Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies
Internationale Konferenz von Projekt B03 des SFB 1412 (Unter den Linden 6, 16. und 17. Oktober 2025)
International Conference on
“Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies”
Date: October 16-17, 2025
Location: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Conference Theme
The study of communication in ancient societies provides valuable insights into the
sociocultural dynamics, hierarchies, and interactional practices of the past. This conference
aims to explore the concept of asymmetric communication, focusing on contexts where power
imbalances, status differences, and socio-cultural hierarchies influenced modes of interaction.
The term asymmetric communication describes situational conditions in which the interaction
between interlocutors is not at eye level, i.e., it is unbalanced or uneven in respect to socio-cultural
factors. In that respect, one may investigate aspects such as identity and number of
participants/interlocutors as well as their characteristics, social roles, and statuses.
We invite studies based on ancient/historical texts, images, and image-text compositions from
diverse cultural settings. As for written sources, these may concern the formulation of requests,
commands or prohibitions, and the systematic choice of vocatives, epithets or idiomatic
expressions, among other devices. Pictorial sources on the other hand may raise questions
regarding size, orientation, and grouping of represented individuals as well as their attributes
and insignia, actions and gestures. Communicative constellations can be analyzed in two
dimensions: the production and reception of a text by historical persons (text-external
dimension) and the communication between protagonists represented within the story world
(text-internal dimension).
Departing from the field of ancient studies and building on advances in sociolinguistics,
historical linguistics, and multimodal analysis, we invite contributions that examine the
linguistic, visual, and contextual aspects of asymmetric communication across ancient societies.
The goal is to better understand how power, agency, and status were negotiated, maintained, or
challenged through communicative acts. How interlocutors navigate in such communicative
settings and what strategies, e.g., politeness vs. impoliteness, they employ, is of primary interest
here.
Format
Participation is only possible in person. We therefore kindly ask you to register by October 10, 2025, via asymcom-conference@hu-berlin.de.