Language, Identity and Power

This course examines the power relations between languages and linguistic identities. Among other things, we will focus on major and minor languages through the socio-political background of their power. We will refer to linguistic stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and racism, language loss and disuse and linguistic memory, the 'need to belong' (Maalouf), etc. An attempt will be made to apply Critical Discourse Analysis using examples from political language (politicians' speeches, media articles and online media), minority languages, the language of discrimination (e.g. Jews, Roma, immigrants, gender discrimination), the language of the victim and the perpetrator in authoritarian regimes as well as their anti-Semitic ideology as presented e.g. in textbooks. We will also refer to testimonies through (auto-)biographical narratives from the field of literature (e.g. Vassilis Alexakis, Elias Canetti, Eva Hoffman, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Amin Maalouf, Boris Pahor, George Steiner, Yazra Hallend, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Markus Zusak).

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:

• become aware of issues related to prejudices and stereotypes in political and non-political texts,
• be sensitive to political and non-political events of the past by comparing them with current events, always at a linguistic level,
• analyze political and non-political texts containing elements of racism, prejudice and discrimination at the level of language.

Week 1: Presentation of the thematic modules (Language, Identity, Power).

Week 2: "identity check-up" or the paradoxes of identity (Maalouf 2000).

Week 3: Language/s and identity/s (Wodak 2012, Coulmas 2019).

Week 4: Comparison of mother tongue and foreign language (Hoffman 1989, Özdamar 1990).

Week 5: Language and power, power relations between languages, stereotypes and prejudices (Anderson 1983, Ferro 1984, Alexakis 2003, Rinke 2004, Van Dijk 2006, Wodak 2012, Morgan 2012, Noah 2016, Millas 2017, Yannicopoulou/Alaca 2018).

Week 6: Importance of memory (language memory, language loss, minority languages and identity memory, Pahor 1967, Kundera 1978, Haberland 1991, Borges 2005, Papagiorgis 2008, Owen 2011).

Week 7: Memory and history, individual and collective memory and power, counter-memory, the image of the Other (Connerton 1989, Le Goff 1992, Assmann 1998, Sjöberg 2017, Haniotis 2017, O'Sullivan/Immel 2017).

Week 8: Monument and memory (Argyrakaki 2016, Belavilas 2017) .

Week 9: Linguistic identity across the centuries, travelers' narratives (Owen 1796, Napier 1833, Woodsworth 1839, Murray 1840, Farrer 1882, Baedeker 1882, Baedeker 1888, Hauptmann 1918, Reisinger 1923, Pratt 1992, Mewshaw 2005, Mackridge 2014, Demetriou 2019, Demetriou 2021).

Week 10: Myths, identity, power - language and religion (Sedgwick 1849, Michaels 2014, Gürsel 2018).

Αμπατζοπούλου, Φραγκίσκη (2020). Ο Άλλος εν διωγμώ. Η εικόνα του Εβραίου στη λογοτεχνία και στον κινηματογράφο. Αθήνα: Πατάκη.

Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Assmann, Aleida (2006). “On the (In)compatibility of Guilt and Suffering in German Memory”. German Life and Letters 59 (2), 187-200.

Bekalu, Mesfin Awoke (2006). Presupposition in news discourse. Discourse & Society 17 (2), 147-172.

Dovidio, John F. & Gaertner, Samuel L. & Kawakami, Kerry (2010). Racism. Dovidio, John F. & Hewstone, Miles & Glick, Peter & Esses, Victoria M. (eds). The SAGE Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination. Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington, DC: Sage, 312-327.

Gee, James Paul & Handford, Michael (2012). The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London/New York: Routledge.

Haberland, Hartmut (1991). Reflections about the Minority Languages in the European Community. Coulmas, Florian (ed.). A Language Policy for the European Community: Prospects and Quandaries. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 179-213.

Maalouf, Amin (2003). In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (English translation of Les Identités meurtrières, 1998; trans. Barbara Bray). New York/London: Penguin.

Moran, Joe (2004). “History, Memory and the Everyday ”. Rethinking History 8 (1), 51-68.

Nora, Pierre (1996). “General Introduction: Between memory and history”. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions (Pierre Nora (ed.), trans. Arthur Goldhammer). New York: Columbia University Press.

Ozolins, Uldis & Clyne, Michael (2001). Immigration and Language Policy in Australia. Extra, Guus & Gorter, Durk (eds). The other languages of Europe. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 371-390.

Shields, Kirril (2016). Pushing Aside the Nazi: Personal and Collective Exculpation and the Everyday German in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 30 (1), 1-15.

Stangor, Charles & Schaller, Mark (1996). Stereotypes as individual and collective representations. Stangor, Charles (ed.). Key readings in social psychology. Stereotypes and prejudice: Essential readings. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 64-82.

Steiner, George (1975). After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Tannen, Deborah & Hamilton, Heidi E. & Schiffrin, Deborah (2015). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Vol. I. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Traverso, Enzo (2017). Τα νέα πρόσωπα του φασισμού. Συζήτηση με τον Régis Meyran (μετφρ. Νίκος Κούρκουλος). Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις του Εικοστού Πρώτου.

van Dijk, Teun A. (1993). Analyzing racism through discourse analysis: Some methodological reflections. Stanfield, John H., II & Dennis, Rutledge M. (eds). Sage focus editions, Vol. 157. Race and ethnicity in research methods. Sage Publications, Inc., 92-134.

van Dijk, Teun A. (2006). Politics, ideology, and discourse. Brown, Keith (ed.). The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 9. Oxford/New York: Pergamon Press, 728-740.

Wodak, Ruth & De Cillia, Rudolf & Reisigl, Martin & Liebhart, Karin (2009). The Discoursive Construction of National Identity. (Trans. Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten, Johann Wolfgang Unger). 2nd ed. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh.

Wodak, Ruth (2012). Language, Power and Identity. Language Teaching 45 (2), 215-233.

Student-centred teaching approach through presentations of selected articles on a specific topic which students analyse and comment on in class.

Use of ICT in teaching and communicating with the students.

Written essay presented orally.