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Hope Lecturer invited to speak at Newcastle University

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Media and Communications Lecturer Dr Lyndon Way has been invited as a guest speaker to Newcastle University’s Critical Discourse Studies Group (CDSG).

His presentation, From Concert to on-line musings: The transformative nature of political discourse in popular music performance and consumption, reflects his most recent research.

The presentation will firstly consider the limits and potential of live musical performance through an examination of a recording of a concert by ‘Grup Yorum’. The politically active Turkish band articulates progressive politics such as egalitarianism, Kurdish rights, workers’ rights and the injustices of unbridled capitalism.

It will also analyse how these politics are interpreted and transformed by fans who watch the concert on YouTube, through an analysis of their comments. This analysis reveals not only the limits and potential of political performance, but also how fans personalise politics and seek to frame them in terms of wider forms of allegiances to, and betrayal of, a true national people and in the light of homogenised and reduced forms of history.

Since 2011, the CSDG has hosted a range of internationally recognised speakers to present innovative research and encourage constructive discussion. This is in order to address issues concerning the relationships between language, politics, media and culture. Past speakers include Ruth Wodak (University of Vienna and Lancaster University), David Machin (Obero University, Sweden) and John E. Richardson (Warwick University). Staff and postgraduate students from all disciplines concerned with language and society will be present, encouraging discussion and challenging the research findings. For more information about this year’s series and presentation follow: http://www.criticaldiscoursegroup.net/programmes

Dr Way’s presentation appears in published form in greater detail in his latest book Popular Music and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies: Ideology, Control, and Resistance in Turkey Since 2002, which is due to be released 28th December 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing.


Published on 20/03/2018