HomeThe world in crisis(es)

The world in crisis(es)

Le monde en crise(s)

Die Welt in Krise(n)

El mundo en crisis

Il mondo in crisi

Collection Société(s) : Langue(s) et culture(s) en dialogue

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Abstract

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The word crisis, derived from the Greek word krisis, means judgment, decision. Conceptually speaking, “a crisis is an illness” (a conceptual metaphor justified diachronically by its etymological meaning of “the decisive phase of an illness”), or “it is a war”, if we focus on the meaning of “an outbreak with violent manifestations”. It is, therefore, a moment of major change. Our societies are plagued by successive and often overlapping crises, enabling them - if not forcing them -  to evolve and transform themselves. The conference will focus on two parallel and complementary themes: “The economic crisis / The economy of the crisis” and “Discourse in a time of crisis”.

Announcement

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Call for book chapters

The World in Crisis(es) Society(ies) in Motion

Collection Société(s) : Langue(s) et culture(s) en dialogue

Editions Voix et Pages du Monde

(New scientific publisher with international distribution in print and digital formats)

Following the success of the international conference "The World in Crisis(es)" held in Orléans on May 23-24, 2024, which brought together participants from various disciplines and countries (Germany, Austria, the United States, France, Hungary, Italy, and Morocco), the initiators of the research project have decided to extend and deepen the scientific discussions through the of a collective work, incorporating new and complementary contributions/approaches.

Working languages: French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian

Argument

The word crisis, derived from the Greek word krisis, means judgment, decision. Conceptually speaking, "a crisis is an illness" (a conceptual metaphor justified diachronically by its etymological meaning of "the decisive phase of an illness"), or "it is a war", if we focus on the meaning of "an outbreak with violent manifestations". It is, therefore, a moment of major change.

Our societies are plagued by successive and often overlapping crises, enabling them - if not forcing them -  to evolve and transform themselves.

The conference will focus on two parallel and complementary themes: The economic crisis / The economy of the crisis and Discourse in a time of crisis.

Focus 1: The economic crisis / The economics of the crisis

The notion of "economic crisis" and its study are both relatively recent. The first "economic crisis" was the tulip crisis in the 17th century.

Thus the notion of " an economic crisis" appears as self-evident, materialized by objective mathematical and statistical measurements. According to the Larousse dictionary, it is "a breakdown in the balance between production and consumption, characterized by a weakening of demand, bankruptcies and unemployment." It is now accepted that it is much more than that.

Although it is difficult to fully grasp all the factors and impacts of an economic crisis, we propose to explore three aspects:

  • The economic crisis: beyond the economy

The economic crisis cannot be reduced to a mathematical dimension. We need only think, for example, of the "crisis effect," the impact on the population, in psychosocial terms, but also, upstream, of the position taken by the population, its influence on the crisis itself, of its conscious but also, and above all, unconscious outbreak. Anticipating the crisis can precipitate it, and apprehensions during an established crisis can and do have an effect that accentuates and prolongs it. The economic crisis is thus a question that interests much more than economics.

  • Economy in Crisis / Crisis Economy

Presented as a disruption, a collapse, can the economic crisis simply be perceived as another state, another phase of the economic cycle which, despite the situation, does not stop and reorganizes itself, generating a "crisis economy"?

On the one hand, there are those who exploit crisis and misery. Think, for example, of the new business that has sprung up around the huge migratory movements of recent years: the supply and management of refugee camps.

On the other hand there would be those for whom the context is a positive factor for recovery. Just as the financial crisis resounds like a big bang, while sowing the seeds of its rebirth, the economic crisis would lead to the downfall of companies with excessive weaknesses, while simultaneously creating an environment conducive to emulation and the emergence of the pillars of the future recovery.

  • Is the economic crisis multicultural?

Rather than talking about the economic crisis, should we not talk about economic crises for the same event? Can the same phenomenon, known and encountered at different times and in different geographical areas, be reduced to the same model, the same acceptance, the same experience? The economic crisis thus brings us back to the debate on the global standardization of cultures and/or the persistence and cohabitation of past, present and emerging cultural identities.

Axis 2: The discourse(s) of the crisis

From the perspective of discourse analysis, a crisis represents a moment when the usual public discourse breaks away to focus on the aspects causing the situation to be resolved and on possible solutions. At the discursive level, in almost all crises there is a tendency to amplify pessimistic visions, often supported by stylistic devices such as metaphor, useful for making difficult concepts more transparent or, on the contrary, for euphemistically expressing a harsh reality.

The discourse(s) of crisis can become excessive in the media, and the linguistic expressions chosen by speakers can influence the public perception. In crises where there are also social reactions to events, discourse can even be used to manipulate.

During the most recent crises, we have generally seen four types of public discourses, depending on the type of speakers and the relationship established with the general public:

  • The discourse of politicians, for whom the crisis can be both a disaster for their image and an opportunity to be noticed and, possibly, to present themselves as the nation’s’ saviors.
  • The discourse of experts, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when political representatives had neither the competence nor the authority to express their views on the evolution of the pandemic.
  • Journalists’ views on the expression of information and the purpose of transmission vary widely.
  • The discourse of "citizens", who are sometimes interviewed in the street to obtain a reaction that purports to mirror public opinion, but rarely truly represents it.

Given the variety of possible types of discourses during crises, on the basis of different corpora of public discourse, this axis of the conference aims to reflect on the possible interference of public discourse on the crisis with, for example, other types of specialized discourses such as political discourses. The points of view will be multiple, ranging from lexical units to complex pragmatic procedures such as irony and the construction of ethos or pathos. We will be interested in contributions that study the lexical, syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic aspects of discourse on the crisis, in spoken language, in discourse transmitted to the public or in the media.

This conference is in keeping with the philosophy of speciality research in LEA (Langues Etrangères Appliquées : Foreign Languages Applied to Business, Trade and Translation), bringing together :

  • disciplines whose common denominator is the mother tongue or foreign language and civilization applied to economics, management, communication and politics in particular (the disciplinary fields are not limitative here);
  • different families of specialists, be they researchers, professionals or students with a research background, able to question a subject from different angles in order to enrich the debate;
  • international participants interested in one or more geographical areas of the five continents of the contemporary world (XX-XXI centuries).

Submission guidelines

Proposals (max. 500 words), accompanied by a short CV and any questions, should be sent to the scientific and editorial committee at the following email address: editionsVPM@gmail.com

Submission deadline: December 13th, 2024

Editors

DECOBERT Claire (Université d’Orléans) et Rodolphe PAUVERT ( Université de Poitiers).

Bibliography


Contact(s)

  • Claire Decobert
    courriel : claire [dot] decobert [at] univ-orleans [dot] fr
  • Rodolphe Pauvert
    courriel : rodolphe [dot] pauvert [at] univ-poitiers [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« The world in crisis(es) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12hds

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