This session is part of the 48th Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM), which will take place from 13-15 September in Poznań Poland.

Following the conference leitmotif “Language and evolution: Issues and perspectives”, we want to explore visual aspects of multimodality of historical texts, especially the ways in which modern technology may offer new perspectives on studying historical texts. We are also interested in how problems and methodologies of historical and modern research on visual rhetoric, textual pragmatics and multimodality can influence one another and how these can inform us about visually embedded language phenomena and their role and functions.

Possible foci include:

- Materiality of the text
- Visual pragmatics of pre-modern texts
- Text-image studies
- Paratextual elements in ‘visual texts’
- Pragmatics of the page
- Manuscript studies and digitalised manuscripts
- Modern editions of historical texts

Submission of abstracts will take place according to the guidelines on the PLM website http://wa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2018/. The deadline for submission to this session will be March 23rd, 2018.


Sample bibliography:

- Caie, Graham D. and Denis Renevey (eds.). 2008. Medieval Texts in Context. London: Routledge.
- Carroll, Ruth, Matti Peikola, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Lisa Varila, Janne Skaffari, and Risto Hiltunen. 2013. “Pragmatics on the Page. Visual Text in Late Medieval English Books”. European Journal of English Studies 17(1): 54-71.
- Machan, Tim William. 2011. “The Visual Pragmatics of Code-Switching in Late Middle English Literature”. In: Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright (eds.), Code-Switching in Early English. Berlin and Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, 303-333.
- Sebba, Mark. 2013. “Multilingualism in Written Discourse. An Approach to the Analysis of Multilingual Texts”. International Journal of Bilingualism 17(1): 97-118.
- Westera, Wim. 2015. The Digital Turn: How the Internet Transforms our Existence. Bloomington: AuthorHouse.
- Wakelin, Daniel. 2014. Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375-1510. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.