CFP: The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival (3/31/2012; 9/6-8/2012)

The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival (SMF)

Thursday 6 to Saturday 8 September
Keynotes: Patrick Hanks and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan
Deadline for abstract submission: 31 March 2012

The Stockholm Metaphor Festival is an annual conference on the use of figurative language and other modes of figurative expression, arranged by the Department of English at Stockholm University. It brings together researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines, working within different theoretical and methodological paradigms in a creative, internationally oriented, and friendly atmosphere. The importance of figurative language and figurative semiotics is now generally recognised, and the Festival offers an opportunity to present and learn about research findings concerning figurative uses in different types of human communication, and their cognitive, cultural, narrative, poetic, rhetorical, social, or textual functions.

Contributions to the Festival can address the linguistic and literary character and use of tropes – metaphor, metonymy, simile, oxymoron, hyperbole, litotes, punning, and irony – or the character and use of rhyme schemes and various types of parallelism, as well as the nature of figurative signs and devices in non-verbal communication.

 At the 2012 Festival we are also planning two workshops on Saturday 8 September, one on Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphors and their Relations, led by Gerard Steen, VU University Amsterdam, and another one on Dickens and Figurative Language, led by Leona Toker, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Each talk is allotted 30 minutes at the Festival, roughly 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. There is also a separate poster session that can be visited by all participants at the Festival.

Abstract guidelines: Abstracts should be written in English, and they are expected to be about 300 to 400 words long. The abstract should have a title, but the author’s name, academic affiliation, and email address should be indicated on a separate sheet, where it should also be specified whether the abstract is intended as a basis for a general session talk, a poster presentation, or a workshop presentation. Abstracts for the general sessions should be emailed to Metaphorfestival@English.su.se, while abstracts for the workshop on Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphors and their Relations should be emailed to g.j.steen@vu.nl. The abstracts for the workshop on Dickens and Figurative Language should be emailed both to toker@mscc.huji.ac.il and toMetaphorfestival@English.su.se. Information about acceptances will be emailed by 15 May to all scholars submitting an abstract.

Conference fee: €80 for early registration, by 31 July; €100 from 1 August.

For further information about The Metaphor Festival, see our home page: www.english.su.se/research/metaphorfestival.