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Representation and Action: Performativity of Domination
Language: English and French
“How do we do things with words?” The classic Austin's proposition introduced the conceptualisation of action in language, its performativity. Acts of language are one possibility of materialization of language in action. This concept also specifically brought the question of power into motion, of the functionings of domination and how language is tied to very practical consequences in reality. But far from summing it up, various other articulations have been studied and could be sociologically imagined between language’s representations and the tangible realm of individual and collective action.
How do domination embodies in various forms of language, be it medias, conversations, political discourses, body communication and/or broader common sense? In which ways are we mobilizing action, meaning, emotions and truth in public spaces but also in intimacy? Lots of situations, inquiries and fields concerns those materialisations today, from family to immigration, health, workplace, genders, vote, solidarity and mobilizations, etc.
More generally, how do regimes of truth translates in everyday life? Sociology, linguistics and/or communication studies are grasping this interface between language’s representations and action in multiple ways, trying to avoid mechanical or unidirectional articulations like effects or influences.
This is an opportunity to present accounts of that articulation between representations and action as observed in diverse thematics and materials. The question of how inequalities, injustices, privileges, asymmetries and standards are taking shapes in discourses, and then action, will be central to the session.