#20260221

Conference first day

As expected I'm delayed in posting my conference blog!! I stayed up till like midnight the night before the conference perfecting my slides and making sure my clothes were nicely ironed after once again getting crammed into my suitcase. Then I was up at 6:30 to do one run-through of my presentation before heading to Nagoya University to make sure my timing was good. Well... so I thought. I forgot to actually start a timer. After I finished, I didn't have time to do it again and actually figure out how long it took, so off I went hoping for the best. It's a good thing I've done so many conferences by now that I have fully internalized how long 20 minutes is - when I actually gave my presentation, I came in perfectly on time. It's a nice reminder that, yeah, I do know what I'm doing! Here was my fit for day 1 (I immediately got compliments on my little bunny plushie):

Anyway, it was a very easy transit to the university, only 2 stops away on the subway. I got only a little bit turned around when I got to campus, because I had written the wrong building, but quickly found my way to the venue. I was a little apprehensive because I know no one at this conference, so I didn't want to show up too early. I got there around 15mins before the opening remarks started and awkwardly settled in, saying nothing to anyone. I knew I would have to put my extrovert had on soon, so took that little bit of time in the morning to just look and listen. It seems a lot of the other presenters and organizers knew each other, some had even brought gifts from their home country for the organizers! It was very sweet!

During the opening remarks I got to learn a bit about the history of this conference. It's called IcoLL2026, and is actually the joining of two separate conferences: The 4th Iconicity Seminar and the 15th International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature. I had never heard of either of these before. I have done a lot of conferences in the Indigenous Languages field, particularly of North America, and then other North American conferences like on syntax and more general conferences like the Canadian Linguistic Association annual conference. This was my first time coming to something specifically about iconicity, and a conference which drew a lot of researchers working on gesture and signed languages. Broadly speaking, iconicity is when form resembles meaning - for example, onomatopoeia like boom, meow; gestures that are miming an action like knitting or showing people walking using your hands in an upside-down v; some signs like ASL for tree or banana; talking about a small animal in high-pitched voice and large animal in low-pitched voice; etc. So, because I research primarily iconic gestures (where you can transparently understand what the gesture is representing), this is why I applied. Any misrepresentations of authors' research in my post is obviously my own! I'm going from memory and shoddy notes!

The conference opened with some comments from the organizers, and broad observations and questions about iconicity (entitled Disentangling iconicity by Hinano Iida). For just a taste of the kinds of things I heard about at this conference so far... How does the mapping between form and meaning differ across modalities? What are some theoretical, experimental, cross-linguistic comparisons? How can we separate iconicity from transparency, when they are often conflated? How can we investigate the relationships between iconicity and sound symbolism (e.g. the famous bouba and kiki experiment: one of these shapes is bouba, one is kiki. Which is which?)

I have known these terms of iconicity, sound symbolism, form/meaning for a long time but never really delved into the theory or history, or engaged really very deeply beyond "this gesture is iconic." So my goal for this conference was to learn a lot from other people. There were presentations lined up on literature, art, comics, music, so all sorts of things I have not heard about before at conferences!

Immediately following was the opening plenary titled A structural perspective on relational similarity in iconicity (by Noburo Saji), where Noburo asked how can we empirically investigate the process of relational similarity mapping to/corresponding to iconicity, and he conducted a case study regarding whether sound-meaning correspondences can be detected from structural similarities. So, if speakers are shown a bunch of different random shapes (like above) and rate them in terms of their similarities to each other, you can end up with a relational map across different features like "roundness/spikiness" and "simple/complex." Speakers can also be asked to rate the similarities of different sound pairings, like "ba" to "ka" or "ni" to "me," which can also be represented as a relational map. Then, how do those two maps (shapes and sounds) compose with each other? Noburo found that when composing these relational maps on top of each other, the /a/ vowel sounds aligned with groupings of shapes that were more complex, jagged, and wide; whereas the /u/ vowel sounds aligned with shapes that were more simple, smooth, and narrow. It was really interesting to hear about this method which I had absolutely no idea about! I generally tried to ask questions at every talk I went to, or if I had no time, go to authors afterwards/during the coffee breaks. Or at least record questions in my notebook to prompt myself to keep thinking about things. So, even by the first coffee break, I had people to talk to. Also the general atmosphere at the conference was super friendly, and it was easy to just walk into conversations and ask the classic "where are you based, what do you work on"!

I had to make some decisions about the talks I attended throughout the day since there were so many different sessions. I'll keep the notes to just that hint of those two talks above, so that this doesn't turn into a book report (also because then it will feel like work to me! I want this to feel like a blog to me!)

Do visual signals really afford more iconicity than acoustic signals? by Qingfeng Tong and Marcus Perlman (I got talking with Qingfeng later in the day and the next day, he was really interested in my work too! And asked how to find me/my work, to which I had to admit I don't have a website and don't talk about my work on social media and don't have many publications... talk about motivation to actually finally make a website!!)

Automatic identification of phonetic and semantic patterns for iconicity research: A transformer approach by Tom Parker and Jared Allen (a lot of this was over my head, but Tom explained it so nicely to me when I had more questions later!)

The iconicity of "shadow" from In Praise of Shadows (Tanizaki Junichiro) to Murakami Haruki's novels as the key to explore the modern Japanese psyche, aesthetic, and identity by Bich Nha Truc Nguyen and Tooru Inuoe

Multimodal iconicity - ideophones and co-speech gestures in Ga and German by Josiah Nii Ashie Neequaye, Josephine Kim Kaul, Markus Steinbach, and Cornelia Ebert (I spent some time throughout the conference talking with Josiah!)

And then my talk closed out the day (in one of the concurrent sessions), Going above and beyond: Iconic pitch and gesture extension in Hul’q’umi’num’.

There was also a poster session in which I did not get to talk to everyone/look at all the posters but I spent some time around:

Are turn off the music and turn the music off two different signs? by Marina Gorlach

The role of iconicity in the acquisition of Mandarin modal verbs and temporal adverbs by Japanese learners by Huichen Hsiao and Tzu-po Wu

An onomasiological model of onomatopoeia-formation by Livia kortvelyessy and Pavol Stekauer

It was great getting to chat to so many different people during the breaks! I got so wrapped up during the lunch break that I didn't have time to go to a restaurant so just grabbed a quick convenience store sandwich + onigiri. It's fine, I was more invested in continuing conversations! There was so much new stuff for me to be thinking about. I had some good questions about my presentation too, and suggestions for what else to look at in future work. The one linguist here who is like a celebrity to me, Pamela Perniss, even attended my talk and asked me questions and seemed really invested in it!! So cool!! I was a little bit star struck. I also met a linguist who did her PhD at UVic, Mihoko Teshigawara, which was awesome! We got talking about various people in the department, and B.C. things generally.

It was a bit of a shame I couldn't stick around after the conference wrapped up for the day, I know some people went to get dinner together afterwards, and there were some folks I wanted to continue chatting with. But I had to run off to go back to my hotel, change out of my now very sweaty shirt (my body still gets nervous even if my brain doesn't, bad for an already sweaty person), quickly eat dinner at a restaurant nearby, and then go to a concert. Wild. I knew it was a pretty bonkers plan when I bought the tickets, but I couldn't resist.

For dinner I went to an Indian place near my hotel, and struggled through communications since they didn't speak English. But I ordered a vegetarian set, which I figured was pretty safe. I was reassured by the staff (in Japanese) that there was no meat in it, so!

As it turns out, the small soup served with the combo 100% had meat in it. That was kinda silly. I figured that out pretty quickly though so didn't eat much. The salad, curry, pickles, and breads were good though! I had to eat it so quickly since I was on a time crunch, which was exceptionally difficult because it was piping hot. It was also the first full, balanced, healthy meal I'd eaten all day (actually, I ended up getting in the zone and skipping dinner last night too) so my stomach was needless to say a bit overwhelmed. I am very glad I got a big dinner though, I really needed it after slacking on eating for the previous 3 meals. Whoops. Don't be like me.

I wrapped up and jumped back on the subway to the concert arena, about a 15min transit away. I got there 15mins before the concert started, the perfect amount of time to get to my seat and not have to wait long!

The group I was there to see is called XG. They're a group made up of 7 Japanese members, but they promote in the kpop industry, but all of their music is almost exclusively in English...so they're kind of hard to define. They also have a wide variety of genres in their discography, so they can't even really be categorized as jpop/kpop, when a lot of their music is rap or hiphop inspired, with a few ballads as well. They're a super cool band, I've been peripherally aware of them since they debuted in 2022, but started actually paying attention to them around 2024, with my recent investment in them starting towards the end of 2025. They're super eye catching, their outfits and styling are really unique in the industry, with their album photoshoots being just visually so stunning! XG's general concept (to my understanding, I don't know as much about their lore as I do for example ATEEZ) are that they're ?aliens? from outerspace? but also they have a lot of wolf imagery? I'm not so clear on it. But a lot of their styling leans towards this alien, fantasy, otherworldly vibe. And, all the videos in between sets at the concert were very much about their space travels and interplanetary ventures.

Seriously, their album photoshoots and music videos are so fucking cool. If you watch only one music video by them, I have to recommend Gala, it's so good and their choreo is awesome!

The seats I had for the concert weren't the best, but hey, I was still seeing XG perform in Japan, so I can't really complain. At least the people in front of me stayed sitting, so I didn't have to stand the whole show! XG put on a spectacular performance, with live vocals even better than their studio versions, precise and intense choreography, really interesting stage outfits. It was incredible!! It also felt really special to me because XG is the first and only group in the kpop industry to have a member who is out as transmasc nonbinary, Cocona (he/they). He only just came out recently, and has talked about the endless support from his group, the company's CEO, the fans, everyone. He's been super open about his experience with gender too, even posting pictures of his top surgery scars. I really didn't know if I would ever see that in the industry. It's so emotional, and I'm not even the person having to go through navigating that in very homophobic countries! When they came on stage and Cocona sang their first line, I absolutely did start tearing up. The industry is moving in really positive directions, with more idols coming out as queer if they can, or signalling queerness even if they can't/don't want to come out, and it's all so beautiful to see. I'm so grateful for idols like Cocona who are taking these gigantic first steps, because surely it will mean that others can or can feel comfortable doing the same. I have a lot of feelings about it, y'all.

Overall it was just a bonkers day to go from getting very little sleep and eating not enough food and drinking too much coffee, to actually giving the conference presentation I'd been chipping away at for months, to going to an intense concert in a totally foreign city. What an experience!! I was friggin exhausted when I got back to the hotel (it wasn't even that late...) which is why I'm posting this a day later. I was extremely happy that the first talk of the conference day 2 wasn't until 10am! Since I don't have many notes from day 2, I'm just putting it in this same post.

Conference second day

I'm super glad I presented on the first day, since that meant I could just chill and enjoy the rest of the talks for the remainder of the conference, with my full attention. What with it being day 2, most folks were visually familiar to me now or I had talked to them yesterday, so I was more comfortable engaging in conversations! I got to have some follow-ups with people who wanted to talk to me after my presentation yesterday too so that was nice. One presenter even told me that some of the people who had gone to dinner after the conference wrapped up yesterday were talking about my presentation and were really impressed by my research...that was so exciting to hear!! My work being talked about without me there?? Unheard of!

I managed to get actual lunch today, at a Chinese restaurant on campus. They didn't have any English menu but thankfully the machine in my pocket could translate from a picture of the menu so I was somewhat confident I could get meatless food. Indeed, once I was there I checked the menu again and asked the employee about the dishes I was most confident were meatless, in very very simple Japanese, and they assured me that yes they were okay. There was an insanely cheap lunch combo of a rice dish plus a ramen dish, so I went for kimchi fried rice and negi ramen (somewhat spicy broth with a bunch of thinly sliced green onions on top). The ramen broth was certainly meat, but like, whatever. It was a ton of food for ~$7.50 and I wasn't sure what the dinner situation would be like so I was happy to fill up.

I tried to attend a variety of talk topics rather than just sticking with the linguistic-y ones, to get more perspectives, even if I am initially drawn to the linguistics ones. Here's what I attended today:

Iconicity bootstrapping hypothesis for the acquisition and evolution of language, plenary talk by Mutsumi Imai

The (in)flexibility of classifier handshapes: Iconic depiction in two unrelated sign languages by Vanessa Tsang, Thomas Finkbeiner, Markus Steinbach, and Aaron Yiu Leung Wong (Vanessa and I really nerded out about classifiers when I went to ask her some questions about her talk during a break!)

Iconicity and handshape type frequency in Taiwan Sign Language by Jane Tsay and James Myers (Jane had a lot to tell me about the history of Taiwan Sign Language when I asked her some questions during the break, and suggested a great book I should read about history of signed languages around the world)

How "no littering" pictograms construe events: A cognitive linguistic analysis of action chains and profiling by Ayaka Nishimura (one of the attendees I ended up chatting with the most! She has been so friendly!)

Beyond words: Multimodal iconicity in Judith Gautier's Japonist poems by Ibtihel Ghourabi

The iconicity, indexicality, and frequency of lines in comics and manga by Irmak Hacımusaoǧlu, Ana Krajinović, and Neil Cohn (such a fascinating topic that really got me thinking about the analysis of comics, I had never heard anything about this before!)

Sonority sounds beautiful, round, friendly, erotic—but why? Effects of iconicity and indexicality on language attitudes by Simon David Stein

Iconicity and visual languages in a multimodal language faculty, plenary talk by Neil Cohn (holy heck this guy is cool, I would love to work with him)

And then the posters I got to see today (again, only a subset of the total):

A chronotopic analysis of iconic gestures in rock climbing narratives by Kuniyoshi Kataoka (lots of discussion of gestural viewpoint, which I know a lot about, so it was cool to talk to Kuniyoshi and compare points from what he noticed in his narratives to what I notice in Hul’q’umi’num’ storytelling)

Cross-cultural differences in gesture use in comics: A corpus-based multimodal analysis by Kazuki Sekine, Konoka Yanase, Kadota Keisuke, and Neil Cohn

To translate or not to translate ideophones in manga: It depends on meaning by Mai Mori and Kimi Akita

Such a full day! I also ended up chatting a lot with Leah Pappas, I wasn't able to attend her talk yesterday (being at a different session) but our areas of research/interest are somewhat similar, and she is also here not knowing anyone and pretty new to the field of iconicity, so we had a lot in common. I'm very grateful for everyone who has been so nice and welcoming and open to conversation.

After day 2 concluded we walked a short distance to a restaurant on the edge of campus for the conference dinner, buffet-style variety of dishes and drinks, with tables in the centre and standing room around to encourage mingling and conversation. There was about 4 different vegetarian things I could eat, which was great!! I had no idea what my options would be. I took zero photos, but there was some salad, roasted potatoes, vegetarian "meatballs" (kinda like the Ikea vegetable balls) in some creamy sauce, and vegetarian Japanese-style curry and rice. And then mochi with peanut powder on it for a sweet(ish) treat! I was happy to use this time to keep talking with some of the pals I had made throughout day 1 and 2. I got to meet one of the presenters whose talk I couldn't attend but who works on ideophones, named Marta Herget.

I tapped out of dinner around 8pm, super tired of being "on" all day, and headed back to the hotel to finally write this post up! Tomorrow's a short day at the conference (just 10-1), and then I'll head to Ghibli Park with some of the other attendees! I have no idea how many. But the conference organizers suggested for those of us that are interested to take an excursion to Ghibli Park since it's just outside of Nagoya, and I absolutely couldn't resist! I've been so excited about it since I got tickets!! So, tomorrow's post will definitely include a lot more photos.

The conference is going fast and it will be sad to finish up tomorrow, but I have so many interesting things to read and I am so glad I know more people in this part of the field now. I really do enjoy coming to conferences!! I feel so lucky to be truly in love with what I do. Conferences are always a great opportunity to remember that.