JS-6
Discourses on Poverty, Homelessness, and Housing: Categorization in Policy, Media, Academy, Popular Culture and Beyond. Part II
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC25 Language and Society (host committee)
RC43 Housing and Built Environment
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Discursive representations of poverty and homelessnes in policy, the media, academic research, and popular culture influences how we perceive and react to social vulnerability, and how we relate to homeless and poor people. On one hand, naturalizing poverty and homelessness are partially discursive social problems. On the other hand, because language and society is a two-way relationship, these representations are also products of social practices and relations.
Discourse and critical discourse studies seek to bridge the gap between theory based on language and other semiotic systems and research that explores the roles of language (and other semiotics) in contextualized social practices. These efforts rely on theoretical bodies of language in society from the social sciences, to focus on how language functions in social life, as modes of representation and action. Because power depends not only on the use of force, but also on manufacturing consent, discourse is a crucial element for supporting/overcoming hegemonic relations in a given historical context.
Social injustice can become naturalized in texts when we employ classifications that legitimize differences. As a result, vulnerable groups can be stripped of their rights, undermining their ability to articulate experience and resist. Prejudiced representations of homeless and poor people must be addressed in different social-discourse spaces including media, policy, academic research, popular culture, etc., and its potential social and political effects. This session thus seeks to look at the representation of these vulnerable social groups in different kinds of discursive places, using a variety of theoretical backgrounds and methodological tools.
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