AESLA 2024

Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (PhD University of Valencia) is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in linguistics. She is interested in im/politeness, genre models, identity construction, and traditional and digital media, on which she has published and lectured extensively. She sits on the board of various international journals and is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Language of Aggression and Conflict and the Routledge Focus on (Im)politeness book series.

Unlocking Cancel Culture and Intergroup Communication: Pragmatic Outlook

In this lecture, I propose a paradigmatic shift in the study of pragmatics and (im)politeness towards an intergroup-oriented framework, aimed at illuminating the dynamics of interactions characterized by the salience of social identities. My focus centers on the contemporary phenomenon of Cancel Culture (CC), a collective form of ostracism wherein individuals perceived to have violated societal norms face widespread social condemnation and exclusion. To comprehensively analyze CC, I introduce a three-layered model that probes its manifestations at the macro, meso, and micro levels. Contrary to prevailing perspectives that primarily scrutinize CC at the macro level, I explore CC's macro, meso, and micro level practices: as a big C conversation, a genre-ecology, and online comments wherein factors such as identity reduction, (im)politeness, and moral emotions converge to shape light group entitativity and agency. By unpacking the intricate interplay between language use, social identities, and collective behaviors, this lecture challenges conventional conceptualizations of CC and sheds light on its underlying mechanisms.