CFP Vol. 19, N. 2/2025   Visages and bodies between emotions and language: new interdisciplinary perspectives

2024-08-01

Call for papers - Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio www.rifl.unical.it

Vol. 19, N. 2/2025   Visages and bodies between emotions and language: new interdisciplinary perspectives

Edited by Gianmarco Thierry Giuliana and Emanuela Campisi

 

Submission deadline: April 30, 2025

 

The relationship between emotions and language is a philosophical theme that has a long history and is today more topical than ever. It is no coincidence that just three years ago a special issue of RIFL came out in which Italian semiologists and philosophers of language reflected on this matter. In this issue, we propose to tackle the same theme once again by focusing on two main interrelated aspects that have been partially neglected in the past. Firstly, we want to the emphasize the central role that the body, and in particular the face, plays in the relation between emotions and language. Secondly, we want to reflect on such relationship in light of the of contemporary digital technologies and media landscape which increasingly call for constant updating of both experimental and theoretical research. Indeed, the contemporary literature on emotions and language, although boundless, presents a substantial split, both epistemological and in terms of perspective; the risk is the polarization of two different ways of approaching the problem from both the epistemological and methodological points of view. On the one hand, there are those who consider the study of the production and interpretation of emotions as beyond the scope of theories of Language and as the semi-exclusive domain of embodied theories or the label, both as generic and anachronistic, of non-verbal communication. On the other hand, there are those who focus their attention on the thought body, rather than the present body, making it a purely metaphorical and/or too abstractly modelled concept.

 

In the former case, the risk is the study of the body without language; in the latter, the study of a language without a body. When it comes to the role of the body as the pivot of the link between emotions and language, there seems to be a lack, in essence, of an interdisciplinary vision that does not simply juxtapose different perspectives and allows for fertile dialogue and common ground. While it is easy to see in this gap a reflection of a large part of the history of Western philosophy for which body and emotions have often been conceived as negative elements (as prison of the soul and obstacle to rationality, respectively), this very history shows us how issues of physical acting and feeling have been a trans-historical and trans-cultural constant in reflections on thinking, feeling, interpreting, acting, and communicating. Moreover, the history of the study of emotions shows how they are constantly contested between theories that emphasize the role of the body and that of culture and language. A tension between body and language, which also recurs in the theoretical conflict between those who conceive the expression of emotions, especially in the face, as innate and spontaneous, and those who instead interpret those movements in terms of semiotic strategies. From a certain perspective, it seems peculiar that the language/emotion/body triad, so recurrent in the premises of thinkers in the philosophical and scientific traditions, has had as its legacy the often dualist theories that, in some ways, have been based on the exclusion by petitio principii of some of these three terms.

Instead, this special issue wants to start precisely from the body and its communicative pragmatics, with a particular interest in the face, in order to address the theme of its relationship with emotions and language. A body to be studied both as present and as mediated, as long as it is not metaphorical and/or too abstractly modeled. Keeping these three terms together responds for us to two different needs. First, it is a matter of valuing those in the studies of language and cognition who have adopted a prismatic perspective on mind and body and, thanks to this minor perspective, now contribute to the dialogue with disciplines that are not strictly philosophical. It also involves taking into account the state of contemporary research and the attempts at reconciliation that are taking place in different fields. In the specifics of the philosophy of language and semiotics, special attention has been paid in recent years to the body and face by producing texts that have touched on such major themes as subjectivity, cultural identity, persuasion, expression, intentionality, and much more. Putting the body and the face at the center of this reflection, that is, making it the starting object and privileged vantage point of philosophical-linguistic reflection on emotions, does not necessarily imply favoring so-called 4E theories at the expense of different approaches. On the contrary, it means creating a common ground for discussion from which we can question many of the established theories, including those of the 4Es. In short, the body and face seem to us to be the most suitable field for developing new perspectives on language and for not falling into the paradox of wanting to counter one reductionism with another. Having ventured in these uncharted lands as a part of the ERC project FACETS (Face Aesthetics in Contemporary E-Technological Societies), we urge other scholars to join us in this exploration.

 

Papers exploring, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome:

  • Connections, filters, exchanges and clashes between body, emotion and language
  • Contested emotion between semiotics, phenomenology, psychology and neuroscience
  • Multimodality of communication and emotion
  • Facial expressions and cultural habit
  • Life forms and corporeality
  • Body mediation and emotion between old and new media
  • Face and rhetoric
  • Expression of emotion and expression of subjectivity
  • Meaningfulness of acting and material feeling
  • Gradients of materiality of face and transformation of meaning
  • Empathy as emotion and expression of otherness
  • Emotions and feelings in the I.A. and in virtual and augmented realities
  • Subjectivity effects of intersubjective and embodied feeling
  • Performance and pathemic forms
  • Body, recollection and narrative
  • Readings and hallucinations of feeling in the face
  • Bodily presence in the languages of music and theatre
  • Education in emotion
  • Emotion and language as a discriminator of otherness
  • Emotional memories of experience between body and language
  • Cultural inscription of bodily feeling and resistance
  • Translations and representations of emotion and the body
  • Disgust and eros between face, body, and language
  • Deformation of face, body, and usual in the comic
  • …

 

We call for articles in Italian, English and French. All manuscripts must be accompanied by an abstract (max 250 words), a title and 5 keywords in English.

The manuscript must be prepared using the template at this link: http://www.rifl.unical.it/authortemplate/template_eng.doc.

All submissions must be prepared by the author for anonymous evaluation. The name, affiliation to an institution and title of the contribution should be indicated in a file different from that which contains the text. The contribution must be sent in electronic format .doc or .rtf to segreteria.rifl@gmail.com.

 

Instructions for authors:

Maximum contribution length:

40000 characters (including spaces) for articles (including bibliography and endnotes);

 

Submission deadline: April 30, 2025

Publication: December 2025