Roundtable is a small-scale workshop, with 10-minute presentations and long conversations (flipped conference style). This format allows for an in-depth exchange of ideas, open questions, speculations and considerations and makes the Roundtable an ideal environment to present and discuss work at the frontiers of research in our disciplines. This year the Roundtable will be held as a hybrid event, with face to face participation as well as online participation for each session.

If you would like to attend – in person or online – please contact Paul Cobley (P.Cobley /at/ mdx.ac.uk) <mailto:(P.Cobley /at/ mdx.ac.uk)>; Adrian Pable (apable /at/ hku.hk) <mailto:(apable /at/ hku.hk)>; Johan Siebers (J.Siebers /at/ mdx.ac.uk) <mailto:(J.Siebers /at/ mdx.ac.uk)>

Programme, below:

**

*27 March*

_10:00-11:30 GMT_

Dorthe Duncker, /Now you get it, now you don’t. Provisional determinacy and Schrödinger’s cat/.//

The indeterminacy of the linguistic sign is the central doctrine of integrationism, although the sign can be determinate relative to a particular interactional situation. However, this provisional determinacy does not outlast the situation in which the sign was made, so what is the semiological status of the indeterminate sign?

Sinead Kwok, /Integrating textual Indeterminacy: the missing textualizer/

My talk focuses on the predominant conceptions of textual indeterminacy in literary criticism and philological studies, including (1) the poststructuralist destabilization of meaning (in opposition to a relatively stable/present form, resulting in the never-ending multiplication of the semantic networks of the 'same text'), which accounts for the debate on author's vs reader's meaning; and (2) the questioning of the autonomy or identification of texts altogether in the philological experience with text-artefact dynamics. I propose to look into how the integrationist theory of signs can cast these two debates on textual indeterminacy in a new light, by showing that both of them are products of a depersonalized semiological view and exploring where textual (in)determinacy stands in an integrational point of view.

_11:30-13:00 GMT_

__

Nick White, /Expectation and Reality: ‘Authenticity’ in the Content and Materials Design for English Language Teaching from an Integrationist Perspective/

Since at least the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but certainly since the early 1970s and the advent of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the concept of ‘authenticity’ in the content and materials design for English Language Teaching (ELT) has been a source of much controversy: Can the indeterminacy inherent in the events and artefacts of ‘real’ communicative experience be successfully transposed for the expectations of an ELT pedagogy? This contribution first sketches out a brief historical background to ‘authenticity’ in ELT from an integrationist perspective before inviting discussion of both this issue and its potential further interest to the study of signs, language and communication beyond language teaching.

Sibusiso Cliff Ndlangamandla, /Languaging through technology in Higher Education: the individual versus language choice, equity, and norms/

When students are asked to write short language narratives about technologies and lifestyles, they use their own languaging and everyday semiotic resources. These narratives show that both forms and functions are indeterminate and that individual reflexive experiences defy norms, standards, and multilingualism that are taught in formal programs. This session will discuss whether language teaching should focus on individual communication, context, production, and reproduction rather than abstract linguistic concepts and language ideologies.

//

_13:00-14:00 GMT_

Lunch

_14:00-15:30 GMT_

__

Mats Bergman, /Vagueness in mind: on the pragmatic virtue of imprecise thoughts/

The starting point for my talk is C. S. Peirce’s conceptualisation of indeterminacy in terms of the communicative functions of utterance (vagueness or indefiniteness) and interpretation (generality). I will focus on the implications of the thesis that no “communication of one person to another can be entirely definite” as applied to dialogic thought.

Chris Barnham, /Peirce's icon: a latent source of indeterminacy in the sign?/

//

This paper seeks to discuss Peirce’s icon in relation to the intrinsic indeterminacy of the sign. Peirce’s icon is conventionally construed as a dyadic relationship between a known sign and an object. But this paper proposes a revised account of the icon - as the point in Peirce’s sign system where indeterminacy is first attached to an ‘object of thought’. It is suggested, as a result, that the icon represents a critical stage in the evolution of the sign for Peirce. He classifies it as prior to the index where the actions of secondness progressively transform the icon’s indeterminacy into a more determinate sign.

//

_15:30-16:00 GMT_

Tea/coffee

_16:00-16:45 GMT_

General discussion: summing up the first day

*28 March*

**

_10:00-11:30 GMT_

__

Susanne Kass, /Exploring the indeterminacy of environmental and non-human knowledge with imagination, narrativity, metaphor using posthuman practices/

//

The posthuman turn confronts us with a range of “other” knowledges, ways of being and communicating, and challenges us to recalibrate our human relationship with non-human species and technologies and navigating indeterminacy in communication can surely be enriched by these more-than-human perspectives. Using examples from creative and critical practice which engage with non-human environmental knowledge, I will discuss some of the possibilities and challenges of using the devices of imagination, metaphor and narrativity when encountering environmental phenomena in the uncertain times of climate change, and (mis)communicating with and about non-human actors.

Ruyu Yan, /Recontextualizing Indeterminacy in Metrolingualism/

//

As a metalinguistic term, “indeterminacy” has been adopted by a socio-applied linguist Alastair Pennycook in his metrolingual projects. Inquiring about what the term signifies in Pennycook’s discourses, this presentation will summarize two main ways of appropriating the integrational idea of indeterminacy, which are recontextualized by two pairs of anxiety and hope regarding human relations and the individual’s role in society.//

_11:30-13:00 GMT_

Elena Fell, /Indeterminacy and communication: a Bergsonian approach/

For this discussion, I want to revisit Bergson’s philosophy of duration, where he claims that real processes (including our thoughts and feelings) are too complex to communicate. Thus, to communicate with one another, we simplify our thoughts and feelings by presenting them verbally, but in doing so, we distort and misrepresent what we attempt to convey.

Anastasia Christou, /Indeterminacy and societal in/action///

From a philosophy of communication perspective, how is communicating moral concern in an era of polarised politics an act of indeterminacy for both ethico-political communication and communicative care. In other words, is there an indeterminacy in the communicology of ethics within toxic political discourses (including shaming and disinformation) in cases of gender-based violence, misogyny and femicide.

_13:00-14:00 GMT_

Lunch

_14:00-15:30 GMT_

Jasper Wu, />From bulbs to rhizomes: Mapping a Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to language policy and practice/

This paper reflects on the theoretical approaches to (in)determinacy developed in the field of language policy, a subfield of sociolinguistics. Focusing on the ‘onion’ metaphor (Hornberger and Johnson 1996) and its influence on subsequent works in the field, the paper argues that language policy remains entangled in a conceptual bias towards determinacy caught in oppositional binaries (e.g., top-down vs bottom-up, policy vs practice) and lines of causality (e.g., actions on one layer – usually a higher layer – causing reactions on another layer – usually a lower layer). The paper sketches a possible way out of this bulb of determinacy through the Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizome.

Marc Haas, /Deleuze and linguistic indeterminacy: how common abstractions are formed /

Deleuze's argument for linguistic indeterminacy is grounded in his critique of representation. In this view, the "langue code" is not what explains language use, but it is what must be explained: the formation of abstractions, linguistic and otherwise, is itself the product of a genesis which begins in dynamic relations.

_15:30 GMT_

Close

*/We are looking forward to welcoming you at Middlesex University or online for two days of lively, exploratory and creative dialogue!/*

/Paul Cobley, Adrian Pablé, Johan Siebers/


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