Here continues the Great Thread on #illicitgenres. I am reporting from day two of @uni_copenhagen symposium. The symposium is supported by @Carlsbergfondet and arranged by @TanyaKaroli and @MarieEBM.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM This morning the first speaker is Anne Freadman of the @unimelb. She is speaking about dog-whistling in order to find out whether it is a genre, and what the consequences of that are.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb If you don't know what a dog whistle is, here's the Urban Dictionary.
urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter…
urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter…
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb "Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words."
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb So, a communicator speaks in a way that the public will hear in one way, but which will be heard differently by a target audience. The point is that the other message—the dog-whistle—would be one that cannot be spoken directly for whatever reason.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Usually because it is unsavory—illicit.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb So you communicate your bad intention to your target audience, but it remains unhearable—or at least hard to pin down—to a broader audience. It often uses code words. A known example (mine, not Freadman's) is the way "Soros" is used in public discourse as an anti-semitic trope.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Dog-whistling is inherently divisive, as it divides its very audience into two.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Josh Fear: the target audience for a dog-whistle can be any group to whom politicians want to send a message without alterting others, or at least without alarming them.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Sam Jackson: When it is not immediately apparent that different constituencies are being sent different messages, then it's a dog-whistle.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb So, the dog-whistle is a way to get the racist vote without pushing away more naive audiences.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Freadman (with some help from existing research) identifies a third audience: Those who actually see through the dog-whistle and can call it out.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb A very energetic discussion. Then
Christopher Heffer: Bullshitting v Bullshit: Insincere and Irresponsible Genres
Christopher Heffer: Bullshitting v Bullshit: Insincere and Irresponsible Genres
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Trust in public discourse. based on a book Heffner will publish next year.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Grice is hiding in there somewhere. And here comes the slide to prove it: "Grice's Maxim of Quality".
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Wants to distinguish between the "Bull": the activity of bullshitting, and the "shit", the ensuing product.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Having too much fun, I neglect to tweet on.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Next up is more grave.
Predrag Dojcinovic: In the mind of the crime: proving the mens rea of genocidal intent in the words of Ratko Mladić and other members of the joint criminal enterprise.
Predrag Dojcinovic: In the mind of the crime: proving the mens rea of genocidal intent in the words of Ratko Mladić and other members of the joint criminal enterprise.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Prosecuting genocide and the intent of the genocidal leader, it seems. And how to prove it.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb The onthology of all mass atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) is ultimately decided in and by words.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb A research project on genocidal intent. It is a prerequisite for any conviction for genocide. No intent, no conviction.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb So the task is to analyse utterances and speech act bt the accused that express genocidal intent.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb Genocide is the crime of crimes. The worst crime that can be committed.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb The research attempt to establish collective language habits of a larger group. It lead to a picture of a "Joint criminal enterprise" which is "a means of assigning criminal liability to an individual for acts committed by a group."
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb So you are looking for both direct and indirect speech acts. In most cases war criminals don't directly tell their followers to commit war crimes, they do so indirectly.
@uni_copenhagen @Carlsbergfondet @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM @unimelb This is quite freezing. Even if the speaker does a very clean job of presenting without unnecessary gore.
This is what gets your heart frozen being here. Look at that rhetoric, and you have the road to genocide right ahead of you.
So the prosecutors trace the way expressions travel from the genocidal masters to the use of the same expressions in the people carrying out the physical atrocities.
So a strongly derogatory term for an ethnic group is established by the masters, it is then used by the foot soldiers of the genocidal enterprise.
Had to skip a paper🐶🐶🐶 - I had finishing notes to prepare. But now it's Tim Grant on Genres and communities of practice in online sex abuse fora.
The topics just keep getting better - would you not say? At this point I'm terribly interested and quite depressed.
So, you have these sexual abusers who meet online and discuss what to do in a sexual communication with a child.
So they meet and share abuse pictures, movies, advise etc etc ... It's really fairly creepy.
Child abuse communication takes place in what Grant calls "low trust environments". Every participant in the communication thinks everyone else is a police officer there to arrest them. And the police officers actually there need to be able to operate in relation to that.
"There are manuals online on how to safely abuse children written by child abusers" ... #GenresToAvoid
Norms of communication when mutual exchanges of material is key, and where security is key. A lot of technical material on how to send material "safely".
Competent use of the genres of the abuser communities establish people as legitimate members of the community. So if you perform right in, for instance, a "abuse narrative" (a retelling - actual or not - of an abuse encounter) marks you off as a someone belonging to the in-group.
Grant does a fine job of the presentation, but I find it hard to tweet about; it makes me feel sick.
The symposium was summed up by yours truly, so I couldn't really tweet the summing up. I tried to say that the seminar was a surprising and invigorating meeting of theory and practice.
I also suggested that Genre research may to an extent be basic research, but it’s also generic and thus can be used with surprising ease in a setting of applied research.
Conversely, forensic linguistics seems to also have an element of basic research that goes well with the research interests of genre research.
I suggested that we should seek a further integration of the two approaches; they should be able to work together much more closely. But we should also keep them distinct because they challenge each others in interesting ways. And these challenges should be kept.
I added that we still have ongoing questions concerning at least the following topics:
Naming
Framing
Identity work
(And identity)
Form >< Function
Genre emergence/learning
Audiences
Occasion
and
Uptakes
Naming
Framing
Identity work
(And identity)
Form >< Function
Genre emergence/learning
Audiences
Occasion
and
Uptakes
Finally I stopped a little to look at a statement by Anne Freadman: Uptakes have long memories.
Predrag Dojcinovic showed how the genocidal intent of Mladic was taken up and turned into genocidal action by his underlings, and thus his words lead to killings on a large enough scale to warrant the term "genocide".
However, this was not the end of it. Uptakes have long memories. The very same words that led to the genocide, were then taken up by the legal system and used as evidence for genocidal intent, the "mens rea" of inciting and ordering large scale slaughter of human beings.
So, they also ended up warranting a conviction (a new genre) for genocide. In the midst of all the grimness, there is something decidedly uplifting about that.
Double thread ends//
Double thread ends//
Unroll please @threadreaderapp
