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

*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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