Languaging Diversity is the international biennial conference of the I-LanD Inter-University Research Centre, an international and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences, and the Humanities. Since its first edition in Naples in 2013, the conference series has brought together scholars working on the relationships between language, identity, diversity, and representation across a wide range of geographical, cultural, and disciplinary contexts.

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Following the successful editions hosted by the Universities of Naples (2013), Catania (2014), Macerata (2016), Cagliari (2017), Antwerp (2018), Teruel (2019), Lille (2021), Turin (2023), and Chieti-Pescara (2025), the conference returns to its point of origin. Almost fifteen years after the first Languaging Diversity conference, the 2027 edition goes back home to the University of Naples L’Orientale. 

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The return of Languaging Diversity to Naples offers an opportunity to reflect on the critical and scientific trajectory of the conference series, with a focus on the urgent challenges that shape contemporary discourse and our role as an academic community. In recent years, political, social, technological, environmental and, more broadly, cultural transformations have problematized processes of identity negotiation, exclusion, belonging, and representation. Language remains one of the principal sites where these tensions are articulated, contested, and reimagined. Words do not simply describe identities but contribute to their social visibility. At the same time, language provides resources through which alternative possibilities and futures are imagined (Gheno 2024). 

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We live in a time marked by instability: the rise of new geopolitical conflicts, the intensification of existing ones, forced and voluntary mobility, digital acceleration, ecological crisis, the growing presence of artificial intelligence in multiple areas of our lives. These developments are transforming the ways in which identities are narrated, surveilled, commodified, and performed across everyday settings. As Blommaert & Backus (2013) argued, the new social environments in which we live are characterized by an extremely low degree of presupposability, in terms of identities, patterns of social and cultural behavior, social and cultural structures, norms and expectations. In such contexts, a wide-ranging reimagination of how people and language relate to each other has emerged. For instance, mobility can no longer be understood independently of digital mediation: linguistic and semiotic practices unfold across polycentric digital environments in which individuals navigate and mobilize different resources from their repertoires (Androutsopoulos and Lexander 2021).  

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In this context, the conference invites contributions that explore how diversity is discursively constructed and negotiated today, with particular attention to the role that language plays in contexts shaped by instability, transformation, and technological mediation. This is an invitation to dig deeper into how power, (digital) surveillance, inequality and repression produce insecurity and may affect identities and languages. At the same time, we are interested in how such dynamics are contested and reconfigured, and in the complex relations between power, vulnerability and agency. This also brings into focus the ways in which invisibility, silence and imperceptibility are discursively organized (Kulick 2026), raising questions about who is made visible/invisible, silenced/heard, and under what conditions recognition becomes possible. 

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The 2027 edition especially welcomes work addressing how individuals and communities use, reshape and transform linguistic and semiotic resources, including language technologies and artificial intelligence, as they negotiate changing conditions of mobility, visibility, belonging and vulnerability. Broader inquiries into discourse, identity, ideology, and social change are also welcome.  

With its focus on language, diversity, and contemporary transformation, Languaging Diversity 2027 invites contributions from scholars in linguistics, discourse studies, translation and interpreting studies, media and communication, literary and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, education, law, political studies, and related fields. 

 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

• Language, identity, and diversity in times of crisis 

• Discourse, inequality, and social exclusion 

• Migration, mobility, borders, and citizenship 

• AI, language technologies, and techno-discursive bias 

• Solidarity, care, and resistance in discourse 

• Gender, sexuality, and queer languaging 

• Visibility, silencing, and recognition  

• Platformization, multimodality, and digital discourse 

• Race, ethnicity, and postcolonial perspectives on language 

• Language and diversity in education and professional settings 

• Multilingualism, translanguaging, code-switching, and language contact 

• Language change, innovation, and digital vernaculars 

• Post/Transhumanism and the artificial body 

 

References 

Androutsopoulos, J., & Lexander, K. V. (2021). Digital polycentricity and diasporic connectivity: A Norwegian-Senegalese case study. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 25(5), 720–736. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12518 

 

Blommaert, J., & Backus, A. (2013). Superdiverse repertoires and the individual. In I. de Saint-Georges & J.-J. Weber (Eds.), Multilingualism and multimodality: Current challenges for educational studies (pp. 11–32). Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-266-2_2  
 

Gheno, V. (2024). Grammamanti: Immaginare futuri con le parole [Grammar lovers: Imagining futures through words]. Einaudi.

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Kulick, D. (2026). People who aren’t really there as a field of enquiry. Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 27. https://paris.pias.science/article/people-who-aren-t-really-there-as-a-field-of-enquiry/  

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Submission formats 

The conference welcomes proposals for:
 

- Panels 
Panel proposals on a specific theme are welcome. Panel organizers should submit a panel abstract of up to 500 words, including the panel title, a brief rationale, the names and affiliations of participants, and the titles of the proposed papers. Panels should include 4 to 8 participants. Individual panel participants will also be required to submit their own abstracts.
 

 - Individual papers 

Individual paper presentations will consist of a 20-minute talk followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts should be 300 words, excluding references. 

 

Abstracts should: 

• be submitted in English; 

• not exceed 300 words for individual papers and papers within panels, or 500 words for panel proposals, excluding references in both cases; 

• include a title and 4–6 keywords; 

• clearly state the research aim(s) and/or research question(s); 

• specify the theoretical framework, data, and methodological approach; 

• indicate the analytical focus and, where applicable, the main findings; 

• include a short list of references formatted according to APA style (7th edition), excluded from the abstract word count; 

• include a short bio-note of the author(s). 

 

Submission format and review process 

All proposals must be written in English and submitted by 15 January 2027 through the online submission form: 

https://forms.gle/aBmSD6QWZoMea27m6 

 

Please select the appropriate submission category (i.e., individual paper, paper within a panel, or panel proposal) and enter your abstract or proposal and the accompanying information directly into the relevant fields. 

 

Panel proposals must be submitted by the panel organizer(s). Each panel participant must also submit their own paper abstract separately through the same form, indicating the title of the proposed panel. 

 

All submissions will undergo anonymous peer review. Authors will be notified of the outcome by 15 March 2027. 

 

Conference language 

The language of the conference is English. 

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Publication opportunities 

A selection of papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in an edited volume and/or a special issue of an international scientific journal.