[Linganth] Critical Media Studies Lecture Series - Dominika Baran 19/3 4PM CET

[Catherine TEBALDI]

Dear All,
The University of Luxembourg and Marie Speyer Gender Excellence Grant is happy to support a new lecture series in critical media studies, with many focusing on digital/media/and linguistic anthropology, language and gender, or critical discourse analysis   Our first talk by the fantastic Prof. Dr.  Dominika Baran (Duke, USA) exemplifies these with a critical discourse analysis of reactionary media and anti-gender ideology.   The talk is March 19, at 4pm CET, 10am EST

Please see the invitation and abstract below. We hope to see you there!



Webinar topic:
Critical Media Studies Lecture 1

Date and time:
Thursday, March 19, 2026 4:00 PM | (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna

Join link:
https://unilu.webex.com/unilu/j.php?MTID=m096de4b8981ce41e0ff1e6b65994867c


Access code: 279 435 06525

What’s ‘rainbow’ got to do with it? Discourse analysis and media representations of LGBTQ+ issues in Poland


This talk presents two case studies of media discourse in Poland, focusing on theories and methods that draw from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and related approaches, and on how these can help us examine and interpret how words can be strategically appropriated, redefined, and recontextualized. The central thesis on which this talk builds is that meanings – of words, phrases, and concepts – are never stable and final, but rather dynamic and negotiable. They can become sites of ideological, political, and cultural struggle (Laclau 1990). Discourse analysis provides an excellent and concrete tool through which we can examine just how users of language – be they politicians, journalists, influencers, activists, or anyone else – employ tactics that shape meanings in particular ways. The two case studies discussed in this talk examine media discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ issues and what the “phantasm” of “gender ideology” (Butler 2019) in Poland. The first analyzes how the lexeme tęcza “rainbow” is used across liberal and rightwing media outlets in Poland and argues that it has become a floating signifier through which the contrasting visions of Poland’s history and future are being fought over. The second offers a detailed discourse analysis of an email newsletter sent out to subscribers by a far-right Polish organization, Center for Life and Family, in which language – including mentions of “rainbow” as a stand-in for “gender/LGBTQ+” – is manipulated in ways that construct a particular, cisheteropatriarchal and Catholic nationalist version of social reality.

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