The 2020 International Conference on Frontiers of Discourse Studies was held on 24 October 2020 via Zoom and live-streamed on Bilibili. The conference was hosted by School of Foreign Languages, SJTU, and attracted more than 4,000 viewers on Bilibili and another 200 in the Zoom conference room. The conference invited four editors of internationally renowned (also SSCI-indexed) journals in discourse studies, as well as two leading Chinese scholars. It is believed that the conference provided new insights into understanding the frontiers of the field.
      Professor Chang Hui, acting dean of School of Foreign Languages, SJTU, gave an opening speech by warmly welcoming the audience online. He expressed sincere thanks to the invited plenary speakers for their participation regardless of huge time difference.

Opening speech by Prof. Chang

      Professor Srikant Sarangi, ‘Fellow’ of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK, ‘Foreign Member’ of The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, Finland, editor of Text & Talk gave the first plenary talk entitled “A cursory history of discourse studies and the potential (in)commensurability of discourse expertise and professional expertise”.

Plenary talk by Prof. Srikant Sarangi

      Professor Richard Fitzgerald, editor of Discourse, Context & Media, focused on “challenges and opportunities for discourse analysis”. He raised these questions before presenting some research on Chinese social media as a way to remind ourselves as discourse analysts and translation scholars that the phenomena should always be at the center of any analysis and that the methods of analysis should be emergent from the phenomena.

Plenary speech by Prof. Richard Fitzgerald

      A/ Professor Monika Bednarek, co-editor of Functions of Language, talked about “corpus-based discourse analysis of newsworthiness”. In her talk, she provided an introduction to DNVA, focusing in particular on some of the challenges faced when undertaking linguistic analysis of newsworthiness. She also touched upon the lessons learned from case studies using corpus-based discourse analysis, and briefly discussed issues that arise when undertaking cross-linguistic/cross-cultural DNVA research .

Plenary speech by Dr. Monika Bednarek

      Professor Tian Hailong, Editor-in-Chief of Discourse Studies Forum, proposed a new term “discursive interaction” and an analytical framework to unpack the multi-layered, trans-field, over-historical interactions that heavily rely on the discursive strategies of social agents. He illustrated this framework by discussing a case study that examined how discourses interact historically and how this interaction brings social effects.

Plenary speech by Prof. Tian Hailong

       Professor Wang Zhenhua, founder of Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics, proposed a new interactive model of speech action-emotion-behaviour, based on appraisal framework. His talk also showcased the appraisal features of discourses of threat, and proposed some possible solutions.

Plenary speech by Prof. Wang Zhenhua

      Professor Michal Krzyzanowski, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Language and Politics, elucidated on a new analytical framework in his talk entitled “Towards a Discourse-Conceptual Analysis: Discursive Shifts in Contemporary Public Discourse”. By providing various examples of applying DCA in analyses of contemporary policy and mediated political discourse, he argued that the DCA allows covering several aspects of dynamics of public discourse in the context of strategic discursive shifts which draw on accelerating recontextualisation of discourses across spatial and temporal scales as well as across multiple social and political including public and regulatory contexts.   

Plenary speech by Prof. Michal Krzyzanowski

      The conference was wrapped up by a closing speech given by Prof. Tao Qing, Associate Dean of School of Foreign Languages, SJTU. He spoke very highly of the quality of all plenaries, as well as interactions between plenary speakers and audience.

Closing speech by Prof. Tao Qing

 

Group photo of some plenary speakers, chairmen, and audience

      This conference was sponsored by the 2020 project of “High-level academic conference in humanities and social sciences”, SJTU. The conference was convened by Dr. Changpeng Huan, and chaired by him, as well as Prof. Su Hang from Sichuan International Studies University, Prof. Zhang Lei from Tianjin Foreign Studies University, and Dr. Yu Hailing from Hunan University.