The Texts and Its Audience

5th ANNUAL YURI LOTMAN DAYS AT TALLINN UNIVERSITY

(Tallinn, 31 May – 2 June 2013)

The Texts and Its Audience

Call for papers

Dear colleagues,

The Estonian Semiotics Repository Foundation at Tallinn University is announcing a call for papers for the annual conference, the 5th Yuri Lotman Days to be held at Tallinn University, 31 May – 2 June 2013.

The topics of our conferences are as always linked to the rich scholarly legacy of Yuri Lotman. This year’s conference is inspired by Lotman’s seminal paper, “The Text and the Structure of Its Audience”. We intend to revive Lotman’s ideas about text as a generator of meanings, to discuss the communicative and pragmatic aspects of text, and new methods of text analysis. The agenda includes the following issues:

— pragmatic and socio-cultural criteria of differentiation between text of “non-text”;

— text as a fundamentally heterogeneous, multilingual and polysemantic object;

— text and its readers; the reader’s active role in the disclosure of the text’s semantic potential; text in the communication process, problems of interpretation;

— text as a dynamic object (a “self-augmentating Logos”): a triad “text – culture – semiosphere”.

The conference will include Russian-language and English-language panels. Each speaker is allotted thirty minutes (20 minutes for delivery and 10 minutes discussion).

Those wishing to attend the conference and present papers are requested to apply, providing  the following information:

— the title of their paper and an abstract (the abstract should not exceed 2000 characters, spaces included);

— a brief CV (name, surname, affiliation, degree, scholarly interests — up to 1000 characters, spaces included).

The applications should be sent to the organizing committee by 11 March 2013.

The applications in Russian should be sent to Mikhail Trunin: mikhailtrunin@gmail.com

The applications in English should be sent to Piret Peiker: piretpeiker@hotmail.com

The participant abstracts will be selected by the organising committee based on their merit and suitability for the conference. The applicants will be informed about the results by 2 April 2013. All conference events are free of charge, and there is no conference fee. The participants are expected to travel on their own expense and responsibility.

The Organising Committee of the 5th Annual Yuri Lotman Days at Tallinn University:

Rein Raud (Chair),

Tatjana Kuzovkina, Mihhail Lotman, Piret Peiker, Igor Pilshchikov, Mikhail Trunin (Secretary)