The last two decades have seen an increasing focus on visual and multimodal media, particularly comics, emoji, and memes. Growing work has applied theories and empirical methods from the linguistic and cognitive sciences to the study of visual and multimodal communication. The Visual Language Conference (VisLang) at Tilburg University aims to bring together scholars focused on these issues to further work towards establishing a community around this research.

We invite submissions to VisLang2024, a two-day conference at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. We invite presentations on all dimensions of visual languages and associated fields. This includes research on (but not limited to):

• pictorial expressions (drawings, art, emoji, cartoons)
• visual narratives (comics, graphic novels, manga, picture books, film, etc.)
• non-narrative sequential images (instructions, signage)
• multimodality (memes, text-emoji relations, cartoons etc.)
• historical and/or cultural graphic systems
• visual event cognition and scene perception
• …and other pictorial and/or multimodal media

We welcome both theoretical and empirical research (corpus, experimental), particularly those situated within (but not limited to) linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and cultural evolution, in addition to research with developmental, applied, and/or educational focus.

Submissions are welcomed from researchers at all levels of scholarship. Submissions include an abstract of up to 400 words, which will be chosen for either a talk or a poster.
Submission deadline is 15 January 2024.

Submissions can be made through the conference website here:  https://www.visuallanguagelab.com/vislang2024

Presenters will be requested to appear in person at Tilburg University, but the conference will be livestreamed for remote participation. 27-28 June 2024 (Thursday and Friday)

VisLang2024 is hosted by the Visual Language Lab within the Department of Communication and Cognition and is funded through an ERC Starting Grant for the TINTIN Project (ttps://www.visuallanguagelab.com/tintin).

Additional questions can be sent to neilcohn@visuallanguagelab.com