Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Brief CV (for Indonesian, Ukrainian (also audio), Russian  (also audio), Albanian, Punjabi, Spanish, and Urdu translations, scroll downwards)

Charles Forceville was born in Heemstede, NL, in 1959. He studied English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where after graduating he taught in the English, comparative literature, and Word & Image departments. From 1996-1998 he did a post-doc "Narration in Fiction and Film" at the University of Leyden. Currently he works in the Media Studies department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where he is associate professor. He serves as member of the advisory boards of Metaphor and Symbol , Journal of Pragmatics , Public Journal of Semiotics,  Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, and the Benjamins series Review of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts. Forceville was programme director of the Research Master Media Studies from 2004-2012 and chairs the ACLC project AIM/Structure & Rhetoric in Multimodal Discourse (see the "Adventures in Multimodality"/AIM blog at http://muldisc.wordpress.com/) .  From 2005-2008 he was external examiner of the MPhil Text and Visual Studies (TVS) at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Apart from publishing scholarly articles and book chapters, he wrote some 200 reviews of English-language fiction for the Dutch national newspaper Trouw (1987-2007). The volume Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton De Gruyter), co-edited with Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, appeared in September 2009. In 2008 he was given the opportunity, together with Kurt Feyaerts and Tony Veale, to spend six months as visiting fellow at VLAC (Vlaamse Academie/Royal Flemish Academy) in Brussels, Belgium, to work on the project The Agile Mind: Creativity in Models and Multimodal Discourse. An edited volume on the topic appeared in 2013 with Mouton de Gruyter. 2017 saw the publication of Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville, eds (2017). Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Amsterdam: Benjamins).

Forceville spent a sabbatical at the university of Lund, Sweden (hosted by Carita Paradis) in the autumn of 2014.  From September to December 2017, he was honorary/visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM), hosted by Laura Hidalgo-Downing. He there started adapting his online Course on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor for publication as a book. This project is still in progress. His monograph Visual and Multimodal Mass-Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is scheduled to appear with Oxford UP in 2020.

Forceville regularly uploads pre-prints of papers and chapters on his  Academia.edu and Researchgate.net and Academia.edu profiles; the latter also has a full CV.

Scholarly background and beliefs

"Educated in a literature and linguistics department, I thrived on a passion for literature. But gradually I found the activity of interpreting literary works, while an enjoyable and important pursuit, no longer satisfied my scholarly ambitions. Adopting the Cognitive Linguistics' work on metaphor I developed a model of pictorial metaphor ( Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Routledge 1996). Since my appointment as lecturer and researcher in Media Studies, my research has broadened from pictorial metaphor to multimodal metaphor, from static representations to moving images, and from advertising to other popular art forms, such as comics, animation, and children's picture books. Moreover,  my work onmultimodal metaphor proved fertile ground for transforming into a multimodality scholar tout court.

While I see text-based analyses of contemporary representations (literature, advertising, comics, cartoons, logo’s and pictograms, film) as basic to my scholarly work, my goal, in the broadest sense, is to contribute to cognitivist theories accounting for the interpretation and evaluation of visuals and of multimodal discourses. I strive to make my work both theoretically insightful and practically applicable and attempt to formulate my findings in such a way as to enable verification and falsification as well as to provide starting points for empirical testing. I consider it crucial to demonstrate that humanities-oriented research focusing on art and popular culture is of interest to work that is being done in the social sciences – and vice versa. In my view, sociobiology offers excellent opportunities for further researching ‘gene-culture co-evolution.’ Relevance Theory and narratology profoundly influence my scholarly work. In recent years I have also become more interested in investigating how theory can inform education and practice, for instance via several short animation films that HKU students have made at my instigation and partial supervision."

Keywords in research and teaching 

Multimodal metaphor, multimodal rhetoric & narrative, narrative across media, relevance theory, genre, documentary film, animation, comics & cartoons.

Plenaries, Invited Lectures/Talks

23-26/6/21      (1) “Workshop on pix in papers”; (2) Keynote lecture “Metaphorical Space and movement in images communicating “goals”; (3) Contribution “Meet the Expert!” session at RaAM (“Researching and Applying Metaphor”) 14 conference (Theme: “Metaphor & Space”), University of Vilnius, Lithuania:   (Due to Corona, this was a virtual conference). http://www.raam14.flf.vu.lt/ https://www.facebook.com/2319184561650388/posts/2809283009307205/

23/3/21           Talk on the basis of Zhang & Forceville (2020) for Intercultural Linguistics Doctoral Programme at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (via Teams). https://btk.elte.hu/en/content/metaphor-and-metonymy-in-chinese-and-american-political-cartoons.t.5936 (contact: Rita Brdar).

19/1/21           Presentation, with Anniek Plomp based on Plomp & Forceville (2021) paper “Evaluating animentary’s potential as a rhetorical genre.” #BreGroMM (Bremen-Groningen Multimodality two-weekly online seminars). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I0-KBshqERN9HkV2voTMDYn4lvj5QrhDZXqLbTYc3ko/edit.

15/1/21            Presentation based on Zhang & Forceville (2020) for “Sign and Symbol research group” at University of Warsaw (organizers Katarzyna Mikulska & Olgierd Uziemblo), via Zoom.

16/12/20         Discussion about my monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle (Oxford UP 2020), via Zoom, University of Cagliari https://dottorati.unica.it/fesc/calendario-della-a-2020-2021/ (organizers: Francesca Ervas, Elisabetta Gola, 50 participants).

23-24/5/19        Invited participation in “New methods for multimodal research” symposium, Salzburg University, https://hartmutstoecklcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/book_of_abstracts_web.pdf (org. Jana Pflaeging and Hartmut Stöckl).

29/4-9/5/19     Two invited lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/tki/naujienos/3527-amsterdamo-universiteto-uva-dr-charles-forceville-paskaitos (org. Inesa Šeškauskienė et al); and eight lectures on multimodality at Vilnius university, Kaunas faculty https://www.knf.vu.lt/darbuotojams/aktualijos/skelbimai/220-renginiai/2441-tarptautinio-lingvistikos-eksperto-is-nyderlandu-paskaitu-ciklas-vilniaus-universitete-kaune (org. Saulė Juzelėnienė et al).

8-9/11/18  Keynote lecture “The representation of DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films,” 5th International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse, “Metaphor across cultures and social spheres.”  Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain (org. Ignasi Navarro i Ferrando & Lorena Bort-Mir). http://www.fue.uji.es/metaphor2018/all

26-28/4/18  Keynote Visual Learning Conference “Content-Culture-Consciousness.” Budapest University of Technology and Economics (org. András Benedek, Kristóf Nyiri). http://www.vll.bme.hu/en/8th-visual-learning-conference/invited-speakers/

18/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Silvia Molina and Ana Roldán).

14/12/17   Invited talk Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (org. Ruth Breeze). http://www.unav.edu/detalle-evento/-/detalle/agenda?_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventDate=14-12- 2017&_detalleevento_WAR_agendaportlet_eventId=16475449

13/12/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid on application RT to mass-communicative visuals/multimodal discourse (org. Paloma Tejada Caller).

28/11/17   Invited talk Universidad Complutense Madrid: review of 30 years of visual/multimodal metaphor studies + report on work in progress on Wilders cartoons (org. Begoña Nuñez Perucha & Juana Arrese Marín).

25/11/17   Plenary presentation “The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs” at the 1st China Multimodality Forum. School of Foreign Languages, University of Tongji, Shanghai (org. Lihe Huang and Lin Zhu). https://alldocs.net/call-for-papers-the-1st-china-multimodality-forum-november-24-26-2017-tongji-university-shanghai-china

21+23/11/17   Guest lecture “Max Black’s (1979) ‘interaction theory’ and its application to visual/multimodal metaphor in print advertising and commercials” at Jiang Normal University, Xuzhou (org. Zhen Pan) and Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (org. Esther Pascual). http://www.sis.zju.edu.cn/chinese/search.php?postflag=1&area=3&fulltext=1&kw_qbzc=forceville

18/11/17   Plenary presentation “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at 3^rd Symposium on Cognitive Poetics/5^th China Symposium on Cognitive Poetics (“Exploration and Dialogue”), China Petroleum University (Beijing) (org. Xiufeng Zhao, Tongwen Chai, Yaxiao Cui). See https://www.sohu.com/a/143784933_488177/http://see.gdufs.edu.cn/info/1136/6846.htm; see also http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/info/14/435

15-17/11/17   Five pre-conference two-hour workshops, Petroleum University (Beijing). See http://www.sohu.com/a/202340684_488177

25-26/10/17   Invited talk at Symposium: MOV(e)ING: From experience to communication through language, image and sound.” Universidad de Castilla-de Mancha, Facultad de Letras, Ciudad Real, Spain (org. Rosario Caballero).

20/10/17   Keynote talk “Metaphors portraying the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in political cartoons” (with Nataša van de Laar). At symposium “Discourse in Metaphor: recontextualization across modes and contexts,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UAM, organised in honour of my visiting scholarship at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (org. Laura Hidalgo-Downing & Coral Calvo Maturana). https://laurahidalgo.wixsite.com/creativityuam/single-post/2017/11/01/III-International-Symposium-on-Metaphor-in-Dsicourse

12-23/5/17   Visiting scholar, University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (org. Elisabetta Gola & Francesca Ervas). Teaching of mini-course (4 x 2 or 2.5 hrs) on visual and multimodal metaphor; one public lecture “Metaphor in advertising (and some cartoons): (sub)cultural perspectives” http://people.unica.it/scienzedellacomunicazione/files/2017/03/Program-of-the-course-Forceville.pdf and http://www.unica.it/pub/7/show.jsp?id=35380&iso=614&is=7

26-28/4/17   Keynote lecture at “3^rd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language.” U. of Osijek, Croatia; see http://www.ffos.unios.hr/anglistics/FTL3/en/index.html (org. Mario Brdar & Kristina Despot et al.).

24/10/16   Invited talk “Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics” at symposium Reading Comics at University of Helsinki, Finland (“Visual and multimodal (meta)representation of speech, thought, and sensory perception in comics”) http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kt-sl/tapahtumat/reading-comics/ (org. Kai Mikkonen).

3/9/16   Invited workshop “Creative visual/pictorial & multimodal metaphors in advertising & cartoons.” Metaphor Festival Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 31/8-3/9/’16 (org. Gerard Steen, Christian Burgers, Marianne Bolognesi, Amber Boeynaems, Britta Brugman and Romy van den Heerik).

8-10/6/16   Invited participation for workshop talks and discussions at "Cinepoetics" Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhoff, Michael Wedel et al.). Other participants included Ray Gibbs, Lynn Cameron, Eve Sweetser, Alan Cienki, Oliver Lubrich, Kathrin Fahlenbrach, and Warren Buckland.

29/4/16      Presentation at “Visualization” meeting of Tekom Europe (= professional organization re technical communication), Hotel Eburon, Tongeren, Belgium (org. Birgitta Meex et al.)

6/4/16        Invited “virtual” lecture (via Skype) on stylistics in comics, Center for Cognitive Sciences Cognitive Comics Studies Lecture Series, University of Niš, Serbia, also with Neil Cohn and Miloš Tasić (org. Dušan Stamenković).

4/12/15       Invited talk on multimodality, University of Bremen, Germany (org. John Bateman and Janina Wildfeuer). http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MultimodalityinBremen.pdf

12-16/10/15     Plenary lecture “International Conference on Communication Styles,” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki, Liisi Laineste, Villy Tsakona, Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska) https://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/gfx/pwszkrosno/userfiles/anna.letkowska/second_call_for_papers_iccs2_krosno.pdf; and lecture at the institute of English Studies, U. of Warsaw, Poland, http://en.uw.edu.pl/lecture-about-metaphor/ (org. Elżbieta Górska).

16-18/4/15       Plenary talk “Stylistics and comics.” AESLA XXXIII (Theme: Multimodal Communication in the XXI Century: Professional and Academic Challenges). UPM/Technical University of Madrid (org. Silvia Molina & Ana Roldán).

28-30/1/15       Keynote/workshop “Multimodality in comics,” Winter School "Mediality and Multimodality,” University of Tübingen, Germany (org. Jan-Noel Thon & Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

1-3/12/14         Plenary and workshop “Creative pictorial & multimodal metaphor in advertising & cartoons” in PhD Masterclass in Multimodal Analysis Methods, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, with John Bateman and Theo van Leeuwen (organized by Niels Christian Hansen and Theo van Leeuwen.)

9-12/14            Guest lectures during sabbatical in Lund, Sweden: on relevance theory applied to visuals in Research Seminar organized by Carita Paradis (1/10, Lund, Lund); on pictorial runes and hand loss in comics/manga in Research Seminar organized by Göran Sönesson (16/10); on journey metaphor in seminar series “From words to discourse,” organized by Carita Paradis & Matteo Fuoli (31/10, Lund); on pictorial metaphor in advertising & cartoons (6/11) and on relevance theory applied to visuals (7/11), University of Bergen, Norway, organized by Jens Kjeldsen; on relevance theory applied to visuals and visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising seminar in Visual Communication elective, Copenhagen Business School, 14/11, organized by Daniel Barrett; on relevance theory applied to visuals in Seminars in Cognitive Science series, (19/11 Lund), organized by Peter Gärdenfors; (with Jana Holsanova) “Narrating film to the blind: Plan for a semi-experimental study,” Symposium Film, Experimental Design & Quantitative Analysis.” Film Department University of Copenhagen, 21/11, organized by Birger Lankjaer & Andreas Gregersen; on the stylistics of comics, “Medium Specificity Revisited” (also with Irina Rajewsky), Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, 17/12, organized by Jørgen Bruhn & Charlotte Hommerberg); on relevance theory applied to visuals, Department of Literature and History of Ideas,
Stockholm University, 18/12, organized by Christer Johansson.

14/5/14            Guest seminar in Metaphor course, Universität Potsdam, Institut für Romanistik (org. Eva Kimminich).

2-9/5/14           Lectures at Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija (Latvian Academy of Culture), dept. of Intercultural Communication and Foreign Languages, Riga, Latvia, Erasmus exchange (org. Anita Naciscione).

15-28/3/14       Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of  English and German philology, Spain. Participation in course “Pragmatic processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point” (org. Belén Soria Clivillés); workshop on multimodal discourse for post-PhD researchers, lecture to BA students “Critical Discourse Analysis” (org. Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio) + presentation on symposium “Rhetoric , Pragmatics and Stylistics: New Trends” (Texto y Discurso en Inglés Moderno, [HUM270] Grupo & University of Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 27-28 March) + work on my own research. 

10 -11/10/13 Keynote lecture & workshop at research seminar New Directions in Metaphor Research. University of Southern Denmark, Campus Slagelse, Denmark (org. Astrid Jensen, Thomas Wiben Jensen, and Soren Vigild Poulsen).

25-27/9/'13 Plenary talk at conference   Intersemiotic Translation , University of Lodz, Poland (org. Alina Kwiatkowska).

 25-26/713 Invited participation workshop "Language in Mind and Society," University of Birmingham, UK (org. John Barnden & Jeannette Littlemore).

11-13/7/13 Plenary talk "Relevance Theory and communicating by pictures and  word & image texts." CRAL/CILAP conference "Meaning construction and meaning interpretation: applications and implications." University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (org. Paula Peréz Sobrino & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza).

2-3/5/13 Keynote lecture at conference Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media"/Transmedial Knowledge Base for the Performing Arts (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal (org. Carla Fernandes).

15-23/3/13   Visiting scholar at University of Granada, Dept. of English  and German philology, Spain. Participation in course "Pragmatic   processes in utterance interpretation: metaphor, a case in point" + lecture to BA students (Course: "Critical Discourse Analysis") + presentation in mini-symposium on multimodal discourse + work on research (org. Belén Soria Clivillés and  Encarnacio Hidalgo Tenorio ).

18-23/2/13 Guest lectures at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities (org.  Saulė Juzelėnienė and Skirmante  Sarkauskiene).

23-24/1/13     Invited participation in workshop on metaphor in film. University of Copenhagen, Film Studies dept. (org. Torben Grodal and Johannes Riis). 

27/8/12    Workshop "Emotion in comics" at International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS) International Summer School in Affective Sciences "Art, Aesthetics & the Emotions" (22-29 August 2012), Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Château de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland (org. Cristina Soriano).

4-7/7/12       (1) Invited paper" Creative metaphors and metonyms: sound in film" for theme panel "Metaphor and Metonymy in Creative Thought and Expression Across Genres" (org. Susan Ryland & Helen Thomas); (2) invited paper "Creative mappings in GOOD IS LIGHT & BAD IS DARK" in films (with Thijs Renckens) for theme panel "Metaphor and Creativity" (org.Laura Hidalgo and Blanca Kraljevic), "RaAM conference Lancaster, UK.   

March/Apr 12     Visiting scholar at Granada University, Dept. of   English and German philology, Spain (org. Belén Soria). Participation in teaching programme, workshop on multimodal discourse, and work on research.

20-23/9/11     Invited lectures on multimodal discourse at Linnaeus University, Växjö (org. Jörgen Bruhn, Lars Elleström,and Charlotte Hommerberg) and Lund University (org. Carita Paradis and Charlotte Hommerberg), Sweden.

28-29/3/11     Pictorial and multimodal discourse in stories and argumentation. Invited talk at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany), founding international research consortium Dynamic Multimodal Communication (DMC) (org. Cornelia Mueller, Arnd Wasserloos,Guido Schnieders).

17-18/11/10     Invited talks on (1) Pictures & Relevance Theory; and (2) Multimodal Metaphor in Moving Images during workshop on Multimodal Metaphor and Expressional Movement , Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the Cluster of Exellence "Languages of Emotion" (org. Cornelia Müller, Hermann Kappelhof, Susanne Tag; other workshops by Todd Oakley).

1/6/10           Invited talk in the Multimodalities Seminar Series of the Literacy Research Discussion Group at University of Lancaster, UK (org. Mary Hamilton, Julia Gillen).

3 -8/5/10          Invited talks Austrian Association of University Teachers of English (AAUTE, Salzburg, org. Hartmut Stoeckl and Wolfgang Goertschacher), English dept. of  University of Salzburg (org: Hartmut Stöckl), English dept. Karl Franzens University at Graz (org. Bernard Ketteman), and Wissenschafts Universität Wien (org. Martin Stegu).

19-23/4/10      Three invited talks at symposium with representatives from various partner universities, celebrating the merger of Växjö University and the University of Kalmar into Linnaeus University (LnU), Sweden (org. Charlotte Hommerberg). Unable to attend because of Icelandic vulcano eruption.

28-30/1/10        Plenary talk Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PTJK) , University of Lodz, Poland, 28-29 January 2009. (Org. Alina Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka et al.)

17-18/10/09    Invited participation Contextualization and Understanding conference, Institute for the Advanced Study in Humanities & Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and talks at the Academia Sinica & Chengchi University. (Org. I-wen Su; Norman Teng; Sewen Sun).

23-25/9/09        Keynote lecture conference Communication, Cognition and Media, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Braga, Portugal. Org. Augusto Soares da Silva. http://www.cicom2009.org/ing_cicom_index.html

28/7-1/8/09

Keynote lecture "Stylistics in comics: Pictorial runes." Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Roosevelt Academy/University College, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Org.Michael Burke. http://www.roac.nl/roac/pala.shtml

7-9/5/09          Invited participation Roundtable Discourse and Creativity, Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong (Org. Rodney Jones). http://www.encityu.hk/2009/05/

26-28/3/09       Keynote lecture AESLA (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada) conference,University of Ciudad Real, Spain (Org. Rosario Caballero). http://www.aesla.uji.es/congresoxxvii/

18-20/3/09       Invited lecture Image, Vision, Mind/Bilder, Sehen, Denken conference, at Chemnitz University of Technology (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-24/10/08     Plenary lecture at Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference (AELCO/SCOLA 6), Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Valencia, Spain (Org. IgnasiNavarro, Jose Luis Otal et al.)

10-12/10/08      Plenary lecture Lived Experience, Metaphor and Multimodality: Implications in Communi-cation, Education, Learning and Knowledge . University of Rethymnon, Gallos Campus, Dept. of   Preschool Education, Crete, Greece (Org. Marios Pourkos, Eleni Katsoura, and Angeliki Polyzou).

11/9/08     "Norms and creative use in comics balloons . " The Agile Mind: Creativity in Discourse and Art . Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (VLAC), Brussels, Belgium, 11-12 September 2008 (Org. Kurt Feyaerts, Charles Forceville, and Tony Veale).

7-9/6/07     Invited paper at Zeichen der Identitaet/ Signs of Identity - Exploring the Borders conference, Leibniz University Hanover (Org. Klaus Rehkaemper, Marijanna Kresis, Gabrielle Diewald et al.).

21-25/5/07     Invited workshop and masterclass at "Multimodal Metaphor" expert meeting, De Bergse Bossen, Driebergen-Zeist/Tilburg University (org. Fons Maes). Other master classed by Dedre Gentner, Barbara Tversky, Paul Hekkert, Rachel Giora, Dianne Pecher, Larry Zbikowski, Seanna Coulson.

23/2-3/3/07     Various invited lectures and workshops at Universidad di Aruba and Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in Animation Art Aruba programme (Org. Mirto Laclé).

5-7/7/06     Invited lectureand workshop in Summer course "Multimodal discourse(s): image and communication." Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/ Cuenca, Facultad de Letras (Spain). Org.: Jesús Moya, Maria-Jésus Pinar, Rosario Caballero. Other participants: Gunther Kress, Eija Ventola, Lisa el Refaie, Crispin Thurlow, Rachel Segovia, Ernesto Suarez-Toste.

21-25/4/06      Two invited lectures on multimodal metaphor, PhD course on MultimodalDiscourse + one invited plenary lecture on Peter van Straaten, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Facultad de Letras/Ciudad Real (Spain.(Org. Rosario Caballero).

25-29/3/04           Invited talk "Cultural factors in the interpretation of multimedial metaphor." Semioticis and the Humanities (International Congress jointly organized by Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) and the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Beijing, China.

24-28/9/03      Invited talk "Pictorial metaphor in images and film." Conference Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflektion und Anwendung. Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany (Org. Klaus Sachs-Hombach).

22-2/02           "Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Modelof ANGER in comics." Conference Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives, Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition" (Dutch-Hungarian Conference on Crosscultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication), University of Pécs (PTE), Hungary (invited paper).

April 94           Two post-graduate seminars (invited) on pictorial metaphor, Trinity College, Dublin.

15/10/87          Invited paper at conference "Metaphor," Aesthetics Society, Ljubljana, Yugo-slavia.

Member advisory boards

2011-       Member editorial advisor board Lodz Papers in Pragm atics (chief editors: Paul Chilton and Monika Kopytowska), Mouton de Gruyter (www.versita.com/lp).

2010-     Member advisory board Review of Cognitive Linguistics . ISSN: 1877-9751 http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=RCL  (chief editor: Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza, University of Rioja , Spain ).  

2010-       Member advisory board of Benjamin series Cognitive Linguistic Studies of Language and Cognition in Cultural Contexts . ISSN: 1879-8047 (chief editors: Ning Yu, University of Oklahoma , USA ; Farzad Sharifian, Monash University , Australia ). http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=CLSCC&show=board  

2007- Metaphor and Symbol http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1092-6488.asp    

2007 -  2015     Atlantis : Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos . http://www.atlantisjournal.org/   

2006 -     Journal of Pragmatics . http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaleditorialboard.cws_home/505593/editorialboard   

1999 - 2007    Book review editor Metaphor and Symbol.

2006 -  Public Journal of Semiotics. http://semiotics.ca/