The Institute of Humanities of the State University of Applied Sciences in Krosno, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, St. Mary’s University College, Queen’s University, Belfast, and Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies invite you to take part in the international conference entitled: Across Borders Conference Ten, which will be held on September 23-25, 2024 in Krosno, Poland under the leading theme: 

Difficult Neighbourhoods:

The Semiotics of Conflict in Culture, Literature and Language.

If a culture defines itself by reference to shared values and symbols, it does so primarily by contrast to the values and symbols shared by another culture, often a neighbouring one.  The neighbourhood of nations gives rise to numerous conflicts of interest (see Kłoskowska 1992 in an article on the social and cultural implications of the difficult Polish-German neighbourhood), and the conflicting views are expressed in semiotic acts that involve contrast, dissent, opposition or hostility in relation to the neighbours. Many wars and revolutions have been preceded by a semiotic construction of conflict and then represented through the language of conflict.

This conference aims to discuss the semiotics and pragmatics of conflict in various discourses of borders and neighbourhoods — geographical, political, religious, ethnic, linguistic, both real and imagined – expressed in widely understood texts of culture.  In recent years, in response to the growing role of infotainment in media and the rise of populism and fake news in the public sphere,  the discourse of conflict has adopted elements of amusement and entertainment.

We  invite interested scholars to submit 20-minute-long papers on the theme of conflict in language, communication, literature, translation, film, media, humour studies, folklore and related fields.

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Antonina Kłoskowska (1992). “Neighbourhood Cultures: Some Aspects Of Difficult Historical Neighbourhoods”. International Sociology, 7(1), 55-68.

The language of the conference is English.

The conference will be held on site in Krosno, Poland. However, there is a possibility of online participation as well, in cooperation with the Organizers.

Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in a conference volume and in a special issue of a journal.

The conference will be held under the auspices of the Rector of the State University of Applied Sciences in Krosno, Professor Zbigniew Barabasz.