PALA 2026: The Philosophy of Stylistics - Call for Papers
Although it has its roots in classical rhetoric, modern stylistics arose from the Russian formalist literary critical movement of the early twentieth century, from which emerged the notion of defamiliarization that is central to the stylistic concept of foregrounding. What set stylistics apart from other literary critical approaches was its focus on producing analyses that were replicable and falsifiable. In this respect, the stylistic approach shares an attitude of mind with the sciences, making it a natural disciplinary associate of linguistics. As stylistics moves into an academic age that will likely be dominated by AI, we invite papers that explore the philosophy of the discipline and its ongoing commitment to objective analysis. Topics that papers might explore include but are not limited to the following:
- The connections between stylistics and linguistics
- The possibilities for replication and falsification in stylistics
- The relationship between theoretical and experimental work in stylistics
- The potential impact of AI on the practice of stylistics
- The relationship between cognitive and corpus stylistics
- The emergence of new subdisciplines of stylistics
- Integrating stylistics into the literary mainstream
- Implications of the stylistic methodology for the teaching of language and literature
- Practical applications for stylistics
We welcome abstracts that explore these issues as well as those which address the general concerns of PALA, including the linguistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts of all types.
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words in length.
Submission is via Easyabs.
Abstracts should contain the following:
- Title of paper
- Your full name, academic affiliation, email address and postal address
- A recognisable thesis/statement or research question
- An explanation of the methodology
- An indication of emerging results
- An alphabetical list of no more than five keywords
- A maximum of five references
In addition to individual papers, we also invite abstracts for sessions devoted to Special Interest Groups (SIG). Prospective SIG organizers should approach potential participants first of all. Each SIG participant should then submit an abstract, ensuring that they include the name of the SIG in their abstract. SIG organizers should submit the following information to: pala2026eng@uu.se
- The name of the SIG
- Full name of SIG organisers, along with academic affiliation and email address
- A description of the aims and objectives of the SIG session
- The name of each presenter and their affiliation
- The order in which papers are to be presented in the SIG
The deadline for submission of abstracts is Friday 30 January 2026.
Accepted abstracts will be announced on Friday 6 March 2026.