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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1198

Part of Session 141: Taking over the squares (Other abstracts in this session)

Occupy global, globalise Occupy: the linguistic hegemony of global resistance practices

Authors: Unger, Johann Wolfgang
Submitted by: Unger, Johann Wolfgang (Lancaster University, United Kingdom)

This paper will attempt to explore the complex relationships between language, hegemony, and the social and political movements and protests of 2011 (e.g. the Arab Springs, Occupy, UK riots) within a critical discourse studies framework. In doing so, it will examine not just the nature of the challenges (verbal, visual, physical) offered by the participants in the movements to symbolic and de-facto representatives of political hegemonies, but also the role of various technologies in causing or facilitating, complicating or frustrating activists’ efforts at communication, multilingual, monolingual or non-verbal, within and beyond their movements.

While the mainstream English-language media has often presented a compelling narrative of “liberation, democratization and social change caused by ‘Western’ technology”, the reality is of course often much more complex. This is shown particularly by the protests that have taken place in majority-English-speaking countries themselves. Protestors have made use of numerous technologies, non-digital and non-electronic in nature, to communicate and further their aims. An example is the  ‘human mic’, systematic repetition by the crowd of what a single speaker is saying, which was used at Occupy gatherings to ensure individual voices could be heard by the whole group, or to challenge amplified voices (in one famous example, protestors interrupted a speech by Barack Obama). At the other end of the technology spectrum, protestors, officials, observers and commentators used Twitter to frame events in particular ways and for particular purposes during major protests – one such example are the claims and counter-claims about looting in the riots that took place in UK cities in Summer 2011. These claims, many which were subsequently proved to be false, were repeated by broadcast media and had a role in shaping public opinion and subsequent governmental policy decisions.

What was notably absent from many contexts was much engagement with the broader global resistance movements. While they were multi-modal, encompassing physical actions, sound, visual elements on placards and banners, and also online actions such as Facebook and YouTube posts, tweets, etc., they were not particularly multilingual, in marked contrast to the Arab Springs and other protests outside the Anglo-American world.

It is thus noteworthy that global networks allow social and political movements around the globe to influence each other using the same technologies and networks as other globalised phenomena. And as with other such phenomena, this process has not necessarily been a two-way street. Thus, the paper concludes that while the “West” has “occupied protest” in less “privileged” parts of the world in various ways, including linguistically, the reverse has not always been true.