The Routledge Handbook of Language and Mind Engineering

Edited by Chris Shei and James Schnell

Call for chapter proposals

[ second round ]

The Routledge handbook of language and mind engineering aims to bring together a collection of groundbreaking essays on mind engineering (alternatively called mind control, brainwashing, cognitive manipulation, and so on) in today’s society in all walks of life. The handbook explores the anatomy of mind engineering technique by scrutinizing it from linguistic, media and technology, and psychological perspectives. Proposals of chapters are solicitated in the following areas in the form of a tentative chapter title and an abstract of no less than 300 words. For your reference, some chapter names already admitted are given below in relevant sections.

Mind engineering theory

(Brainwashing in literary and historical contexts, The theory and philosophy of mind engineering)

• Brainwashing in Cold War Fiction and Film
• Bernays to Big Data: From the Engineering of Consent to the Engineering of the Mind
• Hypervolition: Imposed Desires and Our Sacrifice of Choice

Political mind engineering

(Patriotic education and nationalism, Propaganda, censorship, prosecution and murder, Humiliation, threat, superiority, collective goods, world peace)

• Creating Model Chinese Youth in X-Change: A Multimodal Legitimation Analysis
• Patriotic and nationalistic discourse in sociological field in China in the context of social management ideas
• Biological Plasticity, Exceptionalism, and Vaccine Hesitancy: The Politics of Pure Life and Nationalism in India during COVID-19
• The Truth Lies In-between: Mind Engineering in the 2020-21 Indian Farmers' Protest
• Engineering the Mind of a Child: The Potency of Japanese Language Lessons in Colonized Korea
• Unraveling Mnemonic Manipulations in Electioneering: Investigations into Mind Engineering within Taiwanese Elections
• Red Tourism: Promoting Spirituality, Ecology, and Patriotism in Tibet

Mind engineering in business and industry

(Media advertisements, Email or phone scams, Social media manipulation and game addiction)

• The Benefit of the Doubt: How Big Oil Made Us Think
• Collective narratives in workplaces: from identity work to a form of mind shaping
• From Off Grid to Prepper: Prepper Magazines that Engineer the Paranoid Mind
• The Commodification of Sexual Wellness, Race, Gender, and The Engineering of Consent: Wildflowersex vs. Black Femmes, A Case Study
• Humor as a mind-engineering tool in the digital age: the case of stand-up comedy

Mind engineering in other domains

(Religious brainwashing, Gender inequality, Family and ethnic mind engineering, Culture as mind engineering tool, The rule of law)

• Of Maidens, Stars and the Blue of Night: A Critical Approach to Understanding Extremist Recruitment through Songs and Dreams
• Empowering women in social media discourse
• “Bullshitting” Climate Change and COVID-19: Brainwashing Through Social Media.
• The ‘Cult’: Brainwashing, and Beyond, in the Construction of a Category
• “You are nothing but a hole”: Brainwash porn, incel ideology and the limits of gender

Linguistic aspect of mind engineering

(Linguistic analysis of mind engineering publications, Analyzing patriotic and nationalistic discourse, authoritarian documents and speeches, Sociolinguistic or Psycholinguistics aspect of mind engineering)

• The metapragmatics of political mind engineering in Chinese official discourse: Steering the pendulum between authoritarian and totalitarian discourse modes
• Linguistic Characteristics and Strategies of Mind Engineering: Evidence from Political, Nationalist, and Pro-China Discourse
• A sociolinguistic perspective on VOA’s ideological engineering in bilingual news
• Killing Two Birds with One Stone: China English Translation in China’s Internal and External Propaganda and Ideological Work
• Manipulating the Mind of Audience: A Translation from the Verbal to the Cinematic
• Patriotism and nationalism in Chinese fansubbing

Psychological aspect of mind engineering

(The malleability and manipulability of the human mind, The neurological basis of mind engineering, The use of logical fallacies and outright deception in mind engineering)

• Designing Mental Wellness Therapies Using Mind Engineering Techniques
• Language Corruption in a Blended Space: A Cognitive Linguistic Account
• How to use personal linguistic profile to control people: low-frequency lexicon texture

The science and technology of mind engineering

(Algorithms used by social media to control user emotions and actions, Control and censorship of Internet in authoritarian regimes, The use of AI in surveillance, detection, prediction and influencing decision-making)

• [place holder]

Please email your proposal with proposed chapter title, abstract and the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the proposed author(s) to both editors’ email addresses below:

Dr Chris Shei: c-c.shei@swansea.ac.uk

Dr Jim Schnell: james.schnell@fulbrightmail.org                

Deadline for submitting your chapter proposal: 31 January 2022

Deadline for submitting full article if commissioned: 31 December 2022