IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Language > ACL2020 > Programme

Programme

Speakers at The Asian Conference on Language (ACL2020) will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. This page provides details of featured presentations, the conference schedule and other programming. For more information about presenters, please visit the Speakers page.

Conference Outline

Sunday, March 29, 2020Monday, March 30, 2020Tuesday, March 31, 2020Wednesday, April 01, 2020

17:00-18:00: Conference Registration

18:00-19:00: Welcome Reception

09:00–12:00: Plenary Session & Conference Photograph

12:00–13:15: Lunch Break

13:15–14:45: Plenary Session

14:45–15:00: Break

15:00–16:30: Plenary Session

16:30–17:30: Conference Poster Session

19:00-21:30: Official Conference Dinner (optional extra)

09:00–10:30: Parallel Sessions

10:30–10:45: Break

10:45–12:15: Parallel Sessions

12:15–13:15: Lunch Break

13:15–14:45: Parallel Sessions

14:45–15:00: Break

15:00–16:30: Parallel Sessions

16:30–17:00: Break

17:00–18:00: Parallel Sessions

09:00–10:30: Parallel Sessions

10:30–10:45: Break

10:45–12:15: Parallel Sessions

12:15–13:15: Lunch Break

13:15–14:45: Parallel Sessions

14:45–15:00: Break

15:00–16:30: Parallel Sessions

16:30–17:00: Break

17:00–18:00: Closing Session

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on March 04, 2020. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

The above schedule may be subject to change.

Featured Presentations

Dislocation/Invitation
Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall
Language and Power in Interfaith Dialogue: Inclusion, Exclusion and Essentialism
Keynote Presentation: Stephen Gregg

Final Programme

The Conference Programme contains access information, session information and a detailed day-to-day presentation schedule. All registered delegates who attend The Asian Conference on Language receive a printed copy of the Conference Programme at the Registration Desk on arrival. Only one copy of the Conference Programme is available per delegate, so please take good care of your copy.

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available on March 04, 2020. The final Conference Programme will be available on March 20, 2020.

Dislocation/Invitation

Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

IAFOR’s special theme in 2020 is “Embracing Difference”, which builds on two previous years’ themes: examinations of fear for what the future might hold (2018), followed a year later by explorations of our ability to shape alternate futures (2019). The continuing timeliness of both topics has been fuelled not only by global political trends, but also (and in ways that largely account for those trends) the fact that individuals today are being confronted incessantly with forms and intensities of “difference” as never before in human history. Unless we are wholly off the grid of media and extra-communal encounter (as we might find with self-isolating religious communities), we are confronted daily with lifestyles, belief systems, languages, and ways of being that are radically different from our own. Whether face-to-face or mediated, these continuing micro-shocks of encounters with epistemological difference can be terrifying, exhilarating, disorienting, or even erotically stimulating (if not several of those at once). Much hinges on how we decide to process such encounters, a choice for which, I argue, we bear responsibility. To the extent that we can actively choose to frame such “dislocations” as desirable “invitations”– to question the rightness of our own stances, the security of our own “truths,” and the limitations of our own knowledge – we can welcome encounters with difference as necessary for learning and growth. Too often, of course, they are processed much more narrowly as violent threats to insular selfhood, to national and cultural primacy, and to religious absolutes. We as teachers, scholars and public intellectuals have a role to play in reframing a public debate on the fundamental value of “difference”. Beyond our common and often tepid proclamation of respect for “diversity”, it is imperative that we promote and defend the inherently generative effect of the “unsettledness” that terrifies so many of our fellow citizens. Invitations to rethink our “selves”, our beliefs, and our values should be celebrated as inherently educational opportunities, rather than feared as apocalyptic threats to coherence or community.

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Language and Power in Interfaith Dialogue: Inclusion, Exclusion and Essentialism

Keynote Presentation: Stephen Gregg

Interfaith dialogue is often portrayed as a way of bridging cultural gaps and allowing a “safe space” for mutual respect between different religious worldviews and communities. Whilst it is certainly true that this can occur, in this presentation I will be proposing that interfaith dialogue is, in its framework and performance, a complex projection of inclusion, exclusion and reinforcing of pre-existent relational religious identities. By focusing upon the historic case study of the first ever World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and bringing in recent and contemporary examples of interfaith encounter (including religion and non-religion) from the UK, I will discuss the particular importance of language and power discourse in the projection of religious identities which seek to both embrace and highlight difference.

Read presenter biographies.