International Conference on Figurative Thought and Language (FTL9)

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to circulate the Second Call for Papers for the 9th International Conference on Figurative Thought and Language (FTL9), which will take place at the University of Valencia (Spain), 9–11 September 2026.

FTL9 continues a long-standing tradition of international forums on figurative thought and language, following previous editions in Thessaloniki, Pavia, Osijek, Braga, Sofia, Poznań, Genoa, and Klagenfurt.

The theme of FTL9 is Blending Minds and Machines: Figurative Language, Creativity, AI, and Computational Linguistics.

While this edition highlights the intersection of figurative language and artificial intelligence, we of course welcome submissions addressing figuration more broadly, across linguistic structure (morphology, lexis, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), discourse domains (e.g. politics, media, science, education, law, literature, healthcare), multimodal communication (gesture, image, digital media), humour and rhetoric, cognitive development and pedagogy, corpus-based and experimental approaches, cross-linguistic and sociocultural perspectives, and theoretical accounts of metaphor, blending, persuasion, ideology, and creativity.

We warmly invite proposals for individual papers and themed sessions from a wide range of theoretical, empirical, and applied perspectives, including cognitive linguistics, AI and computational linguistics, translation, multimodal communication, cognitive science, and related fields.

📌 Deadlines
– Theme session proposals: 15 February 2026
– Abstract submission (general and themed sessions): 31 March 2026

📌 Languages of the conference: English, French, Spanish, or Catalan.

📌 Publication opportunities:
A selection of conference papers will be published in:

1. An international edited volume (Q1 SPI)
2. A special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal

All submissions will undergo external peer review. Participation in publication is optional.

Further information and submission details can be found here:
https://cogclare.com/call-for-papers-ftl9/

We very much hope this call will be of interest and look forward to welcoming many of you to Valencia.

With best regards,
FTL9 Organising Committee