Coming out of the dark: critical language and discourse awareness as key soft skills

  • Erika Darics (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk

Description

For a critical scholar, education is an inherent paradox: on the one hand it aims to awaken students to how power is instantiated and perpetuated through discourse practices; on the other hand, it has to prepare them towards their role in the community by conforming to the same practices. In this talk I argue for the crucial importance of getting this balancing act right: in the era of fake news and unprecedented public manipulation, management fads hidden under hard-to-decode management jargon, and the era ruled by visionary, religious-like leadership gurus students should be made aware of the the dual function of language as a means of doing work and as a social action that constitutes social reality. Drawing on examples from my research, I demonstrate the utility of being able to notice, identify, and reflect on linguistic and discourse practices for such awareness-raising. To be able to teach such knowledge however, scientific approaches to language need to be taken more seriously, in particular in disciplines that claim to be 'linguistically turned’. I conclude my talk by calling for increased interdisciplinary efforts, in the hope that a greater attention to language awareness will lead to a future generation of aware, critical and ethical text consumers and producers.
Period15 Aug 2019
Event title2ND INTERNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON DISCOURSE AND COMMUNICATION IN PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT: The dark side of communication
Event typeConference
LocationDenmarkShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational