Oslo welcomes you to this year’s conference!

Due to the uncertain circumstances regarding infection control, and possible restrictions surrounding travel and gatherings, the conference will be hosted digitally. Although there are numerous advantages to hosting a physical conference, we will do our best to take advantage of the technological benefits a digital event can offer, using Zoom as our main platform.

Plenary lecturers:

Registration and important dates

N.B.!: The current registration form is in Norwegian. If you are not proficient in a Scandinavian language, and wish to attend the conference, please send an e-mail to johan.tonnesson@nulliln.uio.no, with the subject line FOT2021.

15. June 2021: Final day for registration of lectures or presentations in workshops. Abstracts: no more than 1200 characters (with spaces). No bibliography required.

25. October 2021: Final chance to register without presentation.

More information will be published at Sakprosasiden.no, where a separate event page has been created and will be updated continuously.

Enquiries

All enquiries should have the subject line FOT2021, and be sent to: johan.tonnesson@nulliln.uio.no

Main topic: Democratic communication

The overarching topic of the conference is Democratic communication.

This topic has been chosen because:

• – The question of democracy is especially relevant nowadays, and the pandemic have brought several important questions of democracy to light
• – It is important to encourage Nordic research and reflections on democracy in general, and Nordic democracies. (Nationally, regionally, locally, specific to different institutions, e.g. volunteer organisations, trade unions, democracy in schools etc.)
• – The university hosting this year’s conference, UiO, are about to initiate a major research initiative, called UiO:Democracy (as a continuation of UiO:Nordic)

Three subtopics

Provided the submitted abstracts are suitable for this, we intend to set up an event program which will cover three specific subtopics. These will be discussed partly in plenary sessions, partly as separate workshops:

• 1) Communication of the pandemic and plain language.
  Many of our fellow academics are involved in research projects concerning governmental communication during the pandemic. The historical tradition of Swedish research and practice, combined with the currently intensified Norwegian plain language work (both research and in practice), makes plain language a highly relevant and important topic from a democratic perspective.
  
• 2) Genres of democracy.
  «Sakprosa» have published material on the annual reports of government-owned enterprises, and on «scenariet» («the scenario») as a public genre. There is a distinct lack of genre knowledge regarding the various genres of democracy.
  
• 3) Literacy research as democracy research.
  In the Nordic countries in general, and Oslo in particular, there is such an abundance of literacy research, particularly within the field of education, that we believe we could bring together some excellent contributors by highlighting the literacy approach as an explicit subtopic.

16 years of Forum for text research/ Forum for tekstforskning/ Forum för textforskning

2005 SveBe 28: Örebro University Workshop
«Text analysis in a Swedish perspective» – Decision to establish FoT (”Textanalys i ett svenskt perspektiv” Beslut om FoT)

2006 FoT 1: Örebro University
«Text and power»/»Texts of mass media»/»Texts in practice»/»Education and texts» (”Text och makt”/”Massmedietexter”/Texter i praktiken”/”Utbildning och texter”)

2007 FoT 2: Linneaus University
«Thought – text – interpretation. The potential and limitations of texts» (”Tanke – text – tolkning. Texters potential och begränsning”)

2008 FoT 3: University of Gothenburg
«The evolution of texts» (”Texter i förändring”)

2009 FoT 4: Stockholm University and Södertörn University
«Intertextuality» (”Intertextualitet”)

2010 FoT 5: Lund University
«The societal relevance of text research» (”Textforskningens samhällsrelevans”)

2011 FoT 6 :Uppsala University
«Text and power» (”Text och makt”)

2012 FoT 7: Örebro University
«Writing and language» (”Skrift och språk”)

2013 FoT 8: Linneaus University
«Texts in business, texts in action, and texts as an active agent»(”Texter i verksamhet och verksamma texter”)

2014 FoT 9: University of Gothenburg
”Methods in text research” (”Metoder inom textforskningen”)

2015 FoT 10: Umeå University
«Text in interaction» (”Text i samspel”)

2016 FoT 11: Stockholm University and Södertörn University:
«Critical text analysis» (”Kritiska textanalyser”)

2017 FoT 12: Linnaeus University
”Empiricism and theory in text and writing research” (”Empiri och teori i text- och skrivforskning”)

2018 FoT 13: Lund University
”Centering the text?» («Med texten i centrum?”)

2019 FoT 14: Uppsala University
”Texts in time – texts in education, society and history” (”Texter i tiden – texter i utbildning, samhälle och historia”)

2020 cancelled FoT 15: Dalarna University
”Countryside and city” (”Land och stad”)

2021 digitally FoT 15: University of Oslo
”Democratic communication” («Demokratisk kommunikasjon»)