The 4th International Conference on Discourse Pragmatics (ICDP-4)

The 4th International Conference on Discourse Pragmatics (ICDP-4)

We are delighted to announce that the 4th International Conference on Discourse Pragmatics will take place online from October 17 to 19, 2025. This year’s theme, “Discourse Pragmatics, Online Interaction, and the Age of AI,” responds to the urgent need to understand how digital technologies and algorithmic mediation are reshaping the conditions of human communication in profound ways.

As digital platforms, social media, and AI-driven interfaces become central to everyday interaction, questions of how meaning is constructed, negotiated, or disrupted have taken on renewed significance. These changes not only challenge traditional pragmatic categories such as deixis, face, implicature, (im)politeness, and speech acts, but also compel us to rethink broader concepts such as (inter)subjectivity, agency, and communicative normativity in digital environments.

This conference provides a forum for critically engaging with these developments from a variety of perspectives within and beyond discourse pragmatics. We invite scholars to explore emerging phenomena in online interaction and human-machine communication, and to reflect on how theories and methods in discourse pragmatics can be extended, reworked, or reimagined in response to technological transformation.

This conference will be hosted by Zhejiang International Studies University (ZISU), located in Hangzhou, China, co-organized by the School of English Studies, ZISU, the Institute of Discourse Pragmatics, ZISU, and the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland. We are looking forward to your participation in this great event.

Conference Theme

Discourse Pragmatics, Online Interaction, and the Age of AI

This conference aims to explore how discourse pragmatics can address the dynamic transformations of communication in the digital and algorithmic age. Key areas of interest include:

•Pragmatic meaning-making in digital interaction (e.g., livestreams, chats, platform discourse)

•Discourse pragmatics in human-AI communication

•(Im)politeness, emotion, stance, morality and identity in online discourse

•Cross-cultural and multilingual pragmatic variation in digital contexts

•Methodological and theoretical challenges to discourse pragmatics posed by new media and AI

•Broader cognitive, ethical, social, or philosophical reflections on discourse meaning in mediated interaction

While rooted in the core concerns of discourse pragmatics, the conference also encourages interdisciplinary approaches—from philosophy, AI studies, media and communication, to cognitive science—where such perspectives enrich our understanding of how language operates in technologically mediated spaces.

Conference Host

Zhejiang International Studies University (ZISU)

Conference Organizers

School of English Studies, ZISU

Institute of Discourse Pragmatics, ZISU

The School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland

Dates and Venues 

Dates: 17-19 October 2025

Venues: Zoom; Tencent/VooV Meeting (online)

Registration Fees

Free of charge

Conference Language

English

Abstract Submission

1. All abstracts should be prepared in English.

2. To submit an abstract, please send a document of no more than 300 words (including keywords and references) to [email protected]. The deadline for submission is 8 August 2025.

3. To submit your abstract, please ensure that it is prepared in the MS Word format and the file is named "full name + paper title." Additionally, please include a separate page that lists all individual authors' names, affiliations, professional titles, email addresses, and any other relevant information.

Notification of Abstract Acceptance

20 August 2025

Conference Email

[email protected] (Ms. Zhang)

Social Media

To stay informed about the conference, please follow us on X/Twitter (iPragmatics), WeChat (internet_pragmatics), and the School of English Studies, ZISU website (http://ywxy.zisu.edu.cn). Thank you for your attention to this conference, and we look forward to seeing you in Virtual Hangzhou, China.