Discourses of #MeToo

After bursting onto the main stage of public mediated discourse in 2017, #MeToo was, and still is, experienced by many as a global feminist movement of both political and personal import, and as powerful outcry against men’s sexual violence. The movement has also been the object of ideological contestations, negotiations, and problematizations, including critical discussions and contextualization in an emerging body of critical scholarly output on #MeToo (see, e.g., Chandra & Erlingsdóttir, 2021). Surprisingly, however, while discourse is central to how #MeToo was manifested and negotiated, relatively few publications to date address #MeToo-related topics through discourse analytic methods or using discourse as data.

The proposed panel addresses this gap by considering #MeToo from a discursive point of view. Through this panel, we hope to shed light on the #MeToo movement’s basis in the discursive production and dissemination of narratives and accounts of experiences, as well as discursive political participation through social acts of solidarity, hope, and resistance, comprising not only the discursive resistance of but also resistances to #MeToo. To address this, we invite papers from scholars interested in studying the following aspects of #MeToo, or any other thematically relevant topics:

  • Affect and emotion
  • Alignment, affiliation, and solidarity
  • Feminism and activism
  • Language, sex, and gender
  • Mediation, mediatization, and social media
  • Morality and ethics
  • Political participation, resistance, and opinion formation
  • Public speech and civic engagement

We invite papers approaching these, or similar, topics centered around the #MeToo movement and employing any discourse analytic methods, such as critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, feminist or poststructuralist discourse analysis, etc. Paper proposals should follow the general guidelines of the G22 conference, and should include a description of data/materials and analytical methods.

References

Chandra, G., & Erlingsdóttir, I. (2021). Introduction: Rebellion, revolution, reformation. In G. Chandra & I. Erlingsdóttir (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of the politics of the #MeToo movement (pp. 1–23). Routledge.

Peter Wikström1 and Erica Sandlund2

1Phd, Associate Senior Lecturer In English Linguistics, Department Of Language, Literature And Intercultural Studies, Karlstad University

2Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer In English Linguistics, Department Of Language, Literature And Intercultural

Studies, Karlstad University