France

Languaging Diversity 2021

Emotion, discourse, and linguistic diversity: Emotions in grammar and discourse in northern Australia

### Welcome to The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025)

Message from the General Chair:<br>
*It is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for  Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025), held in beautiful Vienna, Austria, from July 27 to August 1, 2025.  ACL2025continues our field’s tradition of excellence in scholarship, innovation, and inclusivity, and I am  deeply grateful to the many volunteers who have worked tirelessly to bring this event to life.*<br>
[Read more](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GI_hvOpjswAuYdUTromfeDiPpCcqidwg/view?usp=sharing)<br><br><br>



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ACL 2025

Welcome to The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025)

keynote

## **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**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbGV6Kgz" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**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**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbEV6KgI" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

To access the **Languaging Diversity 2021** conference, please remember to [register.](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/registration) 

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. 

                                                                           Abstract
This study considers a multilingual and culturally diverse post-Soviet country – Kazakhstan, where most of the population is bilingual or multilingual. In order to reverse the pre-colonial Russification, in the post-colonial period, the country has raised the status of Kazakh as the national language. However, Russian is kept as the language for inter-ethnic and regional communication, and English is adopted as the language of international communication. This small-scale study uses the concept of lifestyle diglossia (Saxena, 2014) to understand and explain the macro- & micro-level language practices in  ‘regulated spaces’ and ‘unregulated spaces’ (Sebba, 2009) through the following research questions: (1) What are the attitudes of the participants towards the languages in their language repertoire?; (2) What are their patterns of language use in different domains at macro-level?; and (3) What are their patterns of language use in digital communication at micro-level? The participants in the study were 19 family members of master’s students at Graduate School of Education. The participants were divided into three groups by age: Teenagers (10-19), Younger Adults (20-39), and Middle-aged Adults (40-59). Questionnaires conducted among the participants were consisted of eleven questions, that were employed to elicit macro-level data on language repertoire, language attitudes and language use in three different domains, such as family, friendship, and education. The micro-level language use data in different contexts of digital communication (viz., WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram) were collected over a period of three weeks during the course Multilingual Society in the Spring’21. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit participants’ attitudes towards languages in their repertoires and their language choices in the social networks. The results of the study revealed a high competence in the Kazakh language use and a positive attitude towards it were on the rise among the youngest participants, notably by teenagers. However, mainly the Russian language was favoured and accepted as the most prestigious language among the younger adults and middle-aged participants. Although the respondents’ English language competence varies, the attitude towards learning it as a foreign language was positive among all three age groups. Moreover, the micro-analysis of digital communication revealed multi-modal code-switching among these languages. Besides, code-mixing, borrowings, neologisms, abbreviations, emoticons, and shortenings were mainly used by the respondents in their digital communication in all age groups. Based on the study results, the decision tree was drawn to depict language choice depending on the formal/informal settings, intimate/non-intimate topics, serious/non-serious issues and characterized the equal usage of all languages for different purposes. 

References:
Saxena, M. (2014). ""Critical diglossia"" and ""lifestyle diglossia"": Development and the interaction between multilingualism, cultural diversity and English. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014(225), 91-112. 
https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2013-0067  
Sebba, M. (2009, June 18-20). Unregulated spaces. Plenary lecture at the conference on “Language Policy and Language Learning: New Paradigms and New Challenges”. University of Limerick, UK. 

A Small-Scale Study: Patterns of Language Choice in Families in Multilingual Kazakhstan

The reborn subculture is widely perceived as macabre and unsettling, as online communities, as well as newspaper articles, blogs, and posts on social media, are generally prone to label collectors as ‘freaks’, and their reborns as ‘creepy’ and ‘nightmarish’. However, handling a hyper-realistic baby doll has been proven to significantly improve the psychological state of people who have dementia, depression, mood, and anxiety disorders, preventing moments of relapse and promoting feelings of attachment (Pezzati et al. 2014). Similarly, simulacra babies are sometimes proposed as a non-pharmacological coping mechanism to help parents overcome the traumatic experience of miscarriage, stillbirth, and child loss, protecting vilomahs from grief-induced depression, and other types of emotional and psychological distress related to mourning. 

Drawing on corpus-based approaches to text analysis, this paper investigates the synthetic relationships that collectors entertain with their baby dolls through an opportunistic corpus made up of online content. Studying the occurrence of specific keywords in discourses around the reborn subculture will highlight how ideologies on the trope of alternative and non-reproductive parenthood are developed and construed in discourse. Furthermore, a Qualitative Content Analysis of the data will show how the reborn subculture intersects with discourses on disability, and address Doll Therapy as a healing process for people who are grieving or are affected by (mental) health conditions.
The lack of linguistic research in this field may be a clear index of the taboo that this topic represents, which makes it urgent and interesting to put it under a magnifying glass. 



Reborn dolls, dementia, disability, and grief: the linguistic construction of synthetic parenting as non-pharmacological therapy

Language is important in inculcating cultural identities and forge one’s identity. Through one’s verbal or written interaction, the form of utterance or interlocution and the content or one’s choice of words will reflect complex and rich backgrounds of one’s national, strata or individual identity (Joseph, 2004). In the realm of second language acquisition (SLA) or foreign language learning (FLL), the conceptual link between identity and language acquisition in terms of pragmatics, discourse and sociolinguistics are greatly discussed (Anwaruddin, 2012; Edwards, 2009; Hernández, 2017; Morgan and Matthew, 2011; Pavlenko, 2006; Tamimi Sa’d, 2017; Menard-Warwick, 2005). A positive sense of identity obtained through English learning is also beneficial in motivating students to practice their agencies, facilitating not only the efficiency and effectiveness of learning but their social skills (Teng and Teng, 2019). Within the domain of language acquisition, one’s develop new idea and knowledge to add in their realm of identity. As a response to the current situation, over 1.7 billion of students worldwide has been affected due to school closure and the shift towards distance learning and blended learning in response to Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The impact of COVID-19 has affected education, social dynamics and caused unknown drawbacks to LGBT and students of non-Icelandic origins. As proposed by Doshi (2011), risk is assessed by anticipation of severity and precaution should be calibrated to risk. With that in mind, the aim of this research is to investigate the clashes and intersections of gender, race and ethnicity  within the domain of language acquisition after the pandemic in Iceland. 

	 In really understanding the challenges faced by LGBT and students of non-Icelandic origins, a mixed-method research will be conducted. Although the primary goal of this research is to find a big number of sample size to form a reliable and generalisable result (Kang and Wu, 2019; Adjerid and Kelley, 2018), a more realistic non-probability samples will be selected from the university students and secondary students until data saturation is reached (Strauss and Korbin, 1990). Should there be a need for primary students to participate, a new survey form will be obtained to cater to the level of the students. By using both quantitative and qualitative approaches to collect and analyse data a more pragmatic paradigm can be generated (Tashakori and Teddlie, 2008). To answer this exploratory question, an in-depth semi-structured interviews and questionnaires will be administered twice over twelve months to understand the experiences and the consistencies of students’ experiences in a gradual manner. As the existing literature to date points to the need of questionnaire measure focused on the unique minority stress experience faced by LGBT and students of non-Icelandic origins, modifications on an existing scale should be done. In order to revise the existing stress scale, a qualitative focus group and interviews should be generated. The scale will then undergoes pilot testing through web-based survey or through Google Forms. 


How Digitised Classroom Affect Second Language Acquisition among LGBT Students and Students of Non-Icelandic Origin

Cyberspace is often accused of dehumanizing interpersonal relationships. However, it is, in fact, the theatre of new forms of expression of emotions. Emotional reactions, which are by nature spontaneous, are here carefully formulated. In cyberspace, when the user has an emotional reaction and wants to communicate it to his interlocutor, he will automatically take into account the context in which he is expressing himself. He will, therefore, tend to modulate the expression of his emotions according to the person he is talking to, the type of conversation they are having and the means of communication they are using.
Computer-mediated communication has inevitably changed how the individual relates to the world and those around him. In particular, the notions of time and space have changed dramatically (Kramsch, 2009). The spatio-temporal shift, which characterises virtual interactions, allows users to hide their identity and the subjective motivation to communicate. In other words, users can create any kind of reality and identity through more or less truthful statements. Moreover, this discrepancy strongly influences the way interlocutors interact and express their emotions. Kramer et al. (2014) showed how an emotion expressed on Facebook influences the emotions of other users. Exposure to a large number of positive messages will lead users to post positive messages.
When the user interacts in cyberspace, the emotions he is feeling dissipate instantly, before he has time to express them in writing. This is because emotions only last a few milliseconds. Therefore, the user can, more or less voluntarily, decide how to verbalize his emotional reactions. Thus, virtual communication can be considered as emotive communication. Contrary to emotional communication, where the individual expresses his emotion at the very moment he feels it, emotive communication is characterised by the description of the emotion once it has dissipated (Plantin, 2011). In other words, emotive communication is closer to the notions of performance, rhetoric and persuasion (Arndt and Janney, 1991). Emotions can, therefore, be staged to influence the speaker’s reactions and behaviour.
This contribution aims at investigating three different types of hate speech produced and spread on the Internet: jihadist propaganda, anti-migrant and antisemitic messages. More precisely, the goal is to examine the way the expression of emotions (pathos) contribute to both creating a reliable and legitimate éthos, and reinforcing the arguments advanced by the speaker (logos) (Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca, 1988). Since in hate speech the other plays a crucial role, particular attention will be paid to the notion of otherness. Staszak (2008) defines otherness as “the results of a discursive process by which a dominant in-group (“Us”, the Self) constructs one or many dominated out-groups (“Them”, Other) by stigmatizing a difference – real or imagined – presented as a negation of identity and thus a motive for potential discrimination” (p. 2). According to Lagorgette and Larrivée (2004), when the target of hate speech (i.e., the other) is not the speaker’s addressee, the addressee is a witness of the target’s diminishment. Therefore, this may allow the speaker to either create or reinforce the coalition with the addressee, that is the in-group (Goffman, 1967). This contribution then questions the way the expression of both positive and negative emotions allows the user to distance the in-group from the out-group (Van Dijk, 2006). Furthermore, we will see how cyberspace influences the delimitation of the border drown between the in-group and the out-group. 
Three corpora were then collected: as far as jihadist propaganda is concerned, the study was conducted on the French jihadist online magazine Dar al-Islam. As far the anti-migrants and antisemitic discourses, the two corpora were collected from user-generated comments on YouTube. The reason is twofold: on the one hand, YouTube’s represents “a large repository of user-generated information” (Madden et al., 2013, p. 698); on the other hand, social networks would nurture the emergence of hate speech (Monnier and Seoane, 2019). In order to identify the specificities of each corpus as well as their differences and similarities, a qualitative discursive analysis was conducted. We will see how, in jihadist propaganda, the in-group is presented as a community chosen by God whose goal is to fight the disbelievers, whereas in both anti-migrants and antisemitic discourse, the in-group is perceived as a victim of the out-group. However, contrary to migrants, who are presented as inferior, Jews are seen as a powerful and rich community. By identifying and analysing both the differences and similarities of these three types of hate speech, this study aims at determining the core elements of the verbalisation of hate speech on the Internet.

The use of emotions in online hate speech: between discursive strategy and manipulation

This presentation will draw on documentation work carried out with speakers of the Dalabon and Kriol languages of northern Australia since the mid-2000s. Dalabon is a severely endangered language of the Gunwinyguan family (non-Pama-Nyungan) (Evans, Merlan & Tukumba 2004). Kriol is an English-based creole spoken 20 to 30,000 people in the central north of Australia (Schultze-Berndt, Meakins & Angelo 2013). The descendants of Dalabon speakers have now adopted Kriol as their day-to-day language. 

In the first part of the talk, I will discuss the underpinnings and implications of attending to emotional language among the Dalabon-speaking communities. I will then dive into the specificities of emotional language in Dalabon, highlighting the prevalence of the linguistic embodiment of emotions (Ponsonnet 2014; Ponsonnet & Laginha in press); as well as a preference for discourse strategies based on avoidance when it comes to managing negative emotions (Rimé 2009). 

In the last part of the talk, I will consider Kriol, and whether the adoption of a new language may have influenced the way people talk about emotions (Woodbury 1998). One observation is that in terms of communication potential, Kriol speakers have developed means to talk about emotions in a very similar fashion as in Dalabon (Ponsonnet 2020). On the other hand, there is evidence that discourse practices evolve to accommodate less avoidant emotion-management strategies in emerging contexts (Rodriguez Louro & Collard 2021). 


Impression management is a complex, productive phenomenon which occurs in every human interaction. Social-psychological and pragmatic research pays attention to the different aspects, levels and discursive features of impression management (Goffman 1959; Gordon 2011; Leary 1995; Nemesi 2011). According to social psychology, impression management is a universal attempt by means of which the interlocutor projects consciously or unconsciously a certain image about herself (eg. Schlenker 1980). Interlocutors can apply various strategies in the course of impression management, there are various taxonomies regarding the impression management strategies or tactics (Fiske 2004; Jones&Pittman 1982; Leary 1995), which are based on the presumed motivation of the interlocutors. For example, Jones and Pittman (1982) differentiate the strategy of intimidation, ingratiation, self-promotion, exemplification and supplication, while Leary (1995) proposes different tactics such as self-presentation, remembering and forgetting, attitude statements, public attributions, social associations, conformity and compliance, and highlights the role of nonverbal behaviour and physical environment. Tedeschi and Riess (1981) divides strategies into two groups. These are the assertive and defensive impression management strategies: the interlocutors attempts to create, maintain but also to protect their impression in case of threatening their image. Besides, even the type or genre of interaction can modify the patterns of impression management therefore legal discourse, political discourse, interviews and daily conversation require different strategies because the interlocutor needs to satisfy distinct expectations (Archer 2018; Lipovsky 2006; Molek-Kozakowska 2013; Nemesi 2011).			
This study presents a complex definition of impression management focusing on the intentional and evaluational aspects. The definition is based on social psychological and pragmatic approaches. In addition, the present paper also proposes an extended taxonomy to determine the impression management strategies in a new genre, namely political debate shows which belong to the semi-institutionalised discourse type (Ilie 2001, 2006). The goal of this genre is the collation of different ideas and argumentation of political issues. The participants are aware of the presence of the internal and external audience therefore they form their projected image by the use of language, the choice of linguistic tools and behaviour patterns in order to affect the audience’s opinion about a political person, a party or ideology. The special properties of this type of semi-institutionalised discourses reveal new impression management strategies which are not covered by the previous taxonomies. The compiled multimodal corpus contains fifteen videos (appr. 600 minutes) from Hungarian political debate shows where the participants are politicians, journalists, and political experts. These videos are taken from different political debate shows therefore the debate shows and their channels support different political ideologies. The study uses the conventional transcription of conversation analysis by Jefferson (2004). On the basis of the corpus, the study differentiates seven main impression management tactics which include subcategories. The categories are built simultaneously with the processing of the videos and set up with heuristic method. The proposed taxonomy contains tactics such as identity projection, verbal aggression, expressing erudition, referring to authority, goading other’s curiosity, expressing attitudes, revisualising certain events. The study shows that there are several linguistic items which help to reveal certain kinds of impression management. The defined impression management tactics take the political identity, or even the personal and collective identity into consideration. Moreover, these tactics follow the desired properties of a political performer in the Hungarian culture. The proposed taxonomy offers a wide scope to the phenomenon of  impression management in political discourse because it lays on the cooperative–competitive continuum of linguistic behaviour. It is divided into two main aspects such as positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation (cf. van Dijk 1998). This paper also aims to demonstrate that behind the assertive or defensive strategies, impression management tactics may belong to the offensive linguistic behaviour depending on the socio-cultural and discoursive contexts. The suggested categories may provide a deeper insight into the possible intentions, motivations and cultural patterns underlying the utterances in public talks.
References:
Archer, Dawn 2018. Impression management in the Early Modern English courtroom. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 19: (2) 205–222. 
Fiske, Susan T. 2004. Social Beings: A Core Motive Approach to Social Psychology. New York: John Wiley&Sons Inc.
Goffman, Erving 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Gordon, Cynthia 2011. Impression management on reality TV: Emotion in parental accounts. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 3551–3564.
Ilie, Cornelia 2001. Semi-institutional discourse: The case of talk shows. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 209–254.
Ilie, Cornelia 2006: Talk Shows. In: Brown, Keith (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Second Edition. Volume 12. Oxford: Elsevier, 489–494.
Jefferson, Gail 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In: Lerner, Gene H. (szerk.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 125). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 13–31.
Jones, Edward E. – Thane S. Pittman 1982. Toward a general theory of strategic self-presentation. In: Suls, Jerry (eds.) Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 231–262.
Leary, Mark R. 1995. Self-presentation: Impression Management and Interpersonal Behavior. Madison: Brown & Benchmark Publishers.
Lipovsky, Caroline 2006. Candidates’ negotiation of their expertise in job interviews. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1147–1174.
Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna 2013. The late-night TV talk show as a strategic genre in American political campaigning. In: Cap, Piotr – Urszula Okulska (szerk.) Analyzing Genres in Political Communication. DAPSAC Vol. 50. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company, 321–344.
Nemesi, Attila László 2011. Benyomáskeltési stratégiák, énmegjelenítési taktikák. [Impression management strategies, self-presentation tactics]. In: Nemesi Attila László. Nyelv, nyelvhasználat, kommunikáció. Budapest: Loisir Kiadó, 91–134.
Schlenker, Barry R. 1980. Impression Management. The Self-concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations. Monterey: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Tedeschi, James T. – Marc Reiss 1981. Verbal strategies in impression management. In: Antaki, Charles (ed.) The psychology of ordinary explanations of social behavior. London: Academic Press, 271–326.
van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: SAGE. 


Impression management tactics in Hungarian political debate shows

Metaphorical representation of the pandemic in the German press
Theoretical background
The key role of metaphors in shaping not only cognition but also the emotional attitude towards specific phenomena is particularly relevant in specialised domains directly affecting the lives of individuals, such as medicine (e.g. Sontag 1990; Schiefer 2005; Schachtner 1999; 2001). According to the traditional Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as it was originally formulated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphors always imply a cognitive cross-domain mapping, which is in turn reflected in language use: Abstract phenomena (the target domains) are conceptualised in terms of others, typically more concrete (the source domains), and they are linguistically expressed accordingly. Moreover, those metaphors are embodied, i.e. they rely on bodily experiences. The relationship between emotions and metaphors can be therefore analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, emotions themselves can be considered as abstract categories expressed through metaphors: An example could be the conceptualisation of anger as hot fluid in a container (also implying that the body itself is a container) or as fire (Kövecses 2008: 381), which in turn originates from the way this emotion is physically experienced in the human body. On the other hand, emotions can be awakened by specific metaphors, especially when they are used “deliberately”, i.e. for specific communicative purposes (for the pragmatic approach to metaphor use and the distinction between “deliberate” and “non-deliberate” use see Steen 2008; 2015). The emotional response to metaphors in comparison with their literal counterparts has been investigated in the field of psycholinguistics and data suggesting that metaphors evoke “greater emotional response” (Semino 2021: 51) have been collected (e.g. Citron / Goldberg 2014). A study by Scherer et al. (2015) highlighted for example how “metaphorical descriptions of influenza (as a beast, riot, army, or weed) increased expressions of willingness to be vaccinated, as opposed to a literal description” (Semino 2021: 51). Given its important psychological impact, the language used in the media to portrait the Covid-19 pandemics and its political, economic as well as social consequences elicited (and still elicits) strong emotions (such as fear of the virus and the consequences of the pandemics, but also loneliness due to social distancing), which are, in turn, mostly connected to metaphors. The most famous metaphor used in medical communication is for example the war-metaphor (e.g. Bauer 2006; Semino 2021; Sontag 1990): Not surprisingly, this metaphor, which is deeply rooted in medical communication and has shown (often negative) psychological entailments (Sontag 1990), has been also used to describe the pandemics caused by the Virus SARS-CoV-2. In this regard, Semino (2021) recently presented the data collected in the “#ReframeCovid” (https://sites.google.com/view/reframecovid/home), aiming at finding alternatives to military metaphors, as this latter have been in this case criticised “for inappropriately personifying the virus as a malevolent opponent, creating excessive anxiety, potentially legitimizing authoritarian governmental measures, and implying that those who die did not fight hard enough” (Semino 2021: 50), in other words for the negative emotions they elicit and the potentially dangerous consequences that exploiting those emotions may have for the individual, social and political life. 
The study
Moving from the theoretical assumptions outlined, the aim of this pilot study is to identify on the one hand the metaphors used to describe the first months of the pandemics in the German magazines “Der Spiegel” and “Die Zeit” and on the other hand to highlight their (possible) emotional implications. The metaphorical use of lexical units is identified according to the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglajez Group 2007). Following levels of analysis and research questions will be addressed: 
•	The source and target domains: What metaphors are used and what phenomena do they conceptualise? Are those metaphors novel or do they instantiate highly conventionalised, well-established framing patterns?
•	The emotional level of investigation: What emotions can be linked to those metaphors? Are emotions themselves directly addressed or expressed through metaphors? 
•	The relationship with non-verbal elements: Are there visual metaphors? Are the verbal metaphors also linked to images? 
The corpus consists in articles published by „Der Spiegel“ and “Die Zeit” in March and April 2020, i.e. during the first lockdown established to face the pandemics.
References
Bauer, Alex W. (2006): Metaphern, Bildersprache und Selbstverständnis der Medizin. In: Anaesthesist 55, 1307 - 1314. 
Citron, Francesca M. / Goldberg, Adele E. (2014): Metaphorical sentences are more emotionally engaging than their literal counterparts. In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26 /11, 2585–2595.
Kövecses, Zoltán (2008): Metaphor and Emotion. In Gibbs, Raymond (ed.): The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press, 380-396. 
Pragglejaz Group (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22 /1, 1-39. 
Schachtner, Christina (1999): Ärztliche Praxis. Die gestaltende Kraft der Metapher. Suhrkamp. Frankfurt a.M. 
Schachtner, Christina (2001): Krankheits- und Gesundheitsbilder Metaphern als strukturierende Strukturen. In: Journal für Psychologie 9/4, 61–74. 
Scherer, Aaron M. / Scherer, Laura D. / Fagerlin, Angela (2015): Getting ahead of illness. In: Medical Decision Making, 35 /1, 37–45.
Schiefer, Matthias (2005): Die metaphorische Sprache in der Medizin. Metaphorische Konzeptualisierungen in der Medizin und ihre ethischen Implikationen untersucht anhand von Arztbriefanalysen. Lit. Vienna. 
Sontag, Susan (1990): Illness and its metaphors, and AID and its metaphors. Doubleday. New York. 
Semino, Elena (2021): “Not soldiers, but Fire-fighters” – Metaphors for COVID-19. In: Health Communication, 36/1, 50-58.
Steen, Gerard (2008): The paradox of metaphor: why we need a three-dimensional model for metaphor. In: Metaphor and Symbol 23/4, 213-241. 
Steen, Gerard (2015): Developing, Testing and Interpreting Deliberate Metaphor Theory. In: Journal of Pragmatics 90, 1-6. 


Metaphorical representation of the pandemics in the German press

Exploring diversity and journalistic discourse in the pandemic: a corpus based study

How to do things with emotional expressions

Language is the most sophisticated tool humans have developed to communicate emotional experiences. However, due to their highly personal, idiosyncratic nature, such experiences can often be difficult to put into words. The dimensional aspects of emotional experiences, i.e., those involving valence, dominance and arousal can be expressed through literal language. However, once we go beyond these dimensional accounts and try to describe the subjective felt experiences of emotions it is necessary to employ metaphor. Metaphors provide information about the rich detail of human emotional experience in a way that literal language does not (Semino et al., 2017). Metaphorical skill and imagination are therefore important in communicating the nature of unshared experience and creating rapport (Reisfield & Wilson, 2004). For this reason, when talking about deep, personal emotional experiences that are difficult to describe, people often reach for metaphor, with more personal experiences leading to more creative uses of metaphor (Fainsilber & Ortony, 1987; Williams-Whitney et al., 1992). Possible reasons for this are the fact that metaphors allow us to describe ineffable experiences in more concrete, tangible, and often physical terms, and metaphors are sufficiently flexible to allow us to employ a finite set of linguistic resources to express precisely, an infinite range of experiences (Colston & Gibbs, 2021).
In this talk I present findings from four studies, which involved the analysis of metaphor in order to better understand people’s personal, emotional experiences. These experiences include: pregnancy loss; bereavement; the description of positive and negative workplace experiences; and older adults’ experiences of lockdown during Covid 19. Through these studies I reveal what metaphor analysis can tell us about: embodied grief; agency and identity; relationships with others, including the deceased; attitudes towards time, the extent to which experiences are shared by communities; and the ways in which these experiences change over time. I reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of the methods employed and discuss the ways in which findings from some of these studies have been incorporated into professional development materials that have been designed for those who support the bereaved.

References
Colston, H. L., & Gibbs, R. W. (2021). Figurative language communicates directly because it precisely demonstrates what we mean. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale.
Fainsilber, L., & Ortony, A. (1987). Metaphorical uses of language in the expression of emotions. Metaphor and Symbol, 2(4), 239–250.
Reisfield, G. M., & Wilson, G. R. (2004). Use of metaphor in the discourse on cancer. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 22(19), 4024–4027.
Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Hardie, A., Payne, S., & Rayson, P. (2017). Metaphor, cancer and the end of life: A corpus-based study. Routledge.
Williams-Whitney, D., Mio, J. S., & Whitney, P. (1992). Metaphor production in creative writing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 21(6).

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