How Can We Better Understand Socio-Political Affairs Through the Critical Analysis of Discourse?

Have you ever thought of the role that words, and the discourse you use in your day-to-day interactions, play when constructing your identity and self-presentation? What about the impact that discourse can actually have on shaping socio-political realities, molding public opinion and crafting public policies?

For researchers within Critical Discourse Studies, discourse is a very complex object that has multiple historical layers and mediate our ideological and identity processes. Discourse is everywhere. And being aware of the implications of choosing one word over another (or, in fact, one emoji, gesture, or any other discursive unit over another) is one of the strongest motivations discourse analysts share.

In this talk, I will be sharing some practical examples of how discourse shapes different contexts, and vice versa. First of all, I will focus on recent political events that have heavily impacted on our recent history, mostly multimodal narratives around the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s presidency and with an emphasis on the discursive representation of social collectives. After that, I will also offer insights into the connections between discourse and Intimate Partner Violence in online and media contexts and the representation of gender stereotypes in learning materials.

Join us for this interactive talk where we will be discussing discursive materials from a wide range of sources and modes and their many connections to current socio-political issues.

You can follow the event here

Speaker: Alfonso Sánchez-Moya (Complutense Univeristy of Madrid)

Sponsor: RCCHU; Complutense University of Madrid