Join us to celebrate the achievements of our participants and alumni in the PhD program on Managing Languages, Arguments and Narratives in the Datafied Society (LAND). This is a moment to share insights, exchange ideas for the future, and honor everyone who has contributed to the PhD program and our transdisciplinary community with a certificate.

Speakers:

• Carlo Torniai | Group Chief Data Analytics Officer, Angelini Industries
• Dr. Marius Born | Alumni, ZHAW
• Prof. Dr. Marlies Whitehouse | Alumni, ZHAW
• Prof. Dr. Andrea Rocci and Prof. Dr. Daniel Perrin | Co-Directors of the PhD program

With contributions from our PhD students.

To be continued

We are pleased to announce the continuation of our PhD program in a new format. With an innovative linguistic focus and an expanded network of cooperation partners—both long-standing and new—we are strengthening our commitment to applied linguistic research, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. 

This new phase of our programme will offer opportunities for doctoral candidates employed at Zurich University of Applied Sciences to conduct innovative research and academic exchange. Stay tuned for further details on the updated program structure and partnerships.

Keynotes

A conversation on the need of "argumentation spaces" for sustainable data and AI-centric organizations

This session explores the fundamental yet often undervalued role of argumentation skills in data and AI-centric organizations. Argumentation has always been at the core of strategic decision-making and governance processes in organizations, whether formally recognized or not. As Generative AI technologies become increasingly embedded in strategic decision-making, the ability to critically identify issues, evaluate and articulate solutions, raise related questions and defend positions, emerges as an essential competency for organizational success.

In this session, we will examine how different AI types (predictive vs. generative) impact decision-making processes that underpin organizational strategy, highlighting a paradox: increasingly sophisticated data processing capabilities might lead to the dismissal of human critical thinking and argumentative dialogue rather than demanding their advancement.

We aim to foster collaboration between business practitioners and argumentation scholars to define, develop, and preserve vital "argumentative spaces" that might otherwise be considered obsolete due to technological advancement. The session will culminate in a facilitated brainstorming segment where participants, as argumentation experts, will contribute their knowledge on key theoretical and analytical concepts related to argumentation and on emerging research topics (such as computational argumentation and discussion in polylog).

The hope is that together we can start identifying potential avenues for applied research and practical approaches to address this problem space with its vast societal and organizational implications.

Building Trust in Startup Communication: Connecting Heart and Mind Through Arguments and Stories

The formula of e → i, or “Emotion before Information,” might seem simple, but it’s transformative in mass communication. When we feel, we care—and only then does the mind truly open up to capturing new information. In a world overwhelmed with data, emotional connection is the key to capturing and holding attention. Yet, especially in business, we often rush to the facts, pushing information before connection, numbers before narrative. Imagine this: instead of diving straight into the data, what if we start with a story that resonates? What if we tap into curiosity, empathy, or excitement first? By leading with emotion, we create a space where information isn’t just heard but felt and remembered. But the true art lies in crafting narratives that touch the heart without sacrificing the mind. How do we create stories that captivate emotionally while staying grounded in logic and reason?

This question was at the heart of my PhD project. It explored how stories and structured arguments can interweave, particularly in scenarios where tangible evidence is limited, and trust must be established through plausible, credible communication. This approach is crucial for startup founders, who are often tasked with persuading investors of their vision without an extensive track record. Here, strategic communicative trust-building is paramount, and the cost of losing that trust is high. In my keynote I will talk about the case of the Nikola Corporation, an Arizona-based startup that entered the field of next-generation propulsion technologies. Their rapid rise and subsequent challenges underscore both the power and potential perils of narrative-driven communication in tech startups. And I will talk about how my research project has enriched my consulting work and how theory and practice can be mutually enriching.

Building Trust in Startup Communication: Exploring the Interplay of Arguments and Stories in the Case of the Nikola Corporation is available Open Access: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-63284-6

 

Transdisciplinarity in Financial Communication. Writing for Target Readers

“Buy”, “hold”, or “sell” – these three words summarize the most frequent financial analysts’ recommendations to investors. And these three words are easy enough to understand: the investors are advised to buy, hold, or sell securities, i.e. stocks, bonds, or warrants. But do investors, and especially retail investors, understand the reasoning behind these recommendations?

This presentation identifies and analyses problems of text production in finance from three complementary perspectives and explains why solving these problems benefits theory, practice, and society at large. Thereby, it carries out a research project in transdisciplinary collaboration from the very first to the very last step and proposes evaluated and valid measures to improve writing in finance.

Transdisciplinarity in Financial Communication. Writing for Target Readers
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-29115-9 

 

Back to the argumentation basics

As several of the PhD students of the LAND program draw near to completing dissertations where they present theoretically and methodologically sophisticated explorations of argumentation in different contexts of interaction of our datafied society, it is perhaps worth going back to the fundamentals and to the beginnings of the broad interdisciplinary research program on “argumentation in context” many of these theses, more or less explicitly, refer to. What is argumentation, after all? What have we learned about it? What makes our knowledge of it valuable and distinct from what more mainstream philosophers, logicians, psychologists, communication scholars or even mainstream linguists might (incidentally) say about it? I will approach these questions by going back to a unique paper published by Eddo Rigotti and Sara Greco in 2009, halfway between a foundational manifesto and a pedagogical introduction to the field. I will revisit a few now half-forgotten parts of that paper, such as the oddly named “fishbone model”, and I will reflect on the double valence of argumentation as “an object of interest” and as “a cultural resource”, highlighted in the paper. The hope is to stimulate a productive discussion with the participants, where a retrospective consideration of their thesis work nourishes a broad scope vision on the value of their intellectual pursuit for themselves and for society.   

Reference:
Rigotti, E., & Greco Morasso, S. (2009). Argumentation as an Object of Interest and as a Social and Cultural Resource. In N. Muller Mirza & A.-N. Perret-Clermont (Eds.), Argumentation and Education (pp. 9–66). Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-98125-3_2

On, for, and with practitioners – Fostering transdisciplinary PhD programs in times of science criticism

Fake news, conspiracy theories, and criticism toward science and academia challenge rational discourse and decision-making on societal levels. In academia, the humanities and social sciences tend to experience both harsh criticism and dwindling funding. Against this backdrop, systematically preparing next generations of scholars to mediate between the main discourses in sciences, professional fields outside academia, and society at large can both foster the scholars’ individual success and bolster the standing of science in everyday life. This contribution explains how – and to what effect – cooperations between Swiss universities have woven this rationale into a series of PhD programs in Applied Linguistics.