[ecrea] CFP: ESTIDIA Dialogues without Borders: Strategies of Interpersonal and Inter-group Communication

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The 4th ESTIDIA conference, to be held on 29-30 September, 2017, is 
hosted by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, the oldest higher 
education institution in Bulgaria, founded in 1888, which has been 
consistently ranked as the top university in the country according to 
national and international rankings. The conference serves as a 
discussion forum for researchers and practitioners to showcase their 
dialogue-oriented work on current societal and community-related issues, 
and on methodological approaches to dialogue and strategies of 
interpersonal and inter-group Communication. The aim is to bring 
together senior and junior scholars and practitioners from a wide range 
of disciplines and professional orientations to critically explore, 
through dialogue, different perspectives on human thinking, 
communication strategies, interpersonal relations, socio-cultural 
traditions, political processes and business interactions by means of 
theory-based and practice-driven investigations.

*Conference Theme*

Most of the world’s population – and Europe is a case in point – lives 
in contexts that are becoming increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, 
multi-cultural. Travel across national boundaries is becoming an 
everyday activity for many, and new technologies allow individuals to 
communicate easily and cheaply across such boundaries, even if they stay 
at home. Meanwhile, hostilities between ethnic, national, religious, and 
other groups do not seem to be decreasing, but on the contrary, are 
being kindled by extremist groups and totalitarian leaders. To oppose, 
prevent and do away with such negative and dangerous developments in the 
21st century, it is more important than ever to acquire an in-depth and 
nuanced understanding of how individuals communicate based on group or 
community memberships, and how communication allows or encourages group 
segregation and isolationist tendencies. It is languages – verbal 
language, sign language, body language – that constitute the basic 
channels of communication through which group stereotypes can be 
tolerated, changed, and/or resisted.

While the dynamics of interpersonal and intergroup relations has been a 
recurrent topic in several disciplines, such as psychology, social 
psychology (Tajfel 1978, 1982; Haslam et al 1998; Bar-Tal 2000) and 
political science (Sherif 1966; Pennebaker et al. 1997; Sidanius & 
Pratto 2001), research on communication and miscommunication in 
interpersonal and intergroup interaction has been conducted primarily 
within the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics anthropology, 
rhetoric and communication studies (Hymes 1964; Gumperz 1971; Gudykunst 
1998; Gudykunst & Mody 2002; Giles 2012; Berger 2014). A major advantage 
of these research strands lies in their intergroup perspective that 
considers people not only as individuals, but also as members of social 
groups (in terms of e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, region), 
and investigates the ways in which various social group memberships 
relate to the way that we communicate with each other.

A major goal of this conference is to bring together scholars from a 
wide range of disciplines who are interested in sharing their expertise 
and in discussing and comparing their extensive empirical and 
theoretical findings, so as to achieve a synergy and a 
cross-fertilisation of perspectives and approaches that highlight the 
role of communication practices in dealing with challenging situations 
emerging in interpersonal and intergroup encounters in 21st century 
societies.

Consequential work on intergroup issues was inspired by the development 
of social identity theory, initiated by Tajfel and Turner (1986), who 
explained that an individual does not just have a personal selfhood, but 
multiple selves and identities associated with their affiliated groups, 
and therefore the individual might act differently in varying social 
contexts according to the groups they belong to, which might include a 
sports team they follow, their family, their country of nationality, and 
the neighborhood they live in, among many other possibilities. A major 
finding of social identity theory consists of the insight that social 
behavior falls on a continuum that ranges from interpersonal behavior to 
intergroup behavior, since most social situations call for a compromise 
between these two ends of the spectrum.

The importance of intergroup and interpersonal communication in 
understanding ongoing societal changes has been highlighted by 
Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), by exploring the links between 
language, context, and identity and by examining the reasons why 
individuals emphasize or minimize the social differences between 
themselves and their interlocutors through verbal and nonverbal 
communication (Giles 1977; Giles, Howard, Coupland, J. & Coupland, N. 
1991; Gallois, Ogay & Giles 2005). CAT focuses on both intergroup and 
interpersonal factors that lead to accommodation, as well as the ways in 
which concerns about power, macro and micro-context affect communication 
behaviour in various professional settings, such as the medical field 
(Watson & Gallois 1999; Gasiorek, Van de Poel & Blockmans 2015; Hewett, 
Watson & Gallois 2015), the legal context (Aronsson, Jönsson & Linell 
1987; Gnisci 2005; Davis 2007; Di Conza, Abbamonte, Scognamiglio & 
Gnisci 2012), and police interrogations (Berk-Seligson 2011), to name 
but a few. Cultural perspectives on ingroup and intergroup relations 
that have been developed within the framework of the ethnography of 
communication, strongly rooted in anthropology (Gumperz & Hymes, 1964) 
have added valuable insights into sources of misunderstanding and 
asymmetrical communication. Investigations like the ones carried out by 
Carbaugh, Berry & Nurmikari-Berry, 2006) provide evidence that ways of 
speaking, behaving and interacting define social and group relationships 
within and across cultures.

Today many countries, including European countries, are confronted with 
great challenges following the increasing societal and economic 
globalization, the internationalisation of cross-border cooperation and 
the effects of cross-border mobility through the arrival of migrants and 
refugees. Subtle differences in private or public interaction patterns 
can result in misunderstandings and disagreements, which can lead to 
serious conflicts involving local, national and regional actors, groups 
and communities. How to avoid misunderstandings and prevent conflicts? 
Irrespective of the approaches used, dialogue is a must since it 
requires and encourages a spirit of inquiry, self-reflection and 
personal scrutiny. The inclusiveness, open-endedness and long-term 
perspective of dialogue are necessary prerequisites for building 
interpersonal, inter-group and inter-community bridges by fostering 
exchanges of views, by searching for common ground in cross-border 
encounters, by acknowledging the value of difference and diversity. This 
is why we need to encourage research across a diverse range of domains, 
including language attitudes (accent/language choice), intergenerational 
communication, communication in health care, family communication, 
instructional communication, and computer-mediated communication.

The major goal of this international conference is to offer a forum for 
interdisciplinary and multi-level dialogue among researchers and 
practitioners in interpersonal and inter-group communication across 
social-cultural contexts and fields of activity. The questions they are 
called upon to examine, explore and debate include, but are not limited 
to, the following:

  * How are interpersonal and intergroup relations constructed,
    de-constructed and re-constructed through multilingual, multi-level
    and multidimensional communication?
  * To what extent can social rituals and cultural traditions enable,
    promote or prevent ingroup harmony/disharmony and outgroup
    inclusion/exclusion?
  * How do the groups people belong to influence the (positive and
    negative) ingroup-outgroup stereotypes they develop/hold? What role
    do language and linguistic representations play in spreading or
    exposing stereotypes?
  * What types of pro-migrant and anti-migrant arguments are being put
    forward in official media coverage and in the social media? In what
    ways do they differ and how do they affect individual and group
    reactions?
  * How do media programmes, advertisemensts, online networking, and
    other types of multimodal communication impact the (positive and
    negative) attitudes and emotions of the viewers?
  * What commonalities and what differences can be noticed in the
    terminology and discourse used to describe individuals and/or groups
    migrating within or between countries? Which are the recurrent
    collocations used with regard to categories of people referred to as
    refugees, migrants, immigrants, expats, asylum seekers, and/or
    displaced people?
  * What is the role played by digital platforms in reproducing,
    reinforcing or challenging class and gender systemic inequalities
    within and across groups?
  * How can digital communication culture contribute to fostering a
    multidimensional and multidirectional dialogue across groups and
    communities?
  * In what ways can translation and interpreting serve as
    bridge-builders across generations, genders, and a wide range of
    different or mixed cultures?
  * How can the activation of certain social categories and stereotypes
    influence how we communicate with others, and how can this both
    facilitate and complicate the interaction between members of
    different social/cultural/ethnic groups?

We welcome contributions from diverse fields of enquiry, including 
linguistics, media studies, journalism, cultural studies, psychology, 
rhetoric, political science, sociology, pedagogy, philosophy and 
anthropology

Download link: CfP_4th ESTIDIA  Conference_Sofia_201 
<http://www.estidia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CfP_4th-ESTIDIA-Conference_Sofia_2017.pdf>7



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