2012 FASS Distinguished Visitor, Departmental Lecture
Communicating Europe: “Hegemonic Multilingualism / National Monolingualism?” Integrating Sociolinguistics, Language Policy Research and (Critical) Discourse Studies
Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies, Lancaster University
Friday, October 26, 2012, 12:00 p.m.
Southam Hall, Room 417
In this lecture, Wodak will discuss different theoretical and methodological approaches which are deemed adequate in analyzing, understanding and explaining multilingual policies and practices (and their history) in the European Union, taking the 6th EU framework project DYLAN as point of departure (see here). Simultaneously, Wodak will also discuss recent tendencies of re/nationalisation while focussing on the established hegemony of specific languages or by re-emphasising the national language and /or the language of the majority.
In linking macro, meso and micro levels of investigation, it is worth reflecting on the current scope of sociolinguistics, language policy research, as well as (critical) discourse studies. Does it still make sense to draw distinct boundaries between different paradigms, schools, and approaches? Or would it make sense to transcend traditional boundaries in order to arrive at the best possible analysis and explanation?
In this lecture, Wodak will thus first present the various theoretical and methodological approaches employed in analyzing multilingual practices in interactions inside European Union (EU) institutions as well as the policies which regulate and govern such practices and the language attitudes and ideologies underlying both regulations and practices. On the basis of vast fieldwork conducted in EU organizational spaces throughout 2009 (with the project team located at Lancaster), Wodak then explores different types of communication in order to illustrate how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and officials at the European Commission practise and perform multilingualism in their everyday work (Wodak et al. 2011; Krzyżanowski & Wodak 2011). Here, Wodak draws on existent sociolinguistic ethnographic research into organisations and interactions, and integrates a multi-level (macro) contextual and sequential (micro) analysis of manifold data (observations, field notes, recordings of official and semi-official meetings, interviews, and so forth). In this way, a continuum of context-dependent multilingual practices becomes apparent which are characterised by different patterns of language choice and which serve a range of both manifest and latent functions.
By integrating the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with sociolinguistic ethnography, the intricacies of the increasingly complex phenomenon of multilingualism in transnational-organizational spaces, which are frequently characterised by diverse power-related and other asymmetries of communication, can be adequately coped with.
Invitation to all faculty, staff and students
Sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Reception to follow. Seating is limited.
To register for this event, please email connie_wall@carleton.ca
2012 FASS Distinguished Visitor, Public Lecture
Re/Inventing Nationalism and National Identities: Recontextualising Traditional Themes in Global Politics – A discourse-historical perspective
Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies, Lancaster University
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.
Residence Commons, Room 274
Our world is constantly changing, due to processes of globalization and migration, changes in political systems, the era of web 2.0, and other, broader socio-cultural trends. On the one hand, global media, linguae francae, standardized ‘benchmarks’ and global economies are determining our lives; on the other hand, a return to ever more local policies and ideologies can be observed, on many levels: traditions, rules, languages, visions, and imaginaries. The role of language and communication is, of course, essential in these processes of change, since it is through language that change is talked or written into being, that genres gradually change or drastically alter, that evolving, general societal discourses are voiced.
These developments are not new: Already in 1996, Gerard Delanty stated that [‘T]he crisis of national identity in Western Europe is related to the rise of a new nationalism which operates at many different levels, ranging from extreme xenophobic forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism (p.2). Hence, Wodak claims that recent heated political debates across Europe, about citizenship, language tests related to citizenship and immigration, and the construction of the immigrant per se coincide with the huge crisis of the welfare state. We are dealing with global and glocal developments (Wodak 2010, 2011). Post-nationalism (Heller 2011) and cosmopolitanism (Bauman 1999) seem to have become utopian concepts.
In this lecture, Wodak will analyse recent European developments from a discourse-analytical perspective: She focuses on the discursive construction of national and transnational identities, on the analysis of citizenship- and language tests, and on the continuous reconstruction of national histories by frequently ‘re/inventing new narratives’. The data – analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively – consist of a range of genres (focus group discussion, political speeches, comic books, TV documentaries, and election campaign materials).
This lecture is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Reception to follow. Seating is limited.
To register for this event, please email connie_wall@carleton.ca
Ruth Wodak has held the position of Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, since 2004 while remaining affiliated to the University of Vienna as Full Professor of Applied Linguistics. Besides many other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. In 2008, she was awarded the Kerstin Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament and in 2010 received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Örebro in Sweden. In 2011, she was awarded the Grand Decoration in Silver for Services for the Austrian Republic. She is Past-President of the Societas Linguistica Europea, member of the Academia Europaea and corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Recent book publications include Migration, Identity and Belonging (with G. Delanty, P. Jones, 2008 [2011]), The Discursive Construction of History. Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation (with H. Heer, W. Manoschek, A. Pollak, 2008); The discursive construction of national identity (with R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl, K. Liebhart, 2009); The Politics of Exclusion (with M. Krzyżanowski, 2009); Gedenken im Gedankenjahr (with R. de Cillia, 2009); The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics (with B. Johnstone and P. Kerswill) and The discourse of politics in action: ‘Politics as Usual’ (Palgrave), 2nd revised edition (2011).