CRITICS: globalisation of discursive practices

[Kay P Richardson]

Dear Norman (et al)

I am quite interested in this too.  I teach a course which considers questions of the
globalisation of culture, with a linguistic dimension.  I prefer to start from the baseline of
national culture and identity, and interrogate the extent to which we are moving beyond the
'national' reference point  - fragmentation/homogenization is just as relevant a dichotomy as
global/local for my purposes.  Nationhood still has a pretty strong hold, it would seem.  So -
yes I am interested: keep me posted


On Wed, 22 Nov 1995 13:04:27 +0000 (GMT) Mr N Fairclough wrote:

> From: Mr N Fairclough <N.Fairclough at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 13:04:27 +0000 (GMT)
> Subject: CRITICS: globalisation of discursive practices
> To: CRITICS-L at uva.nl
>
> I would like to see how much interest there is in establishing a network
> around the theme of globalisation of discourse practices.
>
> What I mean by this is the tendency in the contemporary world for
> discourse practices to "flow" sometimes rather rapidly across boundaries
> of culture and language. Examples would be the "Americanisation" of
> political discourse on TV, the spread of workplace genres associated
> with new managerial practices such as "quality circles", or the spread
> of methods of English language teaching and the their assocviated
> discourse practices which originate in eg the USA or Britain.
>
> The assumption is not at all that there is a simple process of
> convergence going on. Globalisation is perhaps best thought of in terms
> of a globalisation/localisation dialectic, so that a key question is how
> practices become transformed in the process of being appropriated within
> specific local discursive economies (orders of discourse). The concept
> of globalisation suggests that to some degree there is perhaps emerging
> a global "order of discourse" which means that the discourse practices
> of one culture may become points of reference for others, but leaves
> open for me the longer-term import or direction of change. Other
> questions are about: the channels and networks through which these
> flows take place; how globalisation of discourse practices relates to
> globalisation in a wider sense - cultural globalisation, economic
> globalisation; how these processes might be politically read - for
> instance are the concepts of hegemony or imperialism relevant?
>
> I would like to hear from anyone who is interested in these issues, and
> I would like to hear about any research going on which bears upon them.
> A network in this area could perahps lead quite soon to a book launching
> this field of research (I have vaguely been thinking about that), to
> conferences, and perhaps tio collaborative research. I would welcome
> responses to the suggestion of any sort.
>
> 				Norman Fairclough,
> 				Linguistics Department,
> 				Lancaster University, UK