Discursive Strategies of Dominance: How Publics Are Homogenized
Susan Gal, University of Chicago
The John J. Gumperz Memorial Lecture

Scholars have been noting for many years the increasingly polyphonous, fractured and heterogeneous discourses that have gained public visibility in this era of the internet, “superdiversity” and “globalization.” Yet, if we look around the world, we see many recent processes – equally remarkable – that move in a different direction: There is a closing down and homogenization of mass mediated political talk. Right wing parties in power in many European countries have destroyed opposition newspapers, TV outlets, billboards, internet sites. Often these discourses gain their authority as “the voice from nowhere” by aligning with the figure of the nation and claiming to speak for “everyone” who is “really” part of the nation. This talk will explore examples from Hungary and Poland of how discursive and rhetorical strategies homogenize mass media.

Susan Gal is Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the Anthropology and Linguistics Departments. She is the author of Language Shift, co-author of The Politics of Gender after Socialism and co-editor of Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority.

The John J. Gumperz Memorial Lecture honors the life and work of John J. Gumperz, the founder of interactional sociolinguistics and a longtime member of the LISO community.

Sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; the Mellichamp Language and Globalization Lecture Series; and the IHC’s Language, Interaction, and Social Organization RFG (LISO)

Gumperz lecture flyer