The workshop aims to initiate an interdisciplinary discussion by convening linguists along with scholars from other disciplines with an interest in language, such as philosophy or psychology, who share a common interest in end-of-life, death and bereavement issues. It will be informed by the following research questions: what are the linguistic representations of death and end of life? What are the similarities and differences between healthcare practitioners, patients and (bereaved) relatives in terms of their representation of death and end of life? To what extent can health care practitioners’ communication practices impact the process of bereavement? What linguistic resources can be put in place to avoid the silence that surrounds death-related topics?

Language & Languages at the crossroads of Disciplines. 2nd Annual LLcD Meeting

Workhop of EasyChair 2025 conference

Sept 1-3, 2025

University of Lille, France, ESJ Lille, 50, rue Gauthier-de-Châtillon - 59046 Lille

2nd Annual LLcD Meeting

Languages and Language at the Crossroads of Disciplines (LLcD) is a research network supported by the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). The network organizes an international conference in France each year with the aim of advancing scientific understanding of human language and linguistic systems, as well as serving as a forum to support new collaborations and cross-fertilization between different research disciplines and approaches.

The annual LLcD Meeting changes location and theme each year. Following the first edition, we are now organizing the 2^nd LLcD Meeting, which will take place at the University of Lille from September 1 to 5, 2025.

This year’s conference will feature a general session, thematic workshops and invited lectures presented in a round table format. The languages of communication will be English and French. A call for workshop proposals will precede the call for individual presentations. 

Argument of the workshop Language, end of life, death, and bereavement: an interdisciplinary perspective

Since the advent of transdisciplinary death studies in the 1970s, a plethora of research has been conducted in the humanities and social sciences on death-related issues, including end-of-life conditions and bereavement. This research has been undertaken in fields such as anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, and sociology (see for example Thomas 1975, Aries 1977, Baudry 1999, Molinié 2006, Clavandier 2009). In linguistics, research has addressed issues related to representations of death since the 1990s. While this research may be diverse in its approach, the question of what is said or not said (also because of societal and cultural prohibitions) constitutes the underlying connection between linguistic research on death-related subjects.

Many linguistic studies on death focus on the representation of death as a taboo subject (Gatambuki 2018, Biseko 2024). The observation that “some experiences are too intimate and vulnerable to be discussed without linguistic safeguards” (Crespo Fernández 2006: 1) is the starting point for these studies. They are based on the influential work of Allan and Burridge (2006: 11), who define taboo as “a proscription of behavior for a specifiable community of one or more persons, at a specifiable time, in specifiable contexts”. One of the main linguistic safeguards that has been investigated in this respect corresponds to the use of euphemisms (Jamet 2010, Xin 2021). These can be observed at the level of lexical units, for example in circumlocutions (e.g. garden of remembrance), or at the level of metaphorical expressions, corresponding to the death is loss metaphor, among others. The use of these euphemistic devices to refer to death has been studied in different genres, such as obituaries (Crespo-Fernández 2006) and TV series (Jamet 2010).

Linguistic studies have also examined the representation of other death-related subjects, such as the end of life and bereavement, especially in communication in healthcare. Since the late 20^th century (Drew and Heritage 1992), research has been conducted on the linguistic practices of patients, healthcare practitioners (HCPs), (bereaved) relatives, and the communication between them. Here too, metaphors are studied to see how they can both facilitate and hinder communication and well-being (Littlemore and Turner 2020). For example, Semino et al. (2020) have studied metaphors used by cancer patients in the UK and have found that violence-related metaphors in doctor-patient communication can be both empowering and disempowering. In France, recent studies have sought to establish corpora of interactions between patients, (bereaved) relatives and HCPs (Auriac-Slusarczyk 2019, Garric and Herbland 2020).

What is left unsaid is a central issue in “disenfranchised grief” (Doka 1989), i.e. grief that is not recognised by society, and clearly highlights the linguistic problem surrounding death. Two recent linguistic research projects, Death Before Birth (https://deathbeforebirthproject.wordpress.com) and PERINAT (https://perinat.univ-lille.fr), on communication in the context of perinatal death, have emerged from the observation that bereaved parents encounter communication difficulties, which can manifest themselves in silence on the part of the medical profession and of relatives. In the face of silence, the reappropriation of language constitutes a key component in comprehending and acknowledging one's grief, and the issue of death more generally. With this workshop, our aim is to explore this question and to open up a discussion on the discursive representations of death and bereavement in order to facilitate communication around the sensitive subject of death. This appropriation of language can take a variety of forms, both conventional and creative, such as by means of metaphors or through lexical formations (Lemmens et al. 2021, Caliendo and Ruchon 2020) and semantic shifts in designating terms.

This workshop will be informed by the following research questions: what are the linguistic representations of death and end of life? What are the similarities and differences between healthcare practitioners, patients and (bereaved) relatives in terms of their representation of death and end of life? To what extent can HCPs’ communication practices impact the process of bereavement? What linguistic resources can be put in place to avoid the silence that surrounds death-related topics? To answer these questions, we seek to initiate an interdisciplinary discussion by convening linguists along with scholars from other disciplines with an interest in language, such as philosophy or psychology, who share a common interest in end-of-life, death and bereavement issues. A variety of methods will be adopted, including corpus-, interview-, and questionnaire-based methods, in order to observe the representation of death-related issues at various levels of the linguistic analysis, such as morphological, lexical, or discursive.

Submission guidelines

If you are interested in this workshop, you can submit an abstract (in English or in French) on EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=llcd2025

no later than March 30, 2025

Abstracts must clearly state the title, the research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. They must be anonymous: not only must they not contain the presenters' names, affiliations or addresses, but they must avoid any other information that might reveal their author(s). They should not exceed 500 words (including examples, but excluding bibliographical references). Each submission is subject to three reviews. Abstracts submitted for workshops will be assessed by two members of the Scientific Committee and (one of) the workshop organizer(s).

Workshop organizers

• Giuditta Caliendo, STL, Université de Lille, giuditta.caliendo@univ-lille.fr
• Océane Foubert, STL, Université de Lille, oceane.foubert@univ-lille.fr
• Catherine Ruchon, STL, Université de Lille, catherine.ruchon@univ-lille.fr

Scientific committee

• Anne Abeillé
• Marta Abrusan
• Víctor Acedo-Matellán
• Giovanni Agresti
• Maxime Amblard
• Peter Arkadiev
• Varun DC Arrazola
• Michel Aurnague
• Mathieu Avanzi
• Lena Baunaz
• Sabrina Bendjaballah
• Claire Beyssade
• Caroline Boglioti
• Gemma Boleda
• Olivier Bonami
• Chloé Braud
• Heather Burnett
• Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
• Bert Cappelle
• Elisabetta Carpitelli
• Soonja Choi
• Benoît Crabbé
• Denis Creissels
• Lieven Danckaert
• Marie-Catherine De-Marneffe
• Hamida Demirdache
• Ilse Depraetere
• Guillaume Desagulier
• Holger Diessel
• Sascha Diwersy
• Jenny Doetjes
• Andreas Dufter
• Katrin Erk
• Margherita Farina
• Sebastian Fedden
• Abdellah Fourtassi
• Valantis Fyndanis
• Luca Gasparri
• Antoine Gautier
• Cyrille Granget
• Maximilien Guerin
• Céline Guillot
• Fatima Hamlaoui
• Nabil Hathout
• Henriette Hendriks
• Martin Hilpert
• Nikolaus Himmelmann
• Jill Hohenstein
• Richard Huyghe
• Gerhard Jaeger
• Sophie Kern
• Anetta Kopecka
• Laurence Labrune
• Aimée Lahaussois
• Nicola Lampitelli
• Peter Lauwers
• Pascale Leclercq
• Gudrun Ledegen
• Gaël Lejeune
• Maarten Lemmens
• Pernelle Lorette
• Paolo Mairano
• Fabienne Martin
• Philippe Monneret
• Franck Neveu
• Christophe Parisse
• Cédric Patin
• Alain Peyraube
• Gilles Philippe
• Serge Pinto
• Sophie Prévost
• Laurent Prévot
• Thomas Rainsford
• Christophe Rey
• Marie-Anne Sallandre
• Lene Schoesler
• Michelle Sheehan
• Alexandra Simonenko
• Achim Stein
• Dejan Stosic
• Fayssal Tayalati
• Anne Michelle Tessier
• Tim Van de Cruys
• Freek Van de Velde
• Lieven Vandelanotte
• Jean-Christophe Verstraete
• Nigel Vincent
• Jacqueline Visconti
• Alice Vittrant
• Marzena Watorek

References

Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617881

Aries, P. (1977). L’homme devant la mort. Paris: Seuil.

Auriac-Slusarczyk, E. (2019). Introduction. Les discours entre soignants et patients. Études contemporaines en Sciences Humaines et Sociales. Éducation, santé, sociétés, 5(2): 7-19.

Baudry, P. (1999). La place des morts : Enjeux et rites. Paris: Armand Colin.

Biseko, J. M. (2024). Cultural echoes: linguistic insights into death and afterlife in the Swahili language. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2024.2414608

Caliendo, G., & Ruchon, C. (2020). La nomination des enfants décédés en bas-âge et de leurs parents. D’une analyse du discours située à une linguistique d’intervention. SHS Web of Conferences, 78. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20207801019

Clavandier, G. (2009). Sociologie de la mort : Vivre et mourir dans la société contemporaine. Paris: Armand Colin.

Crespo-Fernández, E. (2006). The language of death: Euphemism and conceptual metaphorization in Victorian obituaries. SKY Journal of Linguistics, 19: 101-130.

Drew, P., & Heritage J. (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gatambuki, M., Ruiming G., Manqiong Shen W., Tirado C., Tsaregorodtseva O., Khatin-Zadeh O., Minervino R., Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos (2018). A cross-linguistic study of metaphors of death. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 5(2): 359-375.

Garric, N., & Herbland, A. (2020). Présentation. Nouveaux discours de la santé et soin relationnel. Langage et société, 169(1): 15-30. https://doi.org/10.3917/ls.169.0015.

Jamet, D. (2010). Euphemisms for death: Reinventing reality through words?. In: Sorlin. S. (ed.), Inventive linguistics. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires du Languedoc et de la Méditerranée, pp. 173-188.

Lemmens, M., Caliendo, G, Foubert, O., Marinato, L. (2021). Neologisms and metaphors applied to societal issues. Presentation held at the international conference Languaging Diversity 2021, October 131–15, 2021. doi: 10.48448/nctr-gw75. Available in OA: https://underline.io/events/183/sessions?eventSessionId=7271&searchGroup=lecture. (Access date: 28 February 2025)

Littlemore, J., Turner, S. (2020). Metaphors in communication about pregnancy loss. Metaphor and the Social World. Vol. 10: 1, 45–75.

Molinié, M. (2006). Soigner les morts pour guérir les vivants. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.

Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Hardie, A., Payne, S., & Rayson, P. (2017). Metaphor, cancer and the end of life: A corpus-based study. New York: Routledge.

Thomas, L-V. (1975). Anthropologie de la mort. Paris: Payot.

Xin, X. (2021). La mort et ses euphémismes : analyse contrastive entre les langues chinoise et française dans la perspective théorique du registre de Halliday. Synergies Chine, 16: 171-186.g