Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies
Internationale Konferenz von Projekt B03 des SFB 1412 (Unter den Linden 6, 16. und 17. Oktober 2025)
Call for Papers
Diese Konferenz untersucht die Rolle der asymmetrischen Kommunikation in antiken Gesellschaften und stellt die Frage, in welcher Weise ungleiche Machtverhältnisse, Statusunterschiede und soziokulturelle Hierarchien die soziale Interaktion prägten.
Wir freuen uns auf Beiträge von Wissenschaftlern aus den Registerstudien, der Historischen Linguistik und verwandten Disziplinen, die diese Dynamik aus linguistischer, visueller und kontextueller Perspektive erforschen.
International Conference on
“Asymmetric Communication in Ancient Societies”
Call for Papers
Date: October 16-17, 2025
Location: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025
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.
Topics of Interest
We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Theoretical frameworks for analyzing asymmetric communication in historical contexts
across cultures and languages
- Case studies on hierarchical communication in ancient written or visual corpora
- The role of status, power, and authority in shaping communicative practices
- The occurrence and underlying motivations of biases in the representation of social
constellations
- Language and register variation in its connection to asymmetric communication
- Multimodal perspectives: interaction of text and imagery in conveying power dynamics
- Diachronic perspectives on the evolution of communicative asymmetries in ancient
societies
Research Questions
The following research questions may be considered:
- Which recurring asymmetric social constellations can be identified in ancient texts and
artifacts across cultures and languages?
- To what extent are these representations realistic or on the contrary stylistically exaggerated
or even reversed (e.g. by use of polemics, satire, parody, etc.)?
- What phenomena (linguistic, visual, etc.) are characteristic of asymmetric communication
in different sociocultural contexts?
- How can balanced or peer-group communicative situations in ancient societies be identified
and distinguished from asymmetric ones?
- In what ways do the materiality and visual design of artifacts contribute to asymmetric
communication?
- What are the implications of asymmetric communication for understanding broader social
structures and hierarchies in ancient cultures and societies?
We invite scholars from diverse disciplines (e.g., Egyptology, Assyriology, Oriental Studies,
Classics, Historical Linguistics, Archaeology, and Art History) and contributors of all
experience levels studying historical and ancient languages and texts, images and iconography,
material culture and contexts to join us in discussing any of these main topics or to propose
other research questions based on their work.
Abstract submission
Abstracts of approximately 300 words (excluding references), outlining the research objectives,
methodology, and main findings should be submitted in English or German to the following
email address by April 30, 2025: asymcom-conference@hu-berlin.de. Notification of
acceptance will be sent by May 30, 2025. For inquiries, please feel free to contact the above
mentioned email address.
Format
The sessions will be held in person. Speakers are expected to give an oral presentation of 20
25 minutes.