Successful communication can result in human flourishing and cooperation, while  misunderstanding proliferates suffering. Words do not have stable, precise definitions, but “have those meanings which we have given them,” as Wittgenstein notes—new with each interpretational circumstance. Subjective and cultural forces shape the way we interpret signs, which makes our daily connection through language profound. Yet the human capacity to animate signs, by imbuing sound (and movement) with sense, remains beyond scientific understanding. Language is both one of the most fundamental elements of the human experience and one of the least understood, illustrating the need for a creative reexamination of the human language faculty. 

SCHEDULE (see full schedule and participant bios here)

8:45 – 09:15 AM: Registration
9:15 – 09:30 AM Welcome
9:30 – 10:25 AM: Panel 1

⚬ A Bayesian Meta-analysis of Emotional Intelligence in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder
Elizabeth S. Che, Patricia J. Brooks, & Nicole Zapparrata
⚬ Modeling longitudinal reciprocal effects of emotion regulation and vocabulary knowledge in early childhood
Julia Moses, Elizabeth S. Che, Nicole Zapparrata, WingSum Tsang, and Patricia J. Brooks
How well do we really understand social media?
⚬ Rebecca Dolgin, Simone Calbi, Jeffrey Huang, & Michael F. Schober

10:30 – 11:45 AM: Panel 2

⚬ Punctuating Puns: Kasen Scharmann
⚬ Language and Thought: Ellen Burns
⚬ Hegel – recognition: Andrew Tessman
⚬ The Polyphonic Self: Noah Kupper

11:45 AM – 12:00 PM: Break

12:00 – 1:15 PM: Panel 3

⚬ Playing With Metaphors: Kyle O’Dowd
⚬ Situation, Episode, and Event: Benjamin Haile
⚬ Mallarmé’s theory of language: Michele Morelli
⚬ The Tower of Babel in Berlin: a migrant approach to the modern metropolis: Jonathan A. Romero

1:15 – 2:15 PM: Lunch

2:15 – 3:30 PM: Panel 4

⚬ Alienated Language in Colonial Afterlives: Madeline MacLeod
⚬ Miriam Makeba's Linguistic Response to the Epistemological Erasure of Blackness in Urban South Africa: Lauren Stockmon Brown
⚬ Language and Narrative Identity: Sara Rani Reddy
⚬ The Language of Love and Excitable Speech: Sarah Sharp

3:30-4:30 PM: Panel 5

⚬ Dialogues at the Boundary: Rearticulating Subjecthood and Language in the Realm of Sex Robots: Kelsey Elizabeth Clough
⚬ From Chinese Calligraphy to Typewriting: Tianran Qian
⚬ Do Animals Speak Language? Craig Stuart Lanza
⚬ Abyssal Connections: Exploring Speculative Biosemiotics with Simulation Art: Arden Schager

4:30 PM - closing: Poster and Reception

⚬ The Impact of Chunked Determiner Phrases on Verb Learning In Preschoolers Huanhuan Shi
⚬ Redefining Burden Savanna Daquila
⚬ Gender Binary Language Paige Griffith
⚬ EMLang: Ranger Liu
⚬ Learning a Language in Mongolia, China: Skylar Hou