DATE: 23-25 June 2025
LOCATION: University of Bari Aldo Moro
Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate In/Action:
Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary Approaches
Keynote Speakers:
Jonathan Charteris-Black – UWE Bristol
Roberta Sassatelli – University of Bologna Alma Mater
Alexa Weik von Mossner – University of Klagenfurt
We are pleased to announce a call for papers for the First DIS-4Change Conference on Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary Approaches. The Conference aims to explore the dynamics of community engagement in the face of environmental and climate challenges, highlighting the ways storytelling, discourses, and collaborative efforts shape both action and inaction. We invite scholars to contribute their insights on how communities engage with (or disengage from) pressing environmental and climate issues, what narratives drive their responses, and how transdisciplinary strategies can foster transformative action.
As Fløttum (2017) notes in “Willingness of Action”, the public opinion debate on the environmental and climate change crisis has, to a large extent, shifted its focus from causes attribution to the measures that must be taken to meet its many predicted challenges at different levels (local, national, and global). Yet, mobilizing action entails knowledge about how social actors and the public view climate change solutions and what they think needs to be done. Action/inaction necessarily involves different beliefs, values and ideologies which lie at the basis of the discursive struggle inherent in communication, engagement and dis/alignment. Hence, we believe that the investigation of engagement and in/action needs to be critical as it may involve antagonistic calls for action, manipulation, the silencing of alternative courses of action, perpetuation of underlying ideologies of global growth and development etc.
As several studies have found, social actors involved in communicative events are actively engaged in the production of frames to legitimize their interpretations of knowledge, circumstances and events (Charteris Black 2005) which may influence reception, ground decisions and provide reasons for/against action (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012). For instance, the use of climate change crisis frames has recently been discussed in terms of problem definition and argumentation strategies (Cap 2017; Chilton 2004; Augè 2023; Russo and Bevitori 2024). Yet, strategies of legitimation invoke publicly shared and publicly justifiable, even highly formalized, codified, institutional systems of beliefs, values and norms, in virtue of which the action proposed is considered legitimate (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012). Moreover, engagement strategies in narrative may be a fruitful point of departure for studies interested in claims of truth (Reisigl 2021), epistemic and deontic perspectives, perspectivization, etc. (Cap 2017; Chilton 2004; Reisigl and Wodak 2016). Most of all, they may propel action and social movements (Van Dijk 2024) guided by alternative and counter-discourses and imaginaries shaping new ways of being and identities (Iovino and Oppermann 2012; Haraway 2016), together with new ways of conceptualizing the present and future (Russo 2019). As Chiapello and Fairclough (2002) put it,
Discourses include imaginaries – representations of how things might or could or should be. The knowledges of the knowledge-economy and knowledge-society are imaginaries in this sense – projections of possible states of affairs, ‘possible worlds’. These imaginaries may be enacted as actual (networks of) practices – imagined activities, subjects, social relations etc can become real activities, subjects, social relations etc. Such enactments are also in part themselves discoursal/semiotic: discourses become enacted as genres. […] Discourses as imaginaries may also be inculcated as new ways of being, new identities. The dialectical process does not end with enactment and inculcation. Social life is reflexive. That is, people not only act and interact within networks of social practices, they also interpret and represent to themselves and each other what they do, and these interpretations and representations shape and reshape what they do.
Action and inaction are critical in understanding how communication, narratives and language shape, maintain, and challenge social structures, and in turn how social structures determine language and narrative choices (Buell 2005; Zapf 2016). Action may refer to the ways in which language is used to accomplish tasks, assert power, or influence social dynamics. In contrast, inaction may reflect silence, omission, or hesitation, which can also carry significant meaning, revealing implicit biases, power imbalances, or resistance. Studies have highlighted that action-oriented language is used to rally support or legitimize authority, while inaction or ambiguous language may be strategically employed to avoid accountability or maintain the new capitalist and neocolonial status quo (Fairclough 2002; Jessop 2000; Huggan and Tiffin 2010). Moreover, critical thinkers such as Butler (1997) have examined how language acts may injure and perpetuate marginalization by rendering certain voices invisible. This may lead to a discussion of the nuanced interplay between action and inaction in discourse, suggesting that inaction can be just as powerful as explicit language in constructing societal narratives.
We look forward to your contributions to this critical conversation on how communities can be meaningfully engaged to address the challenges posed by environmental and climate issues. We welcome submissions across a spectrum of themes, including but not limited to:
- Intersectionality and cross-cultural perspectives in environmental and climate engagement.
- Discursive strategies and their impact on public engagement.
- The role of storytelling in environmental and climate action/inaction.
- Integrative strategies and collaborative approaches combining social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences in environmental and climate communication.
- Manipulation and conspiracy discourse.
- Corporate and Sustainable Development Discourse
- Environmental and Climate Justice Discourse
- Community-driven narratives and social movements discourse.
- Ethical considerations in climate discourse and engagement.
- Post-humanist and ecocritical approaches to climate narratives.
- Strategic ambiguity and its role in political communication and policies. The role of silence, omission, and inaction in perpetuating power imbalances.
- Claims of truth, epistemic authority, and their impact on public opinion.
- Alternative imaginaries and speculative futures in environmental discourse.
- The impact of discourse on local, national, and global environmental policies.
- The role of communication in fostering or hindering policy alignment.
- Power dynamics and economic governance in climate action narratives.
- Social media as a tool for climate activism and engagement.
- The role of AI and technology in shaping environmental discourses.
- The role of art, literature, and films in shaping climate imaginaries.
References:
Augé A. (2023). Metaphor and argumentation in climate crisis discourse. London and New York: Routledge.
Bortoluzzi M. and E. Zurru eds. (2024). Ecological Communication and Ecoliteracy: Discourses of Awareness and Action for the Lifescape. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Buell L. (2005). The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden: Blackwell.
Cap P. (2017). The language of fear: Communicating threat in public discourse. Palgrave Macmillan.
Charteris-Black J. (2005). Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chilton P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Fløttum K. (2017). Willingness to action. In K. Fløttum (Ed.), The role of language in the climate change debate (pp. 113-129). London and New York: Routledge.
Iovino, S. and Oppermann S. (2012) Material Ecocriticism: Materiality, Agency and Models of Narrativity. Ecozon@, Vol 3, No 1, 75-91.
Haraway D.J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Huggan G. and Tiffin H. (2010). Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. London: Routledge.
Jessop R. (2000). The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the ecological dominance of globalising capitalism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24(2), 273-310.
Reisigl M. (2020). “Narrative! I can’t hear that anymore”: A linguistic critique of an overstretched umbrella term in cultural and social science studies, discussed with the example of the discourse on climate change. Critical Discourse Studies 18(3), 368-386.
Russo K.E. (2019). Speculations about the future: Populism and climate change in news discourse. In E. Hidalgo-Tenorio, M.-Á. Benítez-Castro & F. De Cesare (Eds.), Populist discourse: Critical approaches to contemporary politics (pp. 190-206). London and New York: Routledge.
Russo K.E. & Bevitori C. (2024). The language of crisis in the “Virocene”: A critical corpus-informed analysis of COVID-19 and climate change discourse in the EU. Iperstoria 23, 164-189.
Van Dijk T. (2024). Social movement discourse: An introduction. London and New York: Routledge.
Zapf H. (2016). Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Submission Guidelines:
We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplines with a focus on how climate change and the environment are communicated, narrated, and socially constructed to identify its linguistic, discursive, narrative and multimodal strategies in dialogue with other related studies and disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Both empirical studies and theoretical contributions are encouraged, as well as transdisciplinary projects.
We invite proposals for individual papers, panels and posters that align with the conference themes.
Conference languages: English and Italian.
Submissions should include:
- Author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), and contact information
- Title of the presentation
- Abstract using APA style for references (350 words, including references)
- Short bio-note (150 words)
- Preferred presentation format (individual paper, panel, poster)
Panel proposals: 30 January 2025.
Abstracts Submission deadline: 30 January 2025.
Posters Submission deadline: 30 January 2025.
Notification of Acceptance: 15 February 2025.
Panels: we kindly ask the convenors of panels (6 or 8 at the most) to send their proposals in a single file with all the abstracts and bio-notes of the panel.
Registration Fee: Early bird: €110 (before April 30), Late bird: €130.
Payment procedure: please wire the fee to Adr Congressi Srl, IT29F0200841591000401395742, specifying in the reason for the transfer “Dis4Change proposal – name of the author/s”.
For updated info on the conference: https://www.uniba.it/it/ricerca/dipartimenti/scienze-politiche/convegni/dis-4change/ and https://dis4change-researchcentre.eu/events/
For inquiries and submissions, please write to: dis4change@uniba.it
Scientific Committee:
Raffaella Baccolini (Università Alma Mater Studiorum – Bologna)
Cinzia Bevitori (Università Alma Mater Studiorum – Bologna)
Marco Boffi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Maria Bortoluzzi (Università degli Studi di Udine)
Rita Calabrese (Università degli Studi di Salerno)
Paola Catenaccio (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Rossella Ciocca (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
Alessandra De Chiara (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
Massimiliano Demata (Università di Torino)
Chiara Ghidini (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
Jane Helen Johnson (Università Alma Mater Studiorum – Bologna)
Denise Milizia (Università degli Studi di Bari – Aldo Moro)
Licia Reggiani (Università Alma Mater Studiorum – Bologna)
Katherine Elizabeth Russo (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
Local Organizing Committee:
Denise Milizia (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Laura R. Olson (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Patricia Chiantera (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Valeria Corriero (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Marisa Della Gatta (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Valeria Di Comite (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
Loretta Moramarco (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)