Lecture | Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series
The discursive reproduction of hate speech and its unregulated end: lessons from cognitive pragmatics and argumentation theory
- Date
- Monday 4 November 2024
- Time
- Series
- Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series
- Location
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.22
Abstract
While it is generally acknowledged that it is particularly difficult to provide a universally accepted definition of hate speech, it is also increasingly being recognised that the term has now transcended its original legal meaning and is currently used in common parlance to refer to a much wider array of discourses that do not necessarily fall under the legal requirement of public incitement to discriminatory hatred. In view of this, previous work (Assimakopoulos et al. 2017, Assimakopoulos 2020) has suggested that a distinction needs to be drawn between hard and soft hate speech, with the former encompassing those familiar speech acts that are legally regulated in several countries and the latter referring to discourses that may at first sight appear unproblematic under the relevant legal provisions, but can still be shown to disseminate disparaging attitudes in relation to minority groups. In this talk, I will further substantiate the claim that soft hate speech indeed matters in the relevant discussion, by focusing on how it leads to inferences that help establish a common ground of exclusionary and denigrating attitudes in society. Operationalising Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1995), and more specifically its specific approach to communication, which underlines the automaticity by which contextual interpretation takes place, I will discuss how, even though not directly communicated, the denigrated attitudes that are embedded in instances of soft hate speech still manage to freely creep into their audience’s cognitive environment. Then, employing the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti & Greco 2019), which enables us to break down the inference that underlies standpoint-argument couplings, I will showcase how, despite not being overtly argumentative, the relevant discourses can be taken to still manifest an inherent argumentativity (Amossy 2019) that justifies the development of discriminatory stances. To substantiate the proposed account, I draw on examples from a corpus of comments made in response to LGBTQI+-related articles in Greek news portals (Assimakopoulos & Serafis 2020).
References:
Amossy, R. 2019. The New Rhetoric’s inheritance: Argumentation and discourse analysis. Argumentation 23(3): 313-324.
Assimakopoulos, S. 2020. Incitement to discriminatory hatred, illocution and perlocution». Pragmatics and Society, 11(2): 177-195.
Assimakopoulos, S., F.H. Baider & S. Millar (eds.). 2017. Online Hate Speech in the European Union: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective. Cham: Springer.
Assimakopoulos, S. & D. Serafis. 2020. Ρητορική και λόγος μίσους: Oμοφοβικές τάσεις σε σχόλια αναγνωστών στο διαδίκτυο [Hate rhetoric and hate speech: homophobic tendencies in online news portal comments]. In S. Boukala & A. Stamou (eds.), Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου: (Απο)δομώντας την ελληνική πραγματικότητα [Critical Discourse Analysis: (De)constructing the reality in Greece], pp. 589-621). Athens: Nissos.
Rigotti, E. & S. Greco. 2019. Inference in Argumentation: A Topics-based Approach to Argument Schemes. Cham: Springer.
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell.