Project Conference

The project conference was the first time that the phenomenon of 'conspiracy theory' was comprehensively examined from a linguistic perspective. With a total of 21 presentations, the interdisciplinary range of methodological and content-related focuses was illustrated: In addition to pragmatic, interactional and lexical-semantic approaches, multimodal and language didactic perspectives were presented. Several contributions were dedicated to the media dissemination conditions of conspiracy theories in the digital space against the background of platform-specific affordances. Thematically, conspiracy theories from different discourse spaces such as health, migration and religion were at the center of interest. Overlaps between conspiracy theories and populist and (right-wing) extremist patterns of language use were traced across several presentations. The contributions to the conference were united by a focus on the production of conspiracy theory research through language. An anthology, which will be published by transcipt at the end of 2026, will bring together the findings of the conference.