The Institute of English Studies at the University of Rzeszów has the pleasure of announcing the fifth edition of the conference Culture and Cognition in Language: CCL 5. The conference is aimed at viewing language as a both cultural and cognitive phenomenon.

Submission Guidelines

We invite proposal submissions for 20-minute presentations. Abstracts of a maximum 300 words (excluding references) should be submitted in .docx format by September 15th, 2026 via conference e-mail: ccl@ur.edu.pl. Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 15, 2026. Please indicate in your submission whether you are submitting as a PhD student.

List of Topics

• This edition's leading theme is: Dynamic Aspects of Meaning Construction

Meaning is not a static property of words or sentences but an emergent, context-sensitive outcome

of cognitive and communicative processes. Historical semantics provides an essential backdrop for

understanding how meaning emerges and transforms across time, and how changes in meaning

correlate with shifts in conceptual organization and communicative practice. Rather than treating

semantic change as a sequence of isolated shifts, contemporary approaches emphasize its dynamic,

cognitively motivated character.

Yet diachronic and synchronic variation are inextricably connected, for processes such as

metaphorization, metonymization, broadening, narrowing, and shifts in evaluative meaning can be

seen as long-term manifestations of the same conceptual mechanisms that shape meaning in

everyday discourse, while lexical variation may be regarded as the result of an interaction between

semasiological and onomasiological changes.

Dynamic approaches to meaning construction foreground the idea that “meaning construction is

grounded in the principles of cognitive modeling”, highlighting the role of conceptual integration,

frame shifting, perspective taking, metaphor, metonymy, and other cognitive mechanisms in

shaping how speakers produce and interpret meaning in real time.

Building on the rich traditions of Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar, and Discourse

Analysis, this year's edition invites contributions that investigate the dynamic, situated, and often

unpredictable nature of meaning-making across a range of linguistic and multimodal contexts.

With the above in mind, we particularly welcome submissions addressing topics such as:

• Diachronic aspects of meaning

• The interplay between synchrony and diachrony

• Conceptual integration and blending

• Metaphor and metonymy in discourse

• Construction Grammar and constructional meaning

• Frame semantics and frame-shifting

• Perspective, subjectivity, and viewpoint

• Embodiment and situated meaning

• Dynamic meaning in multimodal communication

• Meaning construction in interaction and conversation

• Creative language use: humour, irony, and non-literal meaning

• Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation in meaning construction

• Computational and corpus-based approaches to dynamic meaning

Committees

Organizing committee

• dr Bożena Duda
• dr hab. prof. UR Robert Kiełtyka
• dr hab. prof. UR Ewa Konieczna
• dr Beata Kopecka
• dr Marcin Kudła

Invited Speakers

• Prof. Dirk Geeraerts (University of Leuven)
• Prof. Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (University of La Rioja)
• Prof. Kathryn Allan (University College London)

Venue

The conference will be held in Hotel SkalnySpa in Polanczyk (https://skalnyspa.pl/)

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to ccl@ur.edu.pl