35th International Systemic Functional Congress
21 - 25 July 2008
Department of Linguistics
Macquarie University

Pre-ISFC 2008 Institute
14 -18 July 2008
School of Languages and Linguistics
University of New South Wales

Call for Papers

Congress Theme: Voices Around the World
Congress Website: http://minerva.ling.mq.edu.au/isfc/
Congress Email: isfc2008@ling.mq.edu.au
Pre-Congress Email: isfc.institute@unsw.edu.au

We are delighted to call for contributions in the form of papers, workshops and colloquia to ISFC 2008, to be held at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 21-25 July 2008.
The Congress will be preceded by a Pre-ISFC seasonal (winter / summer) Institute, to be hosted by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 14-18 July, 2008.

Important Submission Information

Deadline: 31 March, 2008

• All abstracts must be submitted to isfc2008@ling.mq.edu.au.
• Only electronic submissions which have been submitted to the above address will be considered. Please do not send abstracts directly to any committee members.
  Abstracts should follow the guidelines set out under “Submission of abstracts” below, both in terms of length and in terms of categories of information to be included.
• All submissions of papers, workshops and colloquia will be refereed.
  For early acceptance, please contact us at the ISFC address.

Theme

The theme of the 35th ISFC is Voices Around the World, emphasizing the rich multi-faceted nature of contributions to systemic functional linguistics around the world and the centrality of all the regions that make up the global systemic functional community and promoting regional resonances and complementarities. Like the theme of previous ISFCs, this theme is intended to be broad and inclusive. It is intended to be multiply interpretable, promoting regional contributions in terms of:

• Engagement with the rich range of languages — and other semiotic systems — around the world as objects of study;
• Engagement with the varied contexts of research and application around the regions of the world, including problems arising both in academic institutions and in the wider communities and also the implications of conducting systemic functional work in different languages;
• Engagement with the different institutional environments in which systemic functional linguistics is taught and in which systemic functional linguistics informs educational efforts — the different curricular contexts in which systemic functional linguistics operates;
• Engagement with the different “dialects” and “registers” of systemic functional linguistics around the world, with an emphasis on both commonalities and complementarities.
• Engagement with different “metalanguages” close enough to systemic functional linguistics to allow for inter-translatability and cross-fertilization.
  

The congress theme of Voices Around the World will be supported not only by the programme subcommittee of the local organizing committee but also by a special regional subcommittee.

Relating to the congress theme of Voices Around the World, the congress will be designed to promote the development of:

• Resource Networks around the world — networks for sharing resources across regions and across institutions, taking advantage of the regional and global systemic functional communities during a period when resources sharing is increasingly being supported by technological developments at the same time as individual institutions are increasingly being positioned to compete with one another in local and national contexts;
• Research Networks around the world — networks for pursuing research defined in terms of fields such as educational linguistics, translation studies, computational linguistics, multimodal studies, stylistics or themes such as systemic organization, complexity, semogenesis, helping to identify synergies and to develop collaborative research projects, potentially drawing on new sources of funding.
  

Existing Resource and Research Networks will be supported in the organization of the programme through workshops and papers, and the formation of new networks will be encouraged and supported. In addition, these Networks will be supported in the programme through a forum for reporting on and comparing activities relating to different fields and themes. The Resource Networks can be compared with the development of repositories in linguistics, as within the Linguistic Data Consortium, and the Research Networks can be compared with the research networks established by AILA (and the earlier scientific commissions) and with research networks more generally supported by funding agencies.

Submission of abstracts, papers, and proposals for workshops and colloquia

Submissions of proposals for three forms of contribution are invited for consideration — papers, workshops and colloquia:

Proposal abstracts should contain the following information:

Local organizing committees

The local congress organizing committee

• Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (Convenor)
• Ernest Akerejola
• Mohamed Ali Bardi
• Jing Fang
• Maria Herke
  
• Susan Hoadley
  
• Mira Kim
  
• Abhishek Kumar
• Ayako Ochi
• Claire Scott
  
• Brad Smith
• Canzhong Wu

The local pre-congress institute organizing committee

• Kazuhiro Teruya (Convenor, School of Languages & Linguistics, UNSW)
• Louise Ravelli (Co-Convenor School of English, Media and Performing Arts, UNSW)

Important dates

ISFC 2008 and pre-ISFC 2008 Institute dates

Important dates leading up to ISFC 2008 and the pre-ISFC 2008 Institute are:

• 31 March, 2008 — Abstract (papers, workshops, colloquia) submission
• 16 May, 2008 — Deadline for early-bird ISFC 2008 and pre-ISFC 2008 Institute registration
• 14-19 July, 2008 — Pre-ISFC 2008 Institute
• 21-25 July, 2008 — ISFC 2008

Other conferences in the region

ISFC 2008 and the pre-Congress Institute will be preceded and followed by other conferences and institutes in the region, including two in Australia before ISFC and the Institute and one in Singapore after ISFC and the Institute, as well as one in Hong Kong:

• LingFest 2008 (30 June -11 July 2008): a series of six linguistics events to be held 30 June - 11 July 2008 at the University of Sydney, Australia.
• 4-ICOM (30 July - 1 August 2008): The Fourth International Conference on Multimodality, hosted by the Multimodal Analysis Lab directed by Kay O’Halloran at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.
• HCLS-C2 (13-15 August 2008): The 2nd HCLS Conference on the theme of Translation, Language Contact, and Multilingual Communication, organized by the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies at City University of Hong Kong. This is preceded by a pre-conference institute (11-12 August 2008).

Disclaimer

The ISFC 2008 organizers do not assume any responsibility for accidents, losses, thefts, damage, delays, or any changes to its printed or electronic information resulting from unforeseen events.