Novel Perspectives on Communication Practices in Antiquity. Towards a Historical Social-Semiotic App
The main aim of this conference, which forms the opening event of the ERC-project ‘Everyday writing in Graeco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt. A socio-semiotic study of communicative variation’ (2018-2023; www.evwrit.ugent.be), is to explore to what extent it is possible and desirable to found a discipline such as historical social-semiotics, parallel to historical socio-linguistics. Such a novel, interdisciplinary approach is particularly relevant for ‘everyday’ documentary texts: since these texts represent autographs, their external characteristics can also be brought into the interpretation. Jean-Luc Fournet (2007), for example, has recently argued for a ‘paléographie signifiante’, noting that ‘l’analyse matérielle d’un document peut être porteuse de sens’ (2007:353), not only when it comes to text type, but also with regard to the socio-cultural context of writing, and the provenance of the document. Other external characteristics to be considered as expressions of social meaning (functioning as ‘semiotic resources’) are – but are not limited to – writing material, document format, and language choice. Their analysis reveals information concerning hierarchy, status and social relations.
FECHA/DATE/DATA: 03-04-05/10/2019
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Klaas Bentein; Yasmine Amory.
INFO: web - evwrit@ugent.be - klaas.bentein@ugent.be - yasmine.amory@ugent.be
INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: Aquí/here/qui
PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:
Thursday, October 3, 2019
8:45-9:15 Registration 9:15-9:30 Welcome Greetings Morning session: Genre and multimodality Chairperson: Klaas Bentein 9:30-10:00 Klaas Bentein (Ghent University) Introduction
10:00-10:30 Sarah Béthume (INCAL/CEMA, UCLouvain) “The ‘exposed writings’: how the study of the ‘pluricode’ message of ancient Greek inscriptions can shed light on the archaic and classical dialectal variation” 10:30-11:00 Nicola Reggiani (University of Parma) “Towards a socio-semiotic analysis of Greek medical prescriptions on papyrus” 11:00-11:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:00 Francesca Murano & Mariarosaria Zinzi (University of Florence) “A social-semiotic analysis of Greek defixiones from South Italy” 12:00-12:30 James Wolfe (The Ohio State University) “Imagining faith: images, scripts, and texts of early Christian inscriptions from the Roman Near East” 12:30-14:00 Lunch Break Afternoon session: Texts and intra-semiosis Chairperson: Yasmine Amory 14:00-14:45 Key-note speaker, Antonella Ghignoli (Sapienza - University of Rome) “This is the catalogue! A so far unknown latin documentary papyrus from 6th century Italy” 14:45-15:15 Martti Leiwo (University of Helsinki) “Hands and language in ostraca letters from Roman praesidia in Egypt” 15:15-15:45 Giulio Iovine (University of Naples “Federico II”) “Descriptum et recognitum. A survey of Latin closing and acknowledging formulae in Latin and Greek papyri and ostraca” 15:45-16:15 Coffee Break 16:15-16:45 Antonia Apostolakou (Ghent University) “How to sign a contract in Late Antique Egypt: a study of linguistic variation” 16:45-17:15 Simona Russo (Istituto papirologico "G. Vitelli") “Rome as New York, fashion capital?” * Reception at Alice Friday, October 4, 2019 Morning session: Sociolinguistic variation Chairperson: Mark Janse 9:15-10:00 Key-note speaker, James Clackson (University of Cambridge) “Standard languages, language standards and language norms in the Greco-Roman world” 10:00-10:30 Polina Yordanova (University of Helsinki) “Тhe forest’s broken branches: discontinuity in Greek word order in documentary papyri from III c BCE to III c CE” 10:30-11:00 Alek Keersmaekers (UK Leuven) “Sociolinguistic variation in the Greek papyri: a corpus-based, bottom-up approach” 11:00-11:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:00 Emmanuel Roumanis & Geert De Mol (Ghent University) “The Abinnaeus archive: lexical and orthographic features” 12:00-12:30 Alessandro Papini (Ghent University) “A preliminary investigation on the <e>/<i> and <o>/<u> graphemic oscillations in Italian Latin inscriptions of the Republican age” 12:30-14:00 Lunch Break Afternoon session: Visual and material aspects of texts Chairperson: Joanne Stolk 14:00-14:45 Key-note speaker, Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France – EPHE) “Beyond the text: the contribution of the ‘paléographie signifiante’” 14:45-15:15 Marco Stroppa (Istituto papirologico "G. Vitelli") “Big & small: the size of documents as a semiotic resource for Graeco-Roman Egypt?” 15:15-15:45 Nina Sietis (Sapienza - University of Rome) “Abbreviations in Greek documentary texts. A case study of ‘significant palaeography’” 15:45-16:15 Coffee Break 16:15-16:45 Eleonora Conti (Istituto papirologico "G. Vitelli") “Spread and persistence of Latin document features in some Greek letters of high chancery on papyrus” 16:45-17:15 Yasmine Amory (Ghent University) “Visual signs of deference in Late Antique letters” * 17:30 Visit at the Archaeological Collection of Ghent University at Het Pand * 19:30 – Dinner at Sint-Jorishof (optional, pre-reservation required) Saturday, October 5, 2019 Morning session: Multimodal aspects of writing Chairperson: Giovanbattista Galdi 9:15-10:00 Key-note speaker, Mark Depauw (UC Leuven) “Splitting words in Greek letters and petitions. Quantitative research based on Trismegistos” 10:00-10:30 Joanne Stolk (Ghent University/University of Oslo) “The social meaning of scribal corrections in final versions of papyrus letters” 10:30-11:00 Giuseppina di Bartolo (University of Cologne) “Sociolinguistic and semiotic remarks on Greek petitions” 11:00-11:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:00 Sonja Dahlgren and Marja Vierros (University of Helsinki) “Coptic spelling variations transferred onto Greek – visually pleasing or phonologically based?” 12:00-12:45 Key-note speaker, Petra Sijpesteijn (Leiden University) TBA 12:45-13:00 Conclusions and discussion