France

nostalgia ; multimodal analysis ; covid-19 ; memories ; emotions ; social media

## **The Linguistic Construction of Emotional Challenges in a Changing Society**


**Languaging Diversity** is the itinerating conference of the [I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre](https://www.unior.it/index2.php?content_id=14038&content_id_start=1&titolo=i-land-research-centre&parLingua=ENG), an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

Following the six successful events hosted by the Universities of Naples (2013), Catania (2014), Macerata (2016), Cagliari (2017), Antwerp (2018) and Teruel (2019), the seventh edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) will be organized by the University of Lille, France. Due to the COVID-19 ongoing pandemic, the event will be held exclusively online via the virtual conference management platform [Underline](https://underline.io/).


**Focus **

The 7th edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) focuses on the emotional challenges that result from the social innovations of the last two decades, and on the way such experiences are expressed in discourse. Conference convenors invite papers and posters that investigate the intersection of emotion, communication and social change, also within the framework of digital communication. The contributions presented at the LD2021 conference will explore the expression of emotion(s) at the different levels of linguistic description (phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, discursive), and in texts and contexts related to traditional and digital genres in different domains, including (but not restricted to) health, medicine and science, media, politics, the law, academia, the world of corporate and institutional work, education and learning. 


**Conference convenors**

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France

 
**Scientific Committee**

* Giuseppe Balirano, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Henry Hernandez Bayter, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stéphanie Caët, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Bert Cappelle, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Paola Catenaccio, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Emmanuelle Canut, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stefania D’Avanzo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Ilse Depraetere, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Emilia Di Martino, Università degli Studi ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’, Italy
* Antonio Fruttaldo, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Dariusz Galasiński, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland
* Kim Grego, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Siria Guzzo, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
* Geert Jacobs, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
* Samantha Laporte, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Jeannette Littlemore, University of Birmingham, UK
* Julien Longhi, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
* Corinne Oster, Université de Lille & CECILLE, France
* Paolo Mairano, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Antonella Napolitano, Università del Sannio, Italy
* Maria Cristina Nisco, Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’, Italy
* Annick Rivens Mompean, Université de Lille & STL, France 
* Margaret Rasulo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Catherine Ruchon,Université Sorbonne Paris Nord -Pléiade, France
* Hans-Jörg Schmid, LMU München, Germany
* Jerome Tessuto, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy


[**Organizing Committee**](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/)

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Justin Duquesnoy, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Océane Foubert, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Lola Marinato, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Sayf-Eddine Mohamed, Université de Lille & STL, France

**Keynote Speakers**

**Maïa Ponsonnet**
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**Jeannette Littlemore**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cr6i2TVX2d0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**Andrea Scarantino**
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To access the **Languaging Diversity 2021** conference, please remember to [register.](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/registration) 

Languaging Diversity 2021

Languaging Diversity  is the itinerating conference of the I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre, an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

We hope that you enjoy the conference this year!<br><br>

**Your Program Chairs,**
![](https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/underline.prod/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/99984908caba5e6453e5fc5ba34f3507.jpg)

**Learn more about the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub at the University of Vienna, hosts of CogSci 2021**

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/464h1m3iU68" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

To review the proceedings for the conference or review the searchable program, please visit the [website](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/program/).


COGSCI 2021

The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education. The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.

As is known, “[t]he word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek roots: νόστος, nóstos (“return home”) and ἄλγος, álgos (“longing”) (Boym, 2001). The word was invented in the 17th century by Johannes Hofer and soon it became very popular.
Nostalgia is an ambiguous phenomenon: it could be seen negatively, as it “fuelled populism and nationalist identity politics” (Menke, Schwarzenegger, 2016: 2), or “as a creative and progressive resource, a tool for commodification, or an agent for identity and community building to articulate cultural or generational belonging” (ibid., p. 2). Nostalgia may be seen also as an emotion. According to Havlena and Holak (1991: 323), it refers back to an earlier period in the individual's life and draws on biased or selective recall of past experiences. Nostalgia may be described as ""a painful yearning to return home” and it is broadly used in advertising, marketing and PR.
It is not only a manipulative technique, which is popular among PR specialists, politicians, journalists, etc. Nostalgia is also a means of overcoming the psychological consequences of the isolation, anxiety and trauma during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria since March 2020 because of its potential to bond with others (Niemeyer, Wentz, 2014: 129), to increase optimism and to mobilise people for action (FioRito and Routledge, 2020).
The aim of the study is to present nostalgia as a strategy for dealing with the state of emergency at the time of the first lockdown in Bulgaria during the COVID-19 crisis when nostalgic winds, memories of the past and literary reminiscences proved to be a successful strategy for dealing with physical isolation. The research questions include 1) a presentation of the nostalgic modes in Facebook and Twitter and a thematic classification of the initiatives, communication strategies and topics in the public space, oriented towards the past; 2) a quantitative analysis within the classified groups aiming to reveal the most frequent model; 3) revealing the reasons for their success as communicative and social messages through their meaning in social media during the emergency situation.
In order to achieve the above goals, a set of methods and approaches is used in the analysis and classification, as well as in the explanation of the reasons for the nostalgic convertibility in the public space, especially intensified during the COVID-19 crisis. Such a complicated phenomenon insists on using an interdisciplinary approach, especially the apparatuses of discourse analysis and content analysis. To investigate the cultural shaping of the nostalgic posts, to explain their social use in an emergency situation and to conceptualize the research data the multimodal analysis theories are also applied (Jovanovic, van Leeuwen, 2018, Ben Moussa et al., 2020, etc.).
The data includes public posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter), published in the period from 15.03.2020, when the state of emergency in connection with COVID-19 was declared in Bulgaria, until 13.05.2020, when it was terminated. We have collected multimodal posts with a nostalgic nuance, representing the longing for the previous lifestyle. We divide them into thematic groups, including historical memories, personal memories, nostalgic games, literary reminiscences, etc. A quantitative analysis within the groups is made aiming to reveal the most frequent model. As the combinations between different groups have been observed they are also presented.  We discuss as well the linguistic and visual characteristics of these messages to find the reasons for their popularity.
The results so far indicate that nostalgia through its diverse manifestation on social media manages to unite people in the presence of physical isolation, to remind them of past experiences and thus to save them from emotional stress which the COVID-19 constrictions and fears may cause. Social media and modern technologies make it possible to create new products based on old, forgotten stories or memories that live a new meaningful life in the specific COVID-19 situation.

References: 
Ben Moussa, M., Benmessaoud, S., Douai, A. (2020) Internet memes as “tactical” social action: A multimodal critical discourse analysis approach. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5920–5940. 
Boym, Sv. (2001) Adoptation and elaboration from Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, NY 2001. Retrieved July 15, 2021, from: http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/n/nostalgia/nostalgia-svetlana-boym.html
FioRito, TA, Routledge, C. (2020) Is nostalgia a past or future-oriented experience? Affective, behavioral, social cognitive, and neuroscientific evidence. Front. Psychol, 11, 1133. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01133
Havlena, W., Holak, S. (1991) “The Good Old Days”: Observations on nostalgia and its role in consumer behavior. In R. Holman, M. Solomon, (eds.). NA - Advances in Consumer Research (Vol. 18, pp.323–329). Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research. 
Jovanovic, D., van Leeuwen, T. (2018) Multimodal dialogue on social media, Social Semiotics, 28:5, 683–699, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2018.1504732
Menke, M., Schwarzenegger, C. (2016) Media, communication and nostalgia. Finding a better tomorrow in the yesterday? Editorial. Medien & Zeit, 4, 2–5.
Niemeyer, K., Wentz, D. (2014) Nostalgia is not what it used to be: serial nostalgia and nostalgic television series. In: Niemeyer, K. (ed). Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, the Present and the Future (pp. 129–138). London: Palgrave McMillan.


Nostalgia as a means of dealing with emotional challenges during the first part of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria Cultural Studies

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Nostalgia as a means of dealing with emotional challenges during the first part of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria Cultural Studies

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