Guest lecture: How to hurt people with words: Contests over derogatory comparisons (17th-21st c.)
Lecture
Date: Monday 21 October 2024
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Location: Accelerator
Professor Willibald Steinmetz, Universität Bielefeld, gives a guest lecture on reactions and debates concerning offensive comparisons. The guest lecture is followed by a reception with snacks.
Professor Willibald Steinmetz, Universität Bielefeld, gives a guest lecture with the title "How to hurt people with words: Contests over derogatory comparisons (17th-21st c.)".
Abstract
Practices of comparing are an effective, yet often unnoticed rhetorical tool to establish and reinforce power hierarchies between individuals, groups of people, nation states or even entire continents. Such comparisons may be expressed in words, images, or bodily performance, and they exert their force through category-making and suggesting relations – of similarity or difference – between those who are being compared. When people become aware of being debased by comparisons they may react with outrage and polemical counter-comparisons, sometimes turning to violence. The lecture focuses on such moments of contestation in inter- and intra-national conflicts ranging from the era of absolute monarchies (17th c.) till today. The aim is to identify repeatable patterns as well as long-term changes in the practices of making, and reacting to, derogatory comparisons.
Last updated: October 7, 2024
Source: Network Language and Power