August 15-17, 2024, Lund, Sweden

We are happy to host the Fifth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS-5) at Lund University in August 15-17, 2024! This is nearly 10 years after the first conference in the short but productive history of cognitive semiotics, the new discipline which integrates theories and methods from semiotics, linguistics and cognitive science, with the help of phenomenology.

Conference theme: "Crises of Meaning"

Currently we face not only social, political, environmental, and scientific crises but also - and arguably underlying these - crises in how we make sense of ourselves and our world. Husserl diagnosed a general “Crisis of the European Sciences” nearly a century ago, leading us to oscillate between the extremes of positivism and relativism. We witness how this has only deepened, given increasing gulfs between science and the humanities, between technology and spirituality, between “civilizations”, and between conflicting “narratives”, and even “truths". Our plenary speakers (and other speakers, as far as possible) are asked to address some aspect of this meaning crisis from the perspective of their own research. In this way, cognitive semiotics can hopefully make a contribution to the situation in our troubled world!

So far we have the following confirmed Plenary speakers:

• Merlin Donald, Queen's University (https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/merlin-donald)
• Hans-Georg Moeller, University of Macau (https://fah.um.edu.mo/hans-georg-moeller/)
• Cornelia Mueller, Europa-Universität Viadrina (https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/en/lehrstuhl/sw/sw0/professurinhaberin/index.html)
• Jamin Pelkey, Toronto Metropolitan University (https://www.torontomu.ca/llc/people/faculty/jamin-pelkey/)
• Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/philosophy/people/academic-staff/komarine-romdenh-romluc)
• Morten Tønnessen, University of Stavanger (https://www.uis.no/en/profile/morten-tonnessen)

 Specific topics include but are not limited to:

• Consciousness and semiosis (meaning making)
• Perception and representation
• Language and other semiotic systems
• Developmental and evolutionary aspects of semiosis
• Universal and culture-specific of semiosis
• Intercultural and interspecies communication
• Potentials and dangers of technology
• Narratives across media and semiotic systems
• Metaphor and metonymy across media and semiotic systems
• Polysemiosis and multimodality
• Intersemiotic translation and transmediation
• Epistemology and truth
• Agency and subjectivity 

Key dates: 

• Deadline for theme session proposals: December 15, 2023
• Deadline for paper abstracts: January 15, 2024

Local organizing committee: 

• Johan Blomberg

• Niklas Erben Johansson

• Alexandra Mouratidou

• Jordan Zlatev, chair