The Discursive Ecology of Homophobia

Unraveling Anti-LGBTQ Speech on the European Far Right

By (author) Eric Louis Russell

Publication date:

09 May 2019

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781788923453

Through an analysis of the discourse practices of populist Far Right groups in France, Italy and Belgian Flanders, this book makes a ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of the ways in which homophobic discourse functions. It proposes an innovative heuristic for the conceiving of the interplay of language, context and culture: discourse ecology. The author brings linguistic theories, methods and ways of understanding and thinking about language to a study of the overt and covert homophobic discourses of three non-Anglophone populist movements, and grounds the interpretation of such practices in observable data. In doing so the book encourages us all to reconsider the power we give language in our activism and scholarship, as well as in our private lives.

Preface

Chapter 1. Hate and Language, Hate in Language: (Re)Considering Homophobic Discourse

Chapter 2. The Ecology of Homophobic Speech: Unraveling Discourse Practice

Chapter 3. Les Hommen: ‘Muscled Resistance’ and Misogynistic Homophobia

Chapter 4. Le Sentinelle in Piedi: Naturalizing (and Denying) Homophobia

Chapter 5. Filip Dewinter: Pinkwashing, Populism, and Nativism

Conclusion

This innovative book, exploring homophobic discourse in three different Western European communities in order to reveal the linguistic engines that power it, is a valuable contribution to a growing body of literature. Asking and answering the deceptively complex question of what makes homophobic discourse homophobic, Russell’s unflinching analysis exposes homophobia’s linguistic mechanics in a work that is both socially relevant and intellectually rigorous.