28.4903, Calls: Discourse Analysis/Hungary

Tue Nov 21 20:36:42 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4903. Tue Nov 21 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4903, Calls: Discourse Analysis/Hungary

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Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:35:54
From: Sigurd D'hondt [sigurd.a.dhondt at jyu.fi]
Subject: Regimenting the Public Sphere: The Politics of Visibility

Full Title: Regimenting the Public Sphere: The Politics of Visibility 

Date: 06-Sep-2018 - 08-Sep-2018
Location: Budapest, Hungary 
Contact Person: Jan Zienkowski
Meeting Email: jan_zienkowski at yahoo.com

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis 

Call Deadline: 01-Jan-2018 

Meeting Description:

The category of visibility constitutes a key dimension of the public sphere,
up to the extent that the public sphere can be characterized as constituted
in/by struggles over visibility. At the threshold of visibility, one often
encounters power struggles over what aspects of social and cultural practices
deserve a public stage, and what aspects should be relegated to the private
sphere (or made invisible altogether). 

Panel conveners:

Jan Zienkowski, PReCoM (Pôle de Recherches sur la Communications et les
Medias), Saint-Louis University, Brussels
Sigurd D’hondt, Research Collegium for Language in changing Society (ReCLaS),
University of Jyväskylä

Call for Papers:

For the upcoming 2nd International Conference on Sociolingusitics, Budapest
6-8 September 2018 (http://ics2.elte.hu/), we would like to bring together
scholars from various backgrounds and invite them to reflect on these
struggles over visibility, which are at the heart of many ongoing attempts to
(re-)shape and (re)structure the public sphere in our contemporary societies.
We are interested in empirical investigations that look into such struggles
over visibility from various angles, and in a variety of online and offline
settings. We welcome contributions that document and investigate actual
practices of regimenting/reclaiming the public sphere (ethnography, linguistic
landscaping), as well as work that examines the macro-discursive structures
(discourse analysis) and/or the situated communicative events (conversation
analysis, interactional sociolinguistics) through/in which such
regimenting/reclaiming is discursively negotiated.

A first kind of struggle over visibility, with a strong presence in the
current sociopolitical climate, can be referred to as “the politics of
erasure.” This politics comprises various attempts, usually initiated by local
municipal authorities, to regiment activities and practices not because they
constitute a crime or would endanger members of the public, but because they
are perceived as “polluting the public space” and/or “scaring members of the
public.” Items to be removed from the public sphere, or to be “pushed back”
beyond the boundaries of public perception, include cultural practices (e.g.,
wearing a burkini, a headscarf, etc.) and linguistic practices (e.g., foreign
language advertisements and other expressions of multilingualism), as well as
certain forms of economic activity (e.g., begging, busking etc.). Often, such
attempts to regiment the public sphere are targeting practices and/or
activities that have a linguistic, a social and an economic component. Think,
for example, of restrictions on “appearance-degrading” businesses, which are
often also migrant-owned: night shops, shisha bars, internet shops, video
stores, etc. 

The politics of erasure is grounded in a vision of “appropriateness” that
re-signifies everyday activities as indexing wider socio-political problems,
and hence as undesirable (a clear example would be the transformation of the
headscarf into an index of religious conflict and non-integration). It brands
its own way of “seeing” the public space as the only legitimate one, and hence
as the only one that should be allowed to inscribe itself into the materiality
of public everyday life. Paradoxically, this process leads to a heightened
visibility of the phenomena that are considered illegitimate.

At the other end of the continuum, one finds various attempts to “reclaim” the
public sphere, such as the various struggles waged by minority group activists
to decenter “oppressive” representations and practices associated with the
colonial past. In doing so, these activists negotiate alternative ways of
seeing/experiencing the public sphere, decentering the hegemonic gaze that
problematizes expressions of diversity and making visible the historical
patterns of insubordination on which it is founded. Other activists pursue a
more proactive strategy, opening up the public sphere to alternative orders of
indexicality through physically “altering” the material organization of the
public space, either transiently or permanently. This can be done within
existing regulatory frameworks, as exemplified by the various struggles for
the recognition of alternative lifestyles and minority communities (e.g.,
through amendments to the public calendar). On other occasions, however, this
may take the form of transgressive re-territorializations that problematize
the very notion of the public realm, ranging from guerilla gardening, over
Occupy-style appropriations of squares and plazas, to the tactics and
practices of the so-called “black bloc”.

Looking at the public sphere through the lens of visibility allows us to
explore interconnections between public space, as a feature of the material
organization of the physical landscapes in which we live our lives, and the
public sphere as a discursive phenomenon. In addition to an actual space, the
public sphere is also a spatial metaphor for a set of discursive practices and
shared meanings through which we imagine ourselves to be part of a wider
network of mutual accessibility/reflexive accountability. Of particular
importance are the various technologically mediated channels that mediate the
dissemination of these discursive practices: mass media, social media
platforms, etc. The resulting mediatized debates are a major site were
struggles over the regimentation public sphere are fought. On other occasions,
however, these mediating channels become themselves caught up in struggles
over visibility, as attempts to decenter oppressive representations often
specifically target media content. Focusing on the category of visibility
allows us to explore how these different realms, ranging from physical to
digital space, mutually mediate one another, without treating one or the other
as somehow more “foundational.”

These initial musings aside, we are of course very much interested in what you
have to say on these struggles over visibility. As indicated, we wish to bring
together scholars from diverse backgrounds. If you would like to join the
panel, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to
jan_zienkowski at yahoo.com or sigurd.a.dhondt at jyu.fi on January 1, 2018 by the
latest.

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