Category: Philosophy of Language

Call: “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On September 8, 2026, the satellite workshop “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice” will accompany the 6th European Experimental Philosophy Conference at the University of Cagliari, Italy.

Proposals for talks can be submitted until May 1, 2026. The call reads:

The Conference will be accompanied by a Satellite Workshop on “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice” (IPLJ), to be held on 8 September 2026. The IPLJ Workshop will be held in collaboration with the Linguistic Justice Society (LJS). The IPLJ Workshop welcomes experimental and empirically informed contributions on linguistic justice broadly construed, to include linguistic diversity, accent bias and related topics. For the Workshop, we welcome only contributions in the form of talks. There will be no fees for those wishing to take part in the IPLJ Satellite Workshop, which will also be online-accessible.

Deadline: May 1st, 2026

https://openreview.net/group?id=EXPhi/2026/Conference/Workshop/IPLJ

Decisions expected by June 1st, 2026

Submitting authors will have or create a profile on OpenReview. Whereas new profiles with an institutional email will be activated automatically, new profiles created without an institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take up to two weeks. Abstracts for talks should be anonymized for review and not exceed 500 words. References and figure captions do not count towards the word limit. Please make sure all materials for review are anonymized.

Talk: “Expressivity Cross-Linguistically” (Xavier Villalba)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, December 15, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Xavier Villalba’s talk “Expressivity Cross-Linguistically – A Corpus Study of Expressive and Evaluative Adjectives in Romance and Germanic” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

In this presentation, I argue that pure expressive adjectives (such as English fucking and damn) represent the final stage in a process of intersubjectivization (Traugott 2010; Traugott & Dasher 2002). This process begins with a descriptive qualifying adjective, moves through a stage of subjectivization – typical of both evaluative adjectives (e.g., pathetic, horrible) and mixed expressive adjectives (bloody, shitty) – and culminates in the pure expressives. This pragmatic shift is linked to semantic bleaching as well as syntactic changes traceable in our corpora. These changes involve features like gradation, function (modifier vs. predicative), and position (postnominal vs. prenominal modification). To support this claim, I will present two corpus studies: 1. A synchronic study designed to identify the most useful features for distinguishing each adjective class in Germanic and Romance languages; 2. A diachronic study, focused on English and Catalan, to trace the historical emergence of these features. The results of these studies will provide a more accurate and comprehensive cross-linguistic understanding of expressive adjectives. Furthermore, they will offer insights into the patterns of change involved and how the speed of this evolution varies across different items and languages.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Workshop: “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

James Andow and Eugen Fischer have announced the first talks for this season’s “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series.” Talks will be held on Microsoft Teams. Anyone interested in joining can email james.andow@manchester.ac.uk.

November 26, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Qianyi Qin (CUNY Graduate Centre): “Imaginative Tendencies and Virtuality Tolerance – Re-Examining the Experience Machine”
  • Jumbly Grindrod (University of Reading): “Word Meanings in Transformer Language Models”

December 10, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Juan-Pablo Bermúdez (University of Southampton) and Gino Carmona (Universidad Externado de Colombia): “Goals and Plans in the Wild – The Effects of Poverty on Planning Agency”
  • Miklós Kürthy (University of Graz): “Care for Consistency”

January 14, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Monika Jovanović and Andrija Šoć (University of Belgrade): “A Matter of Taste? Toward Deliberative Experimental Aesthetics”
  • Markus Werning (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): t.b.a.

Call: “Valence Asymmetries”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Valence Asymmetries project, led by Isidora Stojanovic at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, is looking for expressions of interest from people who would like to join. The call reads:

We are interested in including new team members in our project. Before opening a new position, we are inviting those interested in joining us to express their interest.

The new team member(s) should have research interests that align directly with the objectives of the project, broadly understood. They will already have a very solid publication track, will cherish interdisciplinary research, and will want to combine theoretical and empirical methodology.

We are particularly interested in the following research profiles:

  • Decision theory, philosophy of rationality & framing effects
  • Formal value theory & formal semantics
  • Philosophy of emotions & social and/or moral psychology
  • Moral cognition & philosophy of well-being

Additionally, any other research profile that offers a novel perspective on the project’s objectives is potentially welcome.

The duration of the contract will depend on the range of project tasks that the new team member will be hired to work on, and in any case cannot exceed the duration of the project (i.e. July 2029).

In addition to prospective candidates who would like to join us for a longer duration, we are also inviting tenured faculty who have a demonstrably heavy teaching load to consider joining us for a one year period (assuming that they can get a leave of absence from their home institution) that they can devote to research.

The expected gross salary is approx. 31.000 gross per year (negotiable for senior and/or already tenured faculty).

NB: The project’s team members must live in Barcelona (region), they regularly meet in person, attend seminars and conduct in-person research. The position is incompatible with living and/or spending considerable periods of time elsewhere.

If you are interested in joining the project, please send an email to Isidora Stojanovic (PI), explaining your motivation and interests, together with a complete CV.

Call: “Valence Asymmetries”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Isidora Stojanovic, Lorenza D’Angelo, Morgan Moyer, and Michelle Stankovic organizing a conference on “Valence Asymmetries,” which will take place at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra from March 19 to 20, 2026.

Abstracts for presentations can be submitted until September 30. The call reads:

The Valence Asymmetries ERC team is happy to announce that it will be organizing the first VALENCE ASYMMETRIES conference on March 19th–20th 2026 at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. The event is funded by Isidora Stojanovic’s ERC Advanced Grant “Valence Asymmetries: the positive, the negative, the good and the bad in language, mind and morality” (GA n° 101142133).

This interdisciplinary event will discuss themes which are central to the Valence Asymmetries project, including the role of valence asymmetries in perception, emotion, morality, language, and communication. Discussion will draw upon insights from philosophy, psychology, and linguistics.

There will be invited talks by Hans Alves, Frederique de Vignemont, Saif Mohammad, and Pascale Willemsen. There is also room for 4–6 additional talks, to be selected from open submissions. Each selected talk will be assigned a 50 min slot, including discussion.

We especially encourage submissions on the relation between value, valence, and polarity; theoretical and empirical accounts of valence asymmetries in language, including in negative strengthening, scalar inferences, and irony; the asymmetry between virtue and vice, and between praise and blame, in normative and applied ethics; as well as other discussions of valence asymmetries in linguistics, cognitive science, moral psychology, and cognate areas.

If you are interested in presenting your work at this venue, please submit a 2-page abstract to valence.asymmetries@upf.edu by Sep 30th, with the subject line “valence asymmetries submission.”

Talk: “Intentionality and Discrimination” (Nicole Gotzner and Kevin Reuter)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Tuesday, October 2, the XPRAG Wine Gatherings welcome Nicole Gotzner and Kevin Reuter to talk about “Intentionality and Discrimination” on Zoom. Kevin writes:

Experimental Pragmatics (XPrag) and Experimental Philosophy (XPhi) share a common vision: whenever our assumptions can be empirically tested against the world, we should rise to the occasion. On October 2nd, 2025, don’t miss a talk on “intentionality and discrimination” by Nicole Gotzner (University of Osnabrück) and Kevin Reuter (University of Gothenburg), followed by a discussion on how our communities can exchange ideas and spark new collaborations. We can’t wait to see you there!

The Zoom link and more information are available at the XPRAG Wine Gatherings’ website.

Call: “Laws Many Users”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Alex Davies and Nikolai Shurakov organize a conference on “Law’s Many Users – Legal Interpretation Within and Beyond Legal Institutions,” which will take place at the University of Tartu from November 12 to 14.

Abstracts for presentations can be submitted until August 12. The call reads:

Law is interpreted and implemented by many hands. Some of them belong to judges, legislators, or lawyers – but many belong to nurses, teachers, municipal officials, or department heads: professionals who encounter law not in courtrooms or casebooks, but in institutional documents, contracts, checklists, and internal protocols. These actors do not interpret law as legal theorists or as abstract “laypeople,” but as role-bound individuals embedded in specific organizational contexts. Their understanding of legal norms is shaped by institutional incentives, bureaucratic hierarchies, resource constraints, inherited routines, and pressures to defer to internal authorities. They are interpreters, but also implementers – conduits through which law acquires practical meaning.

While experimental jurisprudence has deepened our understanding of how legal concepts like causation, intention, or rights are grasped by legal experts and ordinary citizens, it has rarely focused on this middle terrain: how individuals interpret legal rules as part of their job, within the constraints and affordances of organizational life.

This conference is an occasion for exploring that terrain.

Call for Abstracts (submission deadline: August 12, 2025)

We invite submissions from scholars across disciplines interested in how laws and regulations are interpreted, implemented, and transformed in real-world institutional settings.

Legal meaning is shaped not only in courts or legislatures, but in offices, classrooms, clinics, and council chambers – by actors whose interpretations are framed by professional roles, organizational logics, and institutional incentives. This conference invites reflection on the interpretive practices that emerge in such contexts, and how these practices affect what law becomes in use.

We welcome work from experimental jurisprudence, philosophy of language, linguistics, law & economics, public administration, and related fields. Contributions may be theoretical, empirical, or methodological.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Studies of how non-lawyers interpret and apply legal or regulatory texts
  • Experimental investigations of interpretation in institutional settings
  • Pragmatic and semantic analysis of policy and legal communication
  • Incentive structures and role-based reasoning in interpretation
  • Legal meaning as mediated through contracts, guidelines, or protocols
  • Interpretive drift and discretion in organizational environments
  • Extensions or critiques of experimental jurisprudence beyond traditional contexts
  • Interdisciplinary methods for studying law “in the wild”

Abstracts are applications for either 30-minute slots (20 minute talk + 10 minute discussion) OR 1-hour slots (30–40 minute talk + 30–20 minute Q&A). Abstracts (max. 600 words – excluding a list of references) should: (a) make clear the line of argument for the conclusion defended; (b) make clear the relevance of the envisioned talk to the conference theme; (c) make clear whether your applying for a 30-minute or 60-minute slot; and (d) be prepared for anonymous review.

Submitting Abstracts: Abstracts should be submitted with a separate coversheet (author, email, institution) to laws.many.users@gmail.com.

Talk: “Creativity in Taboo Terms in Sign Languages” (Donna Jo Napoli)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, May 26, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Donna Jo Napoli’s talk “Creativity in Taboo Terms in Sign Languages” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

Deaf signing communities share many of the same language taboos that hearing speakers observe. Still, there are areas that are sticky in sign that are not in speech and vice versa. We will take a peek at how signers create taboo signs, looking at ASL and DGS (the sign language of Germany) and perhaps a couple of other languages, noting primarily morphological creativity but also syntactic creativity.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Talk: “Derogatory Speech – Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners” (Claire Horisk)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, March 10, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Claire Horisk’s talk “Derogatory Speech – Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

In discussions of how to mitigate political and cultural polarization, we are often told that we should listen to our opponents. But should we listen regardless of what they say – even to derogatory speech? From the standpoint of philosophy, the prescription to listen lacks subtlety, and we cannot reach greater subtlety without a philosophical account of listening itself. In my recent work, I distinguish between listening and hearing and argue that listening to derogatory speech in the context of a conversation is sometimes morally wrong. In this talk, I expand my account, particularly with respect to how power dynamics affect who counts as a conversational participant.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Hot Off The Press: “Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Lying”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Alex Wiegmann has edited a new volume on “Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Lying,” a further entry into Bloomsbury’s “Advances in Experimental Philosophy” series. See below for the table of contents.

  • Emanuel Viebahn: “What Does it Take to Tell a Lie?”
  • Romy Jaster and David Lanius: “The Concept of Fake News”
  • Jörg Meibauer: “The Concept of Bullshit”
  • Markus Kneer: “The Truth About Assertion and Retraction – A Review of the Empirical Literature”
  • Shirly Orr: “Truth Evaluators – A Different Point of View in the Lying/Misleading Distinction”
  • Alejandro Erut: “Cross-Cultural Studies on Concepts of Lying – Methodological Approaches and Their Findings”
  • Mailin Antomo: “Lying With Gestures”
  • Louisa Reins: “The Impact of Modality and Presentation Time on Judgments of Deceptive Implicatures as Cases of Lying – An Empirical Investigation”
  • Izabela Skoczeń: “From Lying to Blaming and Perjury – Deceptive Implicatures in the Courtroom and the Materiality Requirement”
  • Neele Engelmann: “Murderer at the Door! To Lie or to Mislead?”