Call for Papers (EN)

Doctoral conference
What’s research got to do with it?
Ultime frontiere della ricerca linguistica, inclusione e impatto sociale

Contemporary societies in the post-globalization era are increasingly mobile, permeated by digital technology, and ever more sensitive to issues of inclusivity. This rapidly evolving context requires ongoing reflection and support from academia. Research plays a dual role: it should not only interpret current phenomena but also act as a catalyst for change within society. One example is the Open Science movement (Fecher and Friesike, 2014), promoting transparent access to research processes and outcomes (UNESCO, 2021). This metascientific reflection is gaining traction in the humanities and linguistic disciplines as well, advocating for accessible and reproducible research, while fostering transdisciplinary collaborations within and beyond academia.

The rich linguistic and cultural plurality of contemporary societies fosters new perspectives but also poses significant challenges. Addressing them requires in-depth reflection and concrete actions to make language policies sensitive to diversity. Institutions should be the starting point of this change, where inclusivity and clarity could be achieved through simple, clear, and understandable language (De Mauro, 1994), thus respecting the “constitutional duty of making oneself understood” (Piemontese, 2023). At the same time, the growing attention to accessible language and sensitivity to linguistic and transcultural competencies is transforming educational and social contexts, which are increasingly diverse.

One tangible example of social impact generated by research through innovative and collaborative approaches lies in the application of technology to linguistic studies. Corpora, artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs), digital archives, chatbots, and virtual assistants are opening new avenues for studying language and society. These tools are particularly valuable in exploring the challenges of inclusive communication (Formato, 2024), ensuring equal opportunities for all members of society, irrespective of their abilities (Greco, 2018), and fostering transcultural, pluricentric, and inclusive communication through transformative pedagogical and experiential approaches (Kiraly, 2012: Kohonen et al., 2014). Examples include data-driven learning (DDL) which leverages technology to enable learner-centered education (Johns, 1991; Bernardini, 2016); educational projects based on intercomprehension (Bonvino and Gambarino, 2022); and empirical studies on linguistic variation, incorporation frameworks like translanguaging (García and Wei, 2014), translingualism (Canagarajah and Dovchin, 2019; Canagarajah, 2018; 2024), and plurilingualism (European Council, 2020).

Similarly, research can give voice to minority or marginalized identities, languages, and cultures by questioning existing linguistic policies and practices or by shaping new ones, including those related to translation and mediation. The cultural and activist turns in translation studies (Wolf, 2012) have prompted reflection on translation and self-translation (Castro et al., 2017) as processes of constant negotiations, compelling translators to reflect on ethical responsibilities and power hierarchies in the production of knowledge and the circulation of ideas. By adopting an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw, 1991), and a situated (Haraway, 1988) and reflexive (Rose, 1997) positioning, transfeminist research provides tools to recognize forms of identity-based discrimination that manifest in and are reinforced by language. This paradigm includes investigations that, also from the point of view of translation and interpreting studies (Baer and Kaindl, 2018; Susam-Saraeva et al., 2023), shed light on experiences that are excluded and rendered invisible in dominant discourses.

• Baer, B. J., & Kaindl, K. (Eds.) (2018). Queering Translation, Translating the Queer: Theory, Practice, Activism. New York: Routledge.
• Bernardini, S. (2016). Discovery learning in the language-for-translation classroom: corpora as learning aids. Cadernos de Tradução, 36(1), 14–35.
• Bonvino E., & Garbarino, S. (2022). Intercomprensione. Caissa: Cesena.
• Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
• Canagarajah, S. (2018). Translingual Practice as Spatial Repertoires: Expanding the Paradigm beyond Structuralist Orientations. Applied Linguistics, 39, 31–54.
• Canagarajah, S. (2024). Crip translingualism: Boundary negotiations in (im)mobility. AILA Review, 37(1), 54–78.
• Canagarajah, S., & Dovchin, S. (2019). The everyday politics of translingualism as a resistant practice. International Journal of Multilingualism, 16(2), 127–144.
• Castro, O., & Ergun, E. (2018). Translation and Feminism. In: Fernández, F., Evans, J. (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics. London: Routledge.
• Castro, O., Mainer, S., & Page, S., (Eds.) (2017). Self-translation and Power: Negotiating Identities in European Multilingual Contexts. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Chamberlain, L. (1988). Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation. Signs, 13(3), 454–472.
• Cordoba, S. (2023). Non-Binary Gender Identities: The Language of Becoming. London: Routledge.
• Council of Europe (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Council of Europe Publishing: Strasbourg.
• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
• De Mauro, T. (1994). Capire le parole. Roma: Laterza.
• Fecher, B., & Friesike, S. (2014). Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought. In: Bartling, S., Friesike, S. (Eds.) Opening Science: The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing. Springer.
• Formato, F. (2024). Feminism, Corpus-assisted Research and Language Inclusivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Greco, G. M. (2018). The nature of accessibility studies. Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), 205–232.
• Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.
• Johns, T. F. (1991). Should You Be Persuaded: Two Examples of Data-Driven Learning Materials. English Language Research Journal, 4, 1–16.
• Kecskes, I. (2013). Intercultural Pragmatics. New York: Oxford Academic.
• Kiraly, D. (2012). Growing a Project-Based Translation Pedagogy: A Fractal Perspective. Meta, 57(1), 82–95.
• Kohonen, V., Jaatinen, R., Kaikkonen, P., & Lehtovaara, J. (2001). Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education. Taylor & Francis.
• Le Bervet, C. (2019). A critical overview of feminism and/in translation: constructing cultures and identities through an interdisciplinary exchange. eSharp, 27, 8–17.
• Muscarà, M., & Sani, C. (2019). Accessibility to Cultural Heritage, some project outcomes. Education Sciences & Society, 10(1), 244–280.
• Neves, J. (2018). Cultures of accessibility. Translation making cultural heritage in museums accessible to people of all abilities. In: Harding, S., Cortés, O. C. (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture. New York: Routledge, 415–430.
• Piemontese, M. E. (2023). Il dovere costituzionale di farsi capire A trent’anni dal Codice di stile. Roma: Carocci editore.
• Rose, E. (2017). Revealing and concealing the masquerade of translation and gender: double-crossing the text and the body. In: Epstein B. J., Gillett, R. (Eds.) Queer in Translation. London: Routledge, 37–50.
• Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320.
• Santaemilia Ruiz, J. (2020). Feminismo(s) y traducción, feminismo(s) traducido(s): Notas sobre una interdisciplina asimétrica. In: Santaemilia Ruiz, J. (Ed.) Feminismo(s) y/en traducción: Feminism(s) and/in Traslation. Granada: Editorial Comares, Granada.
• Spurlin, W. (2017). Queering translation. Rethinking gender and sexual politics in the spaces between languages and cultures. In: Epstein B. J., Gillett, R. (Eds.) Queer in Translation. London: Routledge, 172–183.
• Susam-Saraeva, Ş., C. Acosta Vicente, L. Carvalho Fonseca, O. García-Caro, B. Martínez-Pagán, F. Montero, & G. Yañez (2023). Roundtable: Feminist Interpreting (Studies) – the Story so Far. Translation Studies, 16 (1): 134–59.
• UNESCO (2021). UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Paris: UNESCO.
• Wolf, M. (2012). The sociology of translation and its “activist turn”. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 7(2), 129–143.