Neuerscheinung: “Diskurs – kontrastiv”

Gredel, Eva/Kämper, Heidrun/Mell, Ruth M./Polajnar, Janja (Hgg.) (2018): Diskurs – kontrastiv. Diskurslinguistik als Methode zur Erfassung transnationaler und sprachübergreifender Diskursrealitäten. Bremen: Hempen ( = Sprache – Politik – Gesellschaft 25)

Bei der Analyse aktueller gesellschaftspolitischer Diskurse, etwa zur Europapolitik, zeigt sich deutlich, dass Diskurse häufig keine einzelsprachlichen, sondern sprachübergreifende und transnationale Phänomene sind. Schlüsselwörter transnationaler Diskurse wie Brexit/Grexit oder Eurosklerose können mit ihrer internationalen Reichweite als Indizien dafür gelten.

Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge sind kontrastiv konzipiert, um in diskurslinguistischen Studien zu neun verschiedenen Einzelsprachen aktuelle Themen im Rahmen des Sprach- und Kulturvergleichs zu beleuchten. Die Beiträge diskutieren die Interdependenz von Diskursen und deren äquivalente bzw. abweichende Strukturen, womit diskurswissenschaftliche Forschung in sprachübergreifenden, interkulturellen und interregionalen Bezügen fokussiert und dokumentiert wird.


Call for papers – Panel ‘Legitimation processes in discourse: new theoretical and empirical insights’

Call for papers!                                                                                                          Contributions are sought for the panel ‘Legitimation processes in discourse: new theoretical and empirical insights’ which is expected to be presented at the 23rd DiscourseNet Conference: Discourse, power and mind: between reason and emotion, held at the University of Bergamo, Italy 6-8 June 2019.

The aim of the panel is to explore the different ways in which discourse (in its amplest meaning of ‘language in use’) is key in processes of legitimation across a variety of socio-political contexts. Whilst contributions can be theoretically focused or driven by empirical analysis, they are expected to build on the wealth of literature on the topic and to show how they contribute to the advancement of the knowledge in the field of Critical Discourse Studies from fresh perspectives. Possible suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

  • The role of (new) media in legitimation processes
  • Theoretical contributions to understanding the construction of ‘legitimation chains’
  • Legitimation crisis of the EU
  • Naturalisation/Institutionalisation of extreme political discourses
  • Legitimation through ‘fake news’

Deadline: A 500 words abstract in English should initially be submitted to franco.zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk no later than 7th October 2018 with:    title of the paper, author’s affiliation, topic, key theoretical/analytical approach and key contribution to the field.

Acceptance to the panel will be notified to contributors by 10th October. Authors of accepted contributions will be required to submit a shorter version of their abstract to the conference organisers following the instructions detailed on the conference website.

It is expected that papers successfully presented at the panel will be included in an edited publication.

Further enquiries can be addressed to: franco.zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk

Publikationsprojekt: Knowledge, discourses and practices of EU critique

Call for Papers for the Special Issue of Culture, Practice & Europeanization (ed. by Marlon Barbehön and Wolf J. Schünemann): Knowledge, discourses and practices of EU critique

Critique is a constitutive element of democracy. As a normative reference point, democracy is both inherently ambiguous and never entirely realisable. The procedural and institutional materialisation of democratic principles could thus never be satisfying, and the very possibility of articulating critique constitutes a major part of democracy itself. However, regarding European integration and the EU polity, critical voices have long been marginalised. Indeed, critical attitudes towards EU integration had been most prominently and intensely voiced by parties and movements on the margins of the political spectrum in most European countries. In contrast, “mainstream” actors in the “centre” of the political spectrum mostly took and defended an overall pro-European stance. Against this background, professional observers in politics and academia tended to label all sorts of EU critique rather blanketly “Euroscepticism”, thus inventing a specific name for a rather common phenomenon inherently linked to democratic politics. True, researchers of political attitudes active in this field differentiated between “hard” (exit from the EU) and “soft” Eurosceptics (yes to Europe, but not in its actual form), and this taxonomy served EU researchers well. However, it resulted in a depiction of EU critique as a sort of pathology that corresponded to the progressive narrative frequently told and highly shared in EU integration research.

While so-called permissive consensus had long been lost, the EU had to face abounding critique particularly in the context of the multiple crises in the last decade, and so-called Euroscepticism finally entered the manifestos and practices of some mainstream actors across Europe. Thus, nowadays at the latest a more nuanced approach is needed in order to understand the orders of knowledge, discourses and practices that constitute EU critique as a complex and ambiguous social phenomenon. This is especially the case since criticising the EU is not the exclusive business of the “others” anymore, but deeply embedded in how societies talk about Europe and EU integration. At the same time, the ubiquity of anti-EU sentiment is not merely a reason for frustration but has a positive side as well, as public debate is exactly where EU critique belongs. From this perspective, the end of the so-called permissive consensus can be regarded as a necessary politicisation and normalisation of EU politics. Given the existential dangers for European integration, it seems a valuable endeavour to examine more closely the different threads and forms of EU critique instead of banning them into the isolation of Euroscepticism.
The papers we invite for this special issue should not adhere to the common Euroscepticism discourse by just identifying the known and the new suspects. Rather, we are looking for contributions that engage in more nuanced analyses of social movements, political initiatives, debates and practices that are typically not perceived and studied as places or instances of “Euroscepticism”, but that still build on a certain type of EU critique. This might help to heal own prejudices and to reflect about one’s own perspective as an observer of EU politics.

Papers for this special issue should cover one of the following (or related) questions:
• What is the relationship between EU critique and “classical” critique of democracy? Which are the commonalities (normative and empirical)? Which are the differences?
• How could we meaningfully distinguish between different variants of EU critique? What are suitable standards for differentiating e.g. between productive and destructive discourses and practices?
• What role does “EU critique” as a stock of knowledge play for the self-observation of societies?
• At which places and in which forms does EU critique appear? Which are the similarities and which are the differences between practices of critique in the mediatised public, the political sphere and everyday life?
• Which normative value and which impact do different forms of EU critique have?
• In which ways does EU critique (not) serve democratic legitimacy?

The call is open to both theoretical and empirical contributions. In case of empirical analyses, whether choosing a quantitative or qualitative research design, empirical studies should allow for in-depth analyses of certain stocks of knowledge, discourses or practices in contrast to any kind of macro-comparative approach. We invite contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives: political sociology, social movement studies, political science, political theory, European studies, international relations etc.

Abstracts (max. 250 words) should be sent to the guest editors of the special issue, Marlon Barbehön (marlon.barbehoen@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de) and Wolf J. Schünemann (wolf.schuenemann@uni-hildesheim.de) by August 31, 2018. Papers are selected by quality of submission and their matching with the special issue’s overall topic. Full papers will be due by December 31, 2018. Papers will be peer-reviewed before publication.

Call for Posters “Discourse, Multimodality and Experimental Methods” (DEMEM)

2nd International Workshop                                                                                 “Discourse, Multimodality and Experimental Methods” (DEMEM)                                     6. – 9.11.2018, Marina del Rey Hotel, Viña del Mar, Chile

Zusammen mit dem Language & Cognition Lab der Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile) organisieren das Iberoamerikanische Zentrum (IAZ) und das HULC Lab der Universität Heidelberg den 2. Internationalen Workshop “Discourse, Multimodality and Experimental Methods” (DEMEM), der vom 6. bis zum 9. November 2018 in Viña del Mar (Chile) stattfindet.

Themen des Workshops sind Multimodalität, Diskursmarker, Diskursverarbeitung, Spracherwerb und Zweisprachigkeit sowie experimentelles Design und Statistik.

Sie sind herzlich eingeladen, Vorschläge für Poster-Präsentationen und Flash-Talk-Vorträge einzureichen.

Mehr Informationen finden Sie unter: 2018dmem.pucv.cl

Autumn School “The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)”

Only few places left in the workshop on the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)                                                                                                11.10.2018-13.10.2018                                                                                          University of Augsburg

The organizers invite novice as well as experienced academics from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limiting to sociology, ethnology, political science, linguistics, psychology and educational science, to explorethe potential of this approach to studying discourses in the context of their own projects and research.

SKAD redirects discourse research towards Foucaultian research interests about questions of social relationships of knowledge & knowing and politics of knowledge & knowing. Concerning itself with ‘ways of doing’, it uses elements of qualitative research design (like theoretical sampling, sequential analysis, analysis by contrasting cases, category building, discourse ethnography) and interpretative analytics.

The Augsburg workshop builds on the emerging interest in SKAD in international contexts and will be the starting event for the annually recurring series of SKAD workshops in English at the University of Augsburg. SKAD workshops address core issues of the concrete doing and practice of discourse research. It addresses colleagues from the Social Sciences and the Humanities who are interested in learning about SKAD and its particular profile within the field of discourse studies as well as in doing SKAD research/using SKAD methodologies in their own concrete work in the context of discourse research.

For detailed information on the workshop, the venue, accomodation and registration see www.diskurswissenschaft.de.

Contact person: Sasa bosancic (sasa.bosancic@phil.uni-augsburg.de)

 

Tagung: Text und Data Mining in Recht, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft

Veranstaltungszeitraum: Do, 21. Juni – Fr, 22. Juni 2018                                                   Veranstaltungsort: Universität Trier – Campus II – Kapelle

Text und Data Mining (TDM) ist ein Sammelbegriff für automatische Analyseverfahren, mit deren Hilfe große Mengen von Informationen durchsucht, in Beziehung zueinander gesetzt und so Trends und neue Zusammenhänge aufgezeigt werden können.

Bei dem Einsatz der Analyseverfahren sind viele verschiedene Interessen von Verlagen, Datenbankinhabern, Journalisten, Wissenschaftlerinnen, Unternehmerinnen und der Allgemeinheit betroffen.

Es ist Aufgabe von Recht, diese oft entgegengesetzten Interessen auszugleichen und durch klare Vorgaben Rechtssicherheit für die Beteiligten zu schaffen.

Die Tagung möchte das Problemfeld Text und Data Mining in Recht, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft aus vielfältiger, interdisziplinärer Perspektive beleuchten und einen Dialog entstehen lassen, in dem die Beteiligten ihre Anforderungen formulieren können, um so auf eine produktive weitere Ausgestaltung der rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen des Text und Data Minings hinwirken zu können.

Weitere Informationen sowie das Tagungsprogramm finden Sie online.

CfP: ‘Discourse Theory: Ways Forward’

DESIRE, the centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance is happy to invite you to submit paper proposals for the colloquium ‘Discourse Theory: Ways Forward’. The colloquium will take place on 7-8 February 2019 in Brussels. The colloquium starts on Thursday 7 February at 9:00 and ends on Friday 8 February at 17:30.

For further information see here!