FORGE is delighted to announce a talk by our upcoming internal speaker: Luke Harding (LAEL). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Misleading silence under the Australian Consumer Law: Perspectives from linguistics

ABSTRACT
This talk considers the phenomenon of “misleading silence” as it is currently applied in a particular area of private law in the Australian legal system: section 18 (s 18) of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Misleading silence is of theoretical and practical interest in the case of s 18 as, according to that provision, “a person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive”. Yet the treatment of misleading silence is under-examined in academic scholarship around s 18, particularly with respect to linguistic perspectives on silence and their implications for understanding the operation of s 18. In this talk, I will first illustrate how misleading silence has been interpreted in cases decided under s 18. Second, I will discuss two distinctions that have figured as organising ideas in interpreting misleading silence under s 18, providing a critique from a linguistic perspective on silence. Finally, I will suggest some ways in which a consideration of misleading silence in s 18 cases opens up interesting lines of enquiry for research at the intersection of linguistics and the law.

TIME & PLACE
1100-1200, Thu 27^th Feb, County South D72

All are welcome to attend.

Please note that due to the upcoming strike action, Ryan Boyd’s talk has been cancelled. We will reschedule later this or early next academic year.

The FORGE is delighted to announce our external guest speaker: Kate Barber (T) (Cardiff University). Details of her talk are below:

TITLE
The reframing of rape in extremist online discourses

NOTES
THIS TALK IS ON A TOPIC, AND WILL CONTAIN EXTRACTS OF DATA, THAT SOME MAY FIND DISTRESSING.

DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED.

ABSTRACT

Linguistic analyses of far-right discourses have traditionally focused on nationalist rhetoric or racist and ethnoreligious-based invective. The explicit anti-feminist stance held by some far-right groups, specifically in relation to sexual offences against women, remains underexplored. This paper outlines initial findings from an ongoing corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of 100 blog posts on sites identifying as belonging to the Alternative Right (Alt-Right) or the right-wing men’s activist movement known as the Manosphere. While these factions can be distinguished by their primary concerns towards racial diversity (Alt-Right), and men’s rights (Manosphere), this study aims to highlight how their discourses converge in their portrayal of victims and perpetrators of sexual violence against women.

This paper outlines preliminary findings from the second and third year of my PhD research. Using corpus linguistics and a discourse analytical framework based largely on van Dijk’s (1984) and Koller’s (2012) sociocognitive approach to discourse studies and collective identity analysis, the paper discusses how inhabited and ascribed identities promote white male victimhood and portray the mainstream concept of rape culture as a ‘feminist-produced moral panic’ (Gotell & Dutton 2016, p. 65). The presentation includes details of the network analysis I undertook in order to locate the online websites and blogs from which I selected my data; corpora construction; and a comparative analysis of racist and misogynistic constructions of identity in narrative and non-narrative discourses. Finally, some of the ongoing challenges this research has presented will be discussed along with the importance of applying linguistic analyses to develop inoculation narratives (Braddock 2019) and other counter-extremism measures.

References
Braddock, K. (2019). Vaccinating Against Hate: Using Attitudinal Inoculation to Confer Resistance to Persuasion by Extremist Propaganda. Terrorism and Political Violence. DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1693370
Gotell, L. & Dutton, E. (2016). Sexual Violence in the ‘Manosphere’: Antifeminist Men’s Rights Discourses on Rape. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 5(2), 65-80.
Koller, V. (2012). How to Analyse Collective Identity in Discourse – Textual and Contextual Parameters. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines. 5(2), 19-38.
van Dijk, T.A. (1984). Prejudice and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

The talk will be approximately 30-40 minutes in total, with around 10-20 minutes at the end for Q&A.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 13th Feb, County South D72.

All are welcome to attend.