Nicholas Asher (Institute de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse)
Conversational strategies for interactive tasks and learning
This talk will investigate how different conversational strategies facilitate or hinder the accomplishment of goals. I'll be using the set up of ME games from Asher et al 2017, but with the modifications suggested in a recent paper by A. Zheng etal (2026) in Dialogue and Discourse.
André Bächtiger (University of Stuttgart)
Mosaic Communication
"We need to talk" has become a widespread call in recent times. Yet "talking together” can mean quite different things, ranging from an “open” exchange of diverse viewpoints to “debate” involving the confrontation and contestation of diverse and conflicting viewpoints or to “constructive dialogue” with the goal of finding common ground and agreement. Drawing on new experimental research, I will argue that no single mode – open, contestatory or collaborative - is in a position to simultaneously promote in-depth or constructive thinking as well as promoting opinion change and depolarization. Therefore, I propose a novel ‘mosaic’ approach, where the various communication modes are activated together in order to enhance the multifunctionality of political communication.
Floris Biskamp (University of Tübingen)
The practices of drawing, transgressing, and shifting discursive boundaries
All discourses have boundaries. By limiting and regulating discourse, these boundaries create the common ground necessary for discussion. The presentation offers a conception of 'sayability boundaries' and discusses the practices by which these boundaries are constantly negotiated and renegotiated and thereby drawn, transgressed and shifted.
Elizabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
Rational Disagreement and Perspectival Smothering'
Explanation: The talk will be on the question how situations of persistent hermeneutic impasses generated by perspectival difference require willingness by at least one party to try to shift perspectives, and how less cooperative, possibly bad-faith actors can exploit this to their advantage.
John S. Dryzek (University of Canberra)
Rhetoric and deliberation in polarized democracies
Discursive democracy should be able to meet the challenge of discursive polarization. Drawing on discursive psychology, I address the kind of bridging rhetoric that may be able to draw those attracted to extreme positions (including right-wing populism, authoritarianism, and denial) into more productive deliberative relationships. I also address what we can learn from work on deliberative democracy in deeply divided societies.
Bart Geurts (Radboud Universiteit)
Polarisation outside face-to-face settings
It is generally agreed that the primary setting for human communication is face-to-face. Theories of common ground are tailored for face-to-face interactions and tend to perform rather poorly at larger social scales. In particular, the notion of common ground seems problematic for broadcasting and for many forms of written communication. At the same time, broadcasting and written communication are powerful tools for polarisation. I will argue that this is not a coincidence.
Sara Hodges (University of Oregon, Eugene)
Beware the bridge that still has two sides: Perspective taking and polarization
Sometimes, thinking how things look to another person can provide novel insights and lead to greater interpersonal understanding. However, the power of perspective taking may have been potentially overplayed, particularly its ability to reduce polarization. Drawing on social psychology research, I will discuss how perspective taking’s revered effects (evoking greater feelings of compassion for, seeing oneself as more similar to, and a better understanding of the target whose perspective is taken) can come up short when perspective takers do not consider new information that could change their minds. Perspective taking may form a bridge that provides some common ground, but that bridge can also keep us on opposite sides.
Simon Meier-Vieracker (TU Dresden)
Person reference and affective resonance: far-right self-trivialisation on TikTok and Instagram
Far-right actors have a massive reach on short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. They present themselves as approachable and make far-right statements and attitudes seem relatable. Through detailed multimodal analyses, this talk demonstrates how they refer to individuals and groups to achieve this and generate affective resonance.
Lisa Rhein (TU Darmstadt)
Multimodal positioning and boundary setting in political talk shows
Political talk shows provide a platform for debate, including scientific discussions, as demonstrated by the ongoing debate surrounding the pandemic. During the pandemic, scientists communicated their ever-expanding knowledge of the virus to journalists and politicians, and discussed ways to combat it. In my presentation, I focus on the linguistic and multimodal practices that occur when scientists draw boundaries between science, politics, and the media. These boundaries can be seen in positioning practices. My aim is to analyse the complex interplay between the different actors, linguistic practices, bodily actions, and the media staging of guests by programme editors, as well as camera work that focuses on such boundary-drawing and positioning practices.
Constanze Spieß (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
Positioning as a basic category of communicative polarisation strategies in public discourses
Polarisation is based on the communicative strategy of positioning, which manifests itself in public political discourse, among other things, in language use. Starting from a description of the relationship between positioning and polarisation, this contribution examines specific linguistic phenomena in contemporary public discourse and shows the extent to which polarisation functions as a communicative strategy for positioning social groups.
