33.3059, Calls: Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics/Belgium
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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3059. Thu Oct 06 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 33.3059, Calls: Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics/Belgium
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Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2022 04:29:14
From: Philippe Hambye [philippe.hambye at uclouvain.be]
Subject: “Keywords” in sociopolitical debates: approaches to struggles about meaning in discourse
Full Title: “Keywords” in sociopolitical debates: approaches to struggles about meaning in discourse
Date: 09-Jul-2023 - 14-Jul-2023
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Contact Person: Philippe Hambye
Meeting Email: philippe.hambye at uclouvain.be
Web Site: https://pragmatics.international/page/Program2023
Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics
Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2022
Meeting Description:
Panel session at 18th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA2023)
Some terms that are highly dominant in current-day societal debate (such as
populist, woke, cancel culture, sustainable development, fake news or
integration) seem to be used with a variety of meanings depending on the
context and/or the position of the speaker. While these words are frequently
used as if their meaning was conventional and clear, this meaning appears at
the same time to be extremely vague, and is often the subject of explicit
controversy. Yet, such “keywords” (Williams 1985; Jeffries & Walker 2017) or
“formules” (Krieg-Planque 2010) play a central role in political and media
discourse: they participate in processes of classification/categorization
which are related to political orientations and ideologies (Heller & McElhinny
2017, p. 4-9). Indeed, establishing who or what fits into one of the
categories these keywords refer to – e.g. saying who is “populist” or not,
what counts as “sustainable development” or not – is a way to differentiate
and hierarchize objects (ideas, individuals, groups, practices, etc.), and
hence to legitimize or disqualify them. Therefore, the way they are used in
specific pragmatic contexts – associated with other words in lexical networks
(Gobin et Deroubaix 2009) or with certain targets and realities –, makes such
keywords the locus of a “semantic struggle” (Kranert, 2020) to define and
delimitate these words and categories. Moreover, as Seargeant points out,
studying these keywords can be seen as “a very useful technique for getting to
grips with the mindset of a community, not least because it reveals just how
freighted with specific meaning particular words can become, and how these
then act as a building blocks with which we write contemporary history”
(Seargeant, 2020, p. 18).
Keywords have already been analyzed from a variety of perspectives. Corpus
linguistics methods have been applied, but also Discourse Historical Approach
and Discourse Theory have tackled such terms (e.g. Alzahrani, 2018, analyzes
the term liberalism). Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies has elaborated a
methodology to look into keywords, including comparative work (see e.g.
Schröter et al. (2019) on multiculturalism in British, French, German and
Italian newspaper articles).
References
Alzahrani, N. (2018). The discourse of liberalism in Saudi context: A
diachronic corpus-assisted discourse study of the construction of
‘alibrāliyah’ in the Saudi press. [Doctoral dissertation. Cardiff University].
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/119123/.
Gobin, C. & J.-Cl. Deroubaix. (2009). Mots, fréquence et réseaux dans le
discours politique: analyse lexicométrique, méthode et illustration dans deux
corpus de textes européens. Sociolinguistic Studies, 3 (2), 203-227.
Heller, M. & B. McElhinny. (2017). Language, Capitalism, Colonialism : Toward
a Critical History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Jeffries, L., & Walker, B. (2017). Keywords in the Press: The New Labour
Years. Bloomsbury.
Kranert, M. (2020). When Populists Call Populists Populists: ‘Populism’ and
‘Populist’ as Political Keywords in German and British Political Discourse. In
M. Kranert (Ed.), Discursive Approaches to Populism Across Disciplines: The
Return of Populists and the People (pp. 31–60).
Krieg-Planque, A. (2010). La formule “développement durable” : un opérateur de
neutralisation de la conflictualité. Langage et société, 134, 5-29.
Schröter, M., M. Veniard, Ch. Taylor & A. Blätte. (2018). A comparative
analysis of the keyword multiculturalism in French, British, German and
Italian migration discourse. In: Migration and Media: Discourses about
identities in crisis, ed. by Lorella Viola & Andreas Musolff. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. 13-44.
Seargeant, P. (2020). The Art of Political Storytelling. Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Williams, R. (1985). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford
University Press.
Call for Papers:
This panel wishes to foster a dialogue between researchers studying “keywords”
as defined above in different linguistic contexts and with different
methodological approaches. It welcomes contributions that look into the
meanings of terms that could be considered keywords, and that also look into
how these meanings are being constructed in discourse and/or in interaction.
Contributions may concern in particular:
- The analysis of a specific keyword in a specific language, from a synchronic
or diachronic perspective
- The comparative study of a keyword across languages
- The comparative study of methodological approaches to studying a specific
keyword
- The detailed study of specific mechanisms that construct the meaning of
keywords in a specific context.
The panel actively wishes to offer a space for methodological dialogue and
therefore welcomes different methodological approaches. A dedicated
methodological discussion slot will be organized at the end of the panel.
Proposals have to be submitted via the general conference platform of IPrA by
1 November. Please note you have to be (or become) an IPrA member in order to
be able to submit your proposal.
The detailed instructions for submission are available here:
https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP
When you submit an abstract, you will have to select our panel from the
complete list of accepted panels at the step in the submission process where
you are asked to choose 'Topics.'
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