CERLIS 2008 - Trading Identities

Commonality and Individuality in English Academic Discourse

Hosted by CERLIS, University of Bergamo, Italy

19-21 June 2008

The aim of this conference, linked to a national project on Identity and Culture in English Domain-Specific Discourse, is to explore the relationship between shared disciplinary norms and individual traits in academic speech and writing. Identity is indeed a matter of individuality as well as sameness: it defines what makes individuals similar to their peers but also what makes them to a certain extent unique. Despite the standardizing pressure of cultural and language-related factors, academic communication remains in many ways a highly personal affair, with active participation in a disciplinary community requiring a multidimensional discourse that combines the professional, institutional, social and individual identities of its members.

Within the bounds of this perspective, paper proposals are invited on the following themes:

• Tensions involving individual/collective values in academic discourse
• Corpus analyses of collective vs. individual discoursal features
• Longitudinal investigations of the output of individual scholars
• Ethnographic investigations of ‘new disciplinary voices’
• Generic norms and their violation by junior/senior researchers

Invited Keynote speakers

• Ken Hyland (University of London)
• Keith Richards (University of Warwick)
• Paul Thompson (University of Reading)