Languagetalks 2012: Graduate Conference at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Munich, 8-10 November 2012
 
Languagetalks is an interdisciplinary conference series, organized at
regular intervals by members of the structured Ph.D. programs ProLit
(Promotionsstudiengang Literaturwissenschaft) and LIPP (Linguistisches
internationales Promotionsprogramm), both affiliated with LMU Munich¹s
Faculty for Language and Literary Studies.
 
Alles Mögliche. Sprechen, Denken und Schreiben des (Un)Möglichen / The
Works. Of the (Im)Possible: Speaking, Thinking and Writing the (Im)Possible
 
While politics seems to be less and less concerned with visions and utopias
and unceasingly emphasizes the ³Alternativlosigkeit² (Œlack of alternatives¹
­ faux pas term par excellence of 2010) of its decisions, economics attempts
to present the world to the consumer as a realm of infinite consuming
possibilities: ³Impossible is Nothing.² Despite, or perhaps due to, this
discrepancy, current political and economic models are taking new soundings
on the boundaries of their possibilities and of the possible. Consequently,
the question arises of which role the humanities can and want to adopt when
social possibilities regarding political and economic crises are newly
gauged. How do the humanities negotiate these potentialities, which
ultimately also affect the (im)possibilities of research and development as
such? Couldn¹t and shouldn¹t linguistic and literary studies use their
expertise to make a contribution to the sphere of (un)limited and
(un)limiting possibilities? With this discourse as a backdrop, the
conference will set a goal of debating the possibilities of the possible
from a linguistic and literary perspective. Questions of speaking, thinking
and writing of the im(possible) should be newly posed, as well as the
potentialities, assets and liabilities of language and literature discussed.
 
Panel 1: Das Mögliche denken / Thinking the Possible
Literature is hardly imaginable without Musil¹s Möglichkeitssinn or the
participation in Campe¹s ³Game of Probabilities². Literature negotiates the
possible from the horizon of probability, determinism and contingency.
Epistemological as well as mathematical methods designed to grasp the
possible ­ such as abduction, combinatorics, statistics, probabilistics or
prognostics ­ play a prominent role in the current academic discourse on
knowledge, nescience, and literature. Contributions to this panel could be
dedicated to, for example, the following questions: Where do linguistic and
literary representations of possibility stand in relation to philosophical
concepts of the factual, the probable, the necessary or the coincidental?
How does possibility relate to knowledge and nescience in (or also of)
literature? Which role does the possible play for narratological categories
such as space, time, and Ereignis ­ and vice versa? To what extent does the
experience of a contingent world shape narration?
 
Panel 2: Von möglichen Welten sprechen / Speaking of Possible Worlds
Fictional texts compose and describe possible, however, not (yet) realized,
or rather, unrealizable worlds. The panel approaches a poetological
terminology of the possible: What can be said for example about the
emergence of such genres, the possible worlds of which differ acutely from
each other (fantasticism, utopia, dystopia, science fiction)? On the other
hand, how is the possible and the conceivable, but also the physically
and/or logically impossible (re)negotiated? Which importance can be assigned
to the special set of vocabulary of the possible world, when for instance
the specific regulations of the clandestine Hogwarts world in Harry Potter
advance with an armada of neologisms, or the beautiful new world from
Orwell¹s 1984 is clearly only realized via state interference in the
population¹s vocabulary? In this respect, the panel is interested in the
discourse in and about possible worlds, not only from a literary studies
perspective, but also from a linguistic point of view. Adjacent to literary
texts, films and other communicative situations, for example colloquial
speech, online communications, politics, economics, etc. are encouraged as
platforms for exploration.
 
Panel 3: Grammatiken des Möglichen / Grammar(s) of the Possible
This panel will pursue the questions of how (im)possibility can be expressed
in and with the structures of grammar; moreover, the question of how
literature uses, explodes, contaminates or disclaims these structures will
be foregrounded. For linguistics, the modality of a statement thereby plays
a central role, reflecting the attitude of the speaker towards the sentence
content. At the same time, the appraisal of modalities of predicates renders
possible on the one hand the epistemic valuation of expressed thoughts, as
well as the comprehension of its relation to reality; contrariwise,
predicates furnish information about the sources of knowledge
(evidentiality) and approaches. How do such semantic categories of
possibility allow themselves to be expressed grammatically: Which type(s) of
modality/-ies/ evidentiality are mediated through verbal denominations such
as grammatical tense (future, inferential past conjugations) and mood
(imperative, operative, etc.)? Which role do modal verbs or sentence adverbs
play, or kinds of sentences such as statement, question, etc.?
 
Panel 4: Jenseits des Möglichen / Beyond the Possible
If the impossible has already been parenthetically implied in the previous
panels, the territory Œbeyond the possible¹ allows itself to here be more
radically conceptualized. This panel comprises that which is not
discursively representable, yet which nevertheless strives for existence and
representation. In this vein, the question shall be pursued of the
possibility to grasp something that by definition exceeds everything
determinable. Are language and literature at all capable of tackling this
challenge, or do they perhaps exploit precisely the conceptually
unrepresentable here annotated in order to productively process this void or
gap? Which dynamic interrelationship exists between linguistic-literary and
socio-political confrontations with the margins of the possible, such as for
instance political or aesthetic revolutions? How do allegedly impossible
linguistic phenomena (such as passive voice systems) that are brought to
light through systemic comparison allow themselves to be typologically
conceived?
 
 
Organizational Matters
Abstracts may be submitted by Ph.D. candidates as well as postdoctoral
researchers until the deadline of June 29, 2012 and should not exceed 400
words (including a short biographical sketch). Decisions will be made by the
beginning of August. Presentations should be restricted to 20 minutes in
anticipation of the subsequent discussion and may be held in either German
or English. A selection of the contributions will be published in an edited
volume of our conference series languagetalks.
 
Attendance fee: 30 Euro, free entry for students. In well-founded cases, it
is possible to be exempt from paying the participation fee.
 

Please send your abstract to [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by June 29, 2012 at the latest.
 
Additional information available on our homepage:
http://www.languagetalks.fak13.uni-muenchen.de.



-- 
Sandra Fluhrer
Inhaltliche Koordination Languagetalks 2012
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.languagetalks.fak13.uni-muenchen.de