Call for Papers

The Department of English of the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), and the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE), Department of English and Communication of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) present the first edition of their joint effort in fostering research in business and professional communication. 

Drawing upon the successful framework of the “Talking English Across the World” (TAW) Symposium which reached its 7th edition, this event extends its scope by joining forces for the first time with the Department of English of CityU for a 2-day conference preceded by a pre-conference event aimed at bringing together academics, professionals, and institutions to promote a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary discussion, and to elicit dialogue about business and professional communication in Asia and the world. It is a CityU-PolyU joint conference in collaboration with Asian Pacific Region of Association for Business Communication. 

This conference aims to stimulate discussions about professional communication practices in a changing world by highlighting the role of discourse in reflecting and constructing the changes. The changes can be the emergence of digital genres, the increasing attention to multimodality, crisis management during the pandemic, re-definition of the ‘workplace’ and globalisation with subsequent changes in leadership and management communication, as well as the shift of corporate discourse to focus on environmental, social, and governance themes (ESG). In response, the conference creates a platform to shed light on new rhetorics disseminated by businesses across sectors and markets, as a result of corporate peer pressure, increased activism and consumer engagement on social media, and growing risks for reputational damage and financial impacts on corporations.

We invite contributions from scholars, teachers, and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, such as business studies, communication studies, and applied linguistics to share their views and experiences.

Themes (including but not limited to)

• Leadership
• Diversity and inclusion in business communication
• Globalisation and localisation
• Intercultural communication
• Crisis communication and reputation management
• Sustainability
• Multimodality and business communication
• Emerging genres
• Digital media
• Virtual communication
• Organisational communication
• Research methods in business communication
• Teaching and learning practices for business and professional communication

The call for papers is now open. To receive full consideration, submissions must be submitted before 31 March 2023. Proposals should be submitted via the Submit NOW button below. All proposals received by 31 March 2023 will be reviewed, and corresponding authors will be notified of the status of their submissions by 11 April 2023.

• All submissions must include complete contact information for all authors, along with an indication of the corresponding author.
• All submissions must be in English.
• Both on-site and online presentations will be considered.
• To make this an interactive conference, we want as many of the presentations as possible to be synchronous. To achieve this, we will be setting up time-zone dedicated presentations. However, we recognize that there is a need for flexibility and so there will also be pre-recorded asynchronous presentation options available. 

Individual paper submissions should be a single file containing:  

• The names and complete contact information for all authors;
• A clear indication of which author(s) will present the paper and whether the presenter will participate on-site or online;
• The title of the paper;
• An abstract (300 words maximum excluding references);
• Papers will be 20 minutes presentations with ten minutes for questions.  

Panel submissions should be a single file containing:  

• The name and complete contact information for the corresponding author, names of all the participants, and modes of presentation (on-site or online);
• A 300 word (maximum) introduction to the theme and content of the panel excluding references;
• An indication of the panel’s length and the roles of all participants (chair, discussant, presenting author, co-author etc.).
• A list of the individual presentations in order, including the title and abstract for each oral presentation (120 words maximum) and presenting author, and the name, affiliation, and e-mail address of each presenter.  

Note: Call for Papers deadline has passed, and late submissions will not be considered.

Important Dates

If you have any questions about the conference or the proposal submission process, please contact: engl.rcpce@polyu.edu.hk