Wordplay and Exclusion (30/05–31/05/2025)

Workshop programme

All times are Central European Summer Time (CEST).

Call for papers for workshop & edited volume on "Wordplay and Exclusion"

Wordplay typically appears to be funny and innocent, and previous research on wordplay and verbal humour has often foregrounded this aspect, which can be seen as being prototypical of wordplay. Among others, there has been a focus on laughter and amusement as key effects of wordplay (cf. Winter-Froemel 2009; 2016), or on functions of bonding and the strengthening of group identities (see also traditional concepts such as French connivence). However, wordplay can also be used with underlying strategies and agendas that may involve manipulation of opinions, aggression or discrimination of target groups of verbal humour (cf. Attardo 2017, 2018). An interplay of inclusion and exclusion can be observed in phenomena such as irony (cf. Giora & Gur 2003, Gibbs & Colston 2007, Athanasiadou & Colston 2017), double entendre (cf. Goth 2015), contrepèteries (Rabatel 2015), ludic uses of secret languages, argots or cants (e.g., Gibberish, Pig Latin, French loucherbèm; German B-Sprache, cf. Hardy, Herling & Siewert 2019, Saugera 2019), or in youth language practices such as French verlan, Spanish vesre, etc. (cf. Bedijs 2015). In these practices, the exclusion of part of the addressees is a key element of the communicative game played between the members of an in-group. Moreover, it has been shown that literary texts can be based on secret wordplay that is accessible to only part of the readership (cf. Bauer 2015). In this case, a successful decoding of the additional secret message is particularly rewarding for initiated readers, whereas uninitiated readers may simply miss part of the message without perceiving a feeling of being excluded. Still other scenarios of exclusion can be observed in language acquisition (including L1 and L2 settings), where participants can be excluded from wordplay due to a lack of the linguistic knowledge required to decode the relevant meanings involved. In pragmatic research, different types of addressees have been distinguished depending on their active or inactive role in communication, their being known and ratified by the speaker, the acquaintance or absence of acquaintance between the speaker and hearer, etc. (cf. Bell 1984, Dynel 2010, 2017), but these distinctions have not been systematically explored for practices of verbal humour and wordplay. Moreover, serious aspects of wordplay have mostly remained backgrounded in previous research, with the focus most often being on the speakers and hearers (or the producers and recipients more generally) who participate in the game.

The aim of this call for papers is thus to bring together these different perspectives, and to highlight the social dimension of wordplay communication involving different groups of participants. We invite proposals for papers that reflect on serious aspects of wordplay related to phenomena of exclusion in different languages, cultures or historical epochs. Among others, the following aspects may be addressed:

• the interplay of inclusion and exclusion in wordplay,
• the importance of in-group interaction and the existence of an out-group not actively participating in the game and / or being the target of wordplay,
• the pragmatic description of relevant groups of participants in exclusive wordplay practices,
• the perspective of participants excluded from wordplay,
• the textual and discursive dimension of wordplay involving exclusion, e.g., the question of whether wordplay and exclusion are explicitly signalled or can be inferred from the context,
• the historical and cultural dimension of phenomena of exclusion in wordplay, e.g., by presenting case studies on particular traditions of wordplay, language games, text types or discourse traditions that involve an exclusion of others.

Accepted papers will be presented at an online workshop and published in a volume in the De Gruyter book series The Dynamics of Wordplay . The volume will be published open access without publication costs for the authors.

Submission of abstracts and papers

Please send your abstract (in English, 400 words max. excluding references, doc or pdf file) to esme.winter-froemel@uni-wuerzburg.de by 7 March 2025. The abstracts should be preceded by a cover page providing your author details and contact information. Please state “abstract submission Wordplay and Exclusion” in the subject line of your e-mail. The abstracts will undergo anonymous peer review. The authors of accepted abstracts will then be invited to submit first versions of full papers that will be discussed at a 2-day online workshop and undergo a written reviewing process in parallel. The workshop aims to focus on in-depth discussion and exchange on the papers, and only short 5-minute-summaries of the papers will be presented, allowing for 20-minute discussions for each paper. Moreover, the first drafts of the papers will be distributed to the participants before the workshop. In addition, further invited papers will be presented at the workshop. The revised and final versions of the papers are to be submitted after the workshop, integrating feedback from reviewing and from the discussions at the workshop.

Important dates

07.03.2025: Submission of abstracts
14.03.2025: Feedback on abstracts sent to the authors
21.05.2025: Submission of first drafts of papers (extended deadline)
30.05.–31.05.2025: Online workshop with 5-minute paper summaries + 20 minutes of discussion
20.06.2025: Submission of final versions of the papers

Organisation

Esme Winter-Froemel (University of Würzburg), esme.winter-froemel@uni-wuerzburg.de

Selected references

• Athanasiadou, Angeliki & Colston, Herbert L. (eds.) 2017. Irony in language use and communication. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Attardo, Salvatore. 2017. Humor in Language. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Published online Mar 2017. (doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.342).
• Attardo, Salvatore. 2018. Universals in puns and humorous wordplay. In Winter-Froemel, Esme & Thaler, Verena (eds.), Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research, 89–110. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Bauer, Matthias. 2015. Secret Wordplay and What It May Tell Us. In Zirker, Angelika & Winter-Froemel, Esme (eds.), Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection. Authors, Contexts, Techniques, and Meta-Reflection, 269–288. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Bedijs, Kristina. 2015. Langue et générations: le langage des jeunes. In Polzin-Haumann, Claudia & Schweickard, Wolfgang (éds.), Manuel de linguistique française, 293–313. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Bell, Allan. 1984. Language Style as Audience Design. Language and Society 13(2). 145–204.
• Dynel, Marta. 2010. Not hearing things – Hearer/listener categories in polylogues. mediAzioni 9, http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it.
• Dynel, Marta. 2017. Participation as audience design. In Hoffmann, Christian R. & Bublitz, Wolfram (eds.), Pragmatics of Social Media, 61–82. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Gibbs, Raymond W. & Colston, Herbert (eds.). 2007. Irony in language and thought: A cognitive science reader. New York: Erlbaum.
• Giora, Rachel & Gur, Inbal. 2003. Irony in conversation: salience, role, and context effects. In Nerlich, Brigitte & Todd, Zazie & Herman, Vimala & Clarke, David D. (eds.), Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meanings in Language and Mind, 297–316. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Goth, Maik. 2015. Double Entendre in Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Comedy. In Zirker, Angelika & Winter-Froemel, Esme (eds.), Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection. Authors, Contexts, Techniques, and Meta-Reflection, 71-94. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Hardy, Stéphane & Herling, Sandra & Siewert, Klaus (eds.). 2019. Namen im Geheimen. Erträge des XI. Internationalen Symposions Sondersprachenforschung. Hamburg/Münster: Geheimsprachen Verlag.
• Rabatel, Alain. 2015. Points de vue en confrontation substitutifs ou cumulatifs dans les contrepèteries (in absentia). In Winter-Froemel, Esme & Zirker, Angelika (eds.), Enjeux du jeu de mots. Perspectives linguistiques et littéraires, 31–64. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Saugera, Valérie. 2019. Brèves de billot: fonctions de l’argot des louchébems de Paris. Journal of French Language Studies 29/3. 349–372.
• Winter-Froemel, Esme. 2009. Wortspiel. In Ueding, Gert (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 9, 1429–1443. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• Winter-Froemel, Esme. 2016. Approaching Wordplay. In Knospe, Sebastian & Onysko, Alexander & Goth, Maik (eds.), Crossing Languages to Play with Words. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 11–46. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.