Call for Papers

Language and Lifeworlds:

The dialogic constitution of “what is”, “what can be”, and “what ought to be”

International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) Conference Bologna, Italy, 16-19 July 2025

The 2025 conference of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) will take place on July 16-19, 2025 in Bologna (Italy) and will be hosted by the Department of Education Studies of the University of Bologna.

The conference focuses on the role of dialogue in constructing, displaying, maintaining, and transforming the crucial dimensions of the worlds we inhabit, addressing the role of human dialogic practices in the everyday negotiation and re-construction of a common and shared social world.

In 1936, Husserl introduced the groundbreaking notion of “Lifeworld”, i.e., the realm of what is self-evident and given as obvious, the world that individuals perceive as being ‘out there’, experience as common, and take for granted in carrying out their affairs (Husserl, 1970). It was perhaps the first time when the entanglement between reality (i.e., the resistant, obdurate, mind- independent nature of the world out there) and sense making (i.e., the individual and collective definition of what counts as the world out there) was thematized as a research program (Garfinkel & Liberman, 2007). Since then, scholars struggled to establish if and to what extent the Lifeworld should be conceived of as constituted in and through everyday praxis or rather understood as the given, independent ground of such praxis (see Schütz, 1967; Schütz & Luckmann 1973; Habermas, 1981[1987]). Building on the long-standing tradition that, from phenomenology to dialogue studies, pointed to language and social interaction as the main means through which common worlds of meaning are constituted, we propose to focus on the dialogic and semiotic-mediated making of our ontologies, epistemologies, and deontologies.

It is indeed through language-in-interaction as well as other semiotic tools that our ontologies (i.e., the repertoire of certainties concerning the nature of reality) are established. Dialogue shapes the ‘very nature’ of things (e.g., their existence, their primary and secondary qualities, their obviousness), which can be either presupposed and taken for granted (thus being further crystalized and sedimented), or rather be treated as accountable, not self-evident, contested and contestable. Everyday dialogue is also relevant to our epistemologies, meant as the agreed-upon ways of knowing and ideas regarding what counts as reliable knowledge of reality. Ways of knowing and relevant knowledge are examined and ratified in interaction any time they are used as unquestioned explanans, reliable factual renditions of a certain state of affairs, or uncontested “hinges” (Wittgenstein, 1969) of our decision-making. Furthermore, dialogue is the primordial environment and means for the constitution of moral orders and normative horizons, i.e., the deontic dimension of the Lifeworld. Although more visible when these orders are broken (Garfinkel, 1967), language- use-in-interaction displays participants’ orientation to the “ought to be” at stake.

Yet there is more than this. Beyond the ontic, epistemic, and deontic dimensions of our current Lifeworld, dialogue is also the means through which possible worlds are talked-into-being (Bruner, 1986), actual worlds are opened up to alternatives, new moral horizons are delineated, and new ontologies as well as epistemologies emerge as possible. Dialogue is thus the locus in which we individually and collectively imagine and shape our (future) societies, dialogically negotiating the possible paths that our shared communities will be able to take.

The conference welcomes empirical and methodological papers from different disciplinary perspectives that focus on dialogue as a tool for the (situated) crafting of the ontic, deontic, and epistemic dimensions of our Lifeworlds. Theoretical papers are more than welcome insofar as they provide some empirical illustration of the paper’s theoretical point(s).

The main conference theme includes, but it is not limited to, the following subthemes and domains:

• Dialogue and Lifeworlds in healthcare settings (e.g., dialogue in clinical settings; medical interaction; dialogue in multilingual-multicultural healthcare contexts; dialogue in social work; family and social mediation);
• Dialogue in ordinary and institutional learning contexts (e.g., everyday family talk; language socialization; classroom talk; peer talk; dialogue in everyday school-life; parent-teacher conferences; L2 teaching and learning grammar, lexicon, and cultural norms in everyday talk);
• Decision-making, deliberation, and the politics of dialogue (e.g., political debate; courtroom interaction; dialogue in broadcasting and media; news interviews; dialogue in propaganda and political speech, social conflict and Alternative Dispute Resolution);
• Socio-material environments as relevant to Lifeworlds (e.g., inter-objectivity; things as dialogic entities; human and non-human interaction; socio-semiotics; dialogue in technologically saturated environments; the object’s affordances and the user’s agenda);
• The ontological, epistemic, and deontic work of dialogue in or between organizations (e.g., dialogue as an organizing phenomenon; leadership and dialogue; expert-novice interaction; authority and power in organizational communication);
• Language and dialogue in texts (e.g., dialogue in literary texts; dialogue in advertising; advertising as dialogue);
• Dialogue in techno-semiotic environments (e.g., technology-mediated dialogues; dialogue in technologically saturated environments; dialogue in the digital landscape; dialogue in social media; dialogue in online and gaming communities).

Call for abstracts: We invite extended abstracts (500 words, references included) on the main topic of the conference. Deadline: January 31, 2025. To be sent to: abstract.iada2025@unibo.it

Sorin Stati Award: Upon the acceptance of the abstract, we invite PhD and post PhD students to send a full-length paper of their contribution (maximum 8000 words, including references. Citation style: APA, Chicago). All students’ papers will compete for the Sorin Stati Award. For details and deadlines see https://www.iada-web.org/sorin-stati-top-student-paper-award/

The IADA 2025 conference will be held in person.

For any inquiry concerning the extended abstract/paper submission, please contact: abstract.iada2025@unibo.it

For any further details, please contact: info.iada2025@unibo.it