Roland Barthes asserts that stories are universal and can be told in all media. From the earliest oral traditions to today's multimedia extravaganzas, the importance of storytelling remains paramount. As storytelling creatures, humans are shaped through their stories as “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal” (MacIntyre). Storytelling is the art of conveying ideas, experiences and emotions through narratives. Through its evolution from an oral form to written, visual, and digital forms, storytelling has always been a fundamental method of communication for humans. Storytelling represents a nexus between culture studies, literature, and linguistics, as not only does it reflect cultural identities and values but also makes use of linguistic structures and literary techniques to convey complex narratives that shape our understanding of the world.

The English Department at the Higher Institute of Humanities of Jendouba, University of Jendouba organizes ISSHJ International Conference on Stories and Storytelling : A World of Stories.

Argument

There are countless forms of narrative in the world. First of all, there is a prodigious variety of genres, each of which branches out into a variety of media, as if all substances could be relied upon to accommodate man’s stories. […] Moreover, in this infinite variety of forms, it is present at all times, in all places, in all societies […] there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative. (Barthes, 1975)

Roland Barthes asserts that stories are universal and can be told in all media. From the earliest oral traditions to today's multimedia extravaganzas, the importance of storytelling remains paramount. As storytelling creatures, humans are shaped through their stories as “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal” (MacIntyre, 1981). Storytelling is the art of conveying ideas, experiences and emotions through narratives. Through its evolution from an oral form to written, visual, and digital forms, storytelling has always been a fundamental method of communication for humans. Storytelling represents a nexus between culture studies, literature, and linguistics, as not only does it reflect cultural identities and values but also makes use of linguistic structures and literary techniques to convey complex narratives that shape our understanding of the world.

In Cultures Studies, stories are means of cultural transmission by preserving traditions, history, and values across generations and cultures. Storytelling is a universal form of archiving/preserving human history. Cultures are built on stories that strengthen human belonging and collective consciousness/ memory. As a quintessential social activity, storytelling weaves a cultural network by engraving shared experiences and moral insights into the deep fabric of a culture. Stories and storytelling become a form of cultural preservation, negotiation, revitalization, and continuity. In Indigenous cultures storytelling supports and preserves the communities in a process of healing through reclaiming the lost identities in hegemonic narratives. Beyond the micro societal level, stories strengthen the legitimacy of the nation and its sense of collective identity to serve a nationalist agenda. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes (1972) argues that stories allow humans to objectivize reality, to perpetuate a stable system of values needed for living. Stories offer models of human behavior by giving meaning and value to life (Eliade, 1998). Religious texts are exemplary storytelling devices imbued with a cultural spirit that shapes worldviews as well as identities. Historians are storytellers too as stories are central to the writing of history. The "ability to produce stories," Hannah Arendt wrote, is the way we "become historical" (1958). Hi/stories are the source of immortality. According to Walter Benjamin, the historian-storyteller is part of a chain of storytellers, an intermediary as "Storytelling is always the art of repeating stories” (1968).

Storytelling is a powerful tool of persuasion as it influences opinions and inspires action. Storytelling triggers empathy, which creates emotional resonance and consequently breaks defensiveness. It humanizes abstract ideas and increases relatability by mirroring shared experiences and building trust. By engaging the Logos and the pathos, stories become strong tools of persuasion in politics where persuasive storytelling plays a pivotal role in shaping the public opinion especially when associated with digital media and populism. Politicians use stories with specific discursive mechanisms that build “canonical stories that make up a political common sense” (Poletta, 2006).

In literature, storytelling has been extensively psychologized. “Our stories are the tellers of us. Imperfect, incomplete, they nonetheless sum us up ;” thus describes Salman Rushdie the interconnection of storytelling, power and identity. In telling stories, we narrate our identity, be it personal or collective. Maya Angelou is among the prominent writers who highlight the healing/cathartic momentum inherent in storytelling, particularly as she affirms : “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Beyond psychologizing storytelling, the ever-growing globalized world today forces us to politicize the act of storytelling as the un-usurped space for the victimized and the marginalized to voice themselves out and win the empathy of others. The current conditions of genocide in Gaza Strip, in particular, and Palestine as a whole since October 2023 further attest to the pressing need to come to terms with the need for storytelling as a means to articulate the urgency of telling of the inflicted brutalities and of narrating the victims’ traumas and acts of resistance from perspectival lenses. Stories are empowering even though they may hinge on incoherence and fragmentation, as it pointed by Ben Okri’s following assertion : “Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” Similar testimonies about stories as an articulation of the unspeakable invite further reflections on the resistant momentum of storytelling and nourish an unprecedented interest in the literature of testimony. They make all the more pressing need to redirect our critical lenses to the ways in which narrating stories of and about victims and the oppressed is eminent in counterbalancing the grand narrative and teasing out the intersections of the personal and the political, the local and the global in storytelling.

In Linguistics, storytelling is a multifaceted construct that touches on various branches from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, to applied linguistics. As Sociolinguistics examines the relationship between language and society, it focuses on how storytelling reflects and shapes social identities and cultural norms. The Sociolinguistics of Narratives, as defined by Thornborrow & Coates (2005), involves analyzing how stories are constructed and conveyed in different social contexts. Discourse analysis complements sociolinguistics by focusing on the structure and function of language in communication. It investigates how narratives are organized and how they function in interaction through narrative techniques such as framing, perspective, and dialogue use. Discourse analysts look at how stories are used to achieve specific communicative goals. Moreover, the understanding of the relationship between storytelling and Pragmatics is essential in the interpretation of narratives drawing on their background knowledge and situational context ; hence, exploring how storytellers use implicature, presupposition, and speech acts to convey meaning beyond the literal content of their stories. In Applied Linguistics, as far as ELT is concerned, oral, written, digital stories can be used in the second/foreign language classroom to develop learners’ linguistic, cultural, and literacy skills and competencies in the target language. In Systematic reviews, stories are used to synthesize results from the literature, thus, constructing the stories of a particular field. Autoethnography investigates “individual stories in the context of the story of the society” (Chang, 2008) generating a critical, political, and highly emotional genre in Applied Linguistics. Narrative inquiries are meant to analyze stories for research purposes, especially when collecting large sets of data, i.e. interviews, observations, online blogs, longitudinal studies, etc. to uncover “hidden feelings, forgotten motivations, and suppressed emotions” (Canagarajah, 2012, p. 261). The widespread use and acceptance of narrative inquiries resulted from the researchers’ distrust of the positivistic approach which relies on variables and quantification to understand human behavior. Narrative inquiries have, for example, shown how the professional identities of pre-service and novice teachers develop over time and how learner variables such as anxiety, motivation, and attitudes are intrinsically linked to the whole context and experience of language learning (Benson, 2014).

Acknowledging the aforementioned, the English Department at the Higher Institute of Humanities of Jendouba invite researchers, educators, and practitioners to share their reflections, experiences, and projects on stories and/or storytelling in culture studies, literature, and linguistics. This International Conference intends to help creating a hub and a network to better navigate and exchange relevant practices and experiences.

The steering committee welcomes contributions in the form of presentations, workshops, poster sessions, and/or round table discussions related, but not limited to the following subthemes :

• Storytelling of resistance and subversion
• Storytelling for cultural preservation and revitalization
• Indigenous storytelling
• Language resources of minorities
• The intersection of self, memory, identity, and storytelling
• Digital storytelling
• Stories in/and social media
• The role of digital media in re-framing traditional storytelling
• Storytelling and discourse, and the discourse of stories
• Corpus-assisted discourse analysis
• Persuading and negotiating in stories
• Storytelling and problematizing history
• Storytelling in historiography
• Narratology of storytelling
• Genocide and Nakba narratives
• The mis/uses of storytelling
• Religious storytelling
• Evolving narratives/system of stories
• Storytelling the nation : Hi/stories and storytelling in nations building
• The politics of hi/storytelling
• Stories for/and research
• Autoethnography
• Narrative inquiry
• Narrative in ELT
• Storytelling in TEYL
• Teaching/ learning through scenarios
• Communicating stories and communication
• Illocutionary storytelling
• Social identities and cultural norms in stories
• Power dynamics and social interactions in narrative construction

Submission guidelines

Abstracts should be 250 words, a maximum of five keywords, and a 50-word short biography.

Your contribution should be original and submitted for the first time.

Submisssion form : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1w2ZYt5Goctz0qSDnFx-thmux-vpH7NTnZ3cSP6iuZkk/edit

Potential presenters will receive a notification of acceptance and a registration form for confirmation of participation.

Types of Contributions

• Presentation : 20-minute oral presentation which should address one of the topics listed in the call for papers.
  
  
• Workshop : 45-minute practice-oriented session that may start from a theoretical idea. It should be hands-on addressing the professional development needs of the participants. Proposals should include session goals, a synopsis of the theoretical framework, and a description of workshop tasks and procedures.
  
  
• Poster session : A visually-enhanced summary of an academic or practice-based creative project. Presenters are encouraged to highlight their design, research or implementation procedures, and results (outcomes) through the use of charts, graphs, maps, etc.
  
  
• Round table discussion : 45-minute session. The convenor chooses a theme of interest (usually a hot topic related to theory, practice, and policy) and selects key participants to propose connected discussion points. An abstract describing the proposed topic key points and participants should be submitted. The procedure for running the roundtable is also required as part of the submission.

All submissions will be evaluated through a blind review process.

Important Dates

• Abstract submission deadline : 15 February 2025

• Notification of acceptance : 15 March 2025
• Conference : 24-25 April, 2025 at Jendouba & Ain Draham

Scientific Committee

• Prof. Mohamed Jabeur, University of Carthage, Tunisia
• Prof. Mohamed Salah Nejai, University of Batna II, Algeria
• Prof. Mounir Triki, University of Sfax, Tunisia
• Prof. Akila Sellami, University of Sfax, Tunisia
• Prof. Rached Khelifa, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia
• Prof. Taoufik Jebali, University of Caen, Normandy, France
• Prof. Faiza Derbel, University of Mannouba, Tunisia
• Prof. Wassim Daghrir, University of Sousse, Tunisia
• Prof. Hajer Ben Driss, University of Tunis, Tunisia
• Prof. Zied Ben Amor, University of Sousse, Tunisia
• Dr. Sihem Arfaoui, University of Jendouba, Tunisia
• Dr. Adel Hannachi, University of Jendouba, Tunisia
• Dr. Basma Bouziri, University of Jendouba, Tunisia
• Dr. Fedya Daas, University of Jendouba, Tunisia

Conference Chair

• Adel Hannachi

Program committee

• Sihem Arfaoui
• Basma Bouziri
• Ines Kayel

Organizing Committee

• Sihem Arfaoui
• Basma Bouziri
• Ines Kaye
• Fedya Daas
• Zied Khammari
• Amel Zaouga
• Mohamed El Behi
• Heni Barhoumi
• Mohamed Anouer Barouni