Discursive shifts and the manufacturing of illiberal public imagination: Borderline discourses, proxies, and conceptual flipsides

This lecture highlights key concepts developed in recent, interdisciplinary (critical) discourse studies in order to systematically explore public discourse dynamics in the context of, especially, the ever more widespread politics of the populist far-right (Krzyżanowska & Krzyżanowski 2018; Krzyżanowski 2012 & 2013; Krzyżanowski & Ledin 2017; Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou & Wodak 2018; Wodak & Krzyżanowski 2017) and its growing impact on the normalisation of illiberal politics of exclusion in Europe and beyond (Krzyżanowski 2018 a,b; 2020 a,b; Krzyżanowski & Ekström 2022, 2024; Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska 2022; Krzyżanowski et al 2021). Building on research conducted in, inter alia, Poland, Sweden or the UK, the presentation will highlight the application of the central notion of discursive shifts (Krzyżanowski 2018 a,b; 2020 a,b) as a key analytical model guiding the systematic exploration of complex logic of changing and shifting boundaries of public discourse and of public imagination under the impact of the far-right, illiberalism and populism. The presentation will show how taking the wider perspective of exploring discursive shifts can be helpful in tracing differentiated dynamics in/of public discourses and their ‘linear’, or incremental, change (Krzyżanowski & Ekström 2022), including via recontextualization processes taking place between various mediated discourses in the public domain. However, it will also point to how discursive shifts can at the same time allow examining the persistently ‘oscillatory’ or recursive nature of various strategies used in the shifting public discourse - including, inter alia, ‘borderline discourses’ (Krzyżanowski and Ledin 2017; Krzyżanowski et al 2021) at the verge of civility and in/un-civility, ‘proxy discourses’ (Ekström, Krzyżanowski & Johnson 2023) based on various public implicatures and their discursive path dependencies, or, to the logic of by now widespread ‘conceptual flipsiding’ (Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska 2022, 2024) wherein liberal-democratic notions are purposefully infused with illiberal and anti-democratic understandings. The lecture will show how, often deployed in concerted manner, all of the said strategies contribute to the manufacturing of intended and strategic volatility and instability of public discourse and a wider specific ‘doublethink’ (Orwell) residing in the shifting discourse boundaries. These, as I will aim to show, are often put in place to create path-dependencies for normalisation of illiberal ideologies and views in contemporary (European) societies while infusing public imagination with the increasingly exclusionary, nativist ‘common sense’ via such of it articulations as, e.g., the ever more widespread ‘normalised hate speech’ (Breazu, Katsos & Krzyżanowski 2026). 

References: 

• Breazu, P., N. Katsos & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.)(2026). Researching Normalised Hate Speech as Discourse: Tracing Borderline Discourse Logics and Public Sphere Dynamics through a Critical and Interdisciplinary Approach. Special Issue of Discourse Studies, forthcoming. 

• Ekström, H, M. Krzyżanowski & D. Johnson (2023) Saying ‘Criminality’, Meaning ‘Immigration’? On the Role of 'Proxy’ Discourses and Public Implicatures in Normalization of the Politics of Exclusion. Critical Discourse Studies https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2023.2282506.   

• Krzyżanowska, N., & Krzyżanowski, M. (2018). ‘Crisis’ and Migration in Poland: Discursive Shifts, Anti-Pluralism and the Politicisation of Exclusion. Sociology, 52(3), https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518757952   

• Krzyżanowski, M. (2018a). Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On Politicisation and Mediatisation of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Poland. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (12). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15562948.2017.1317897

• Krzyżanowski, M. (2018b). ‘We Are a Small Country that Has Done Enormously Lot’: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ & the Hybrid Discourse of Politicising Immigration in Sweden. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (1-2). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15562948.2017.1317895  

• Krzyżanowski, M. (2019). ‘Brexit’ and the Imaginary of ‘Crisis’: A Discourse-Conceptual Analysis of European News Media. Critical Discourse Studies 16(2). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2019.1592001  

• Krzyżanowski, M. (2020a). Normalization and the Discursive Construction of ‘New’ Norms and ‘New’ Normality: Discourse in/and the Paradoxes of Populism and Neoliberalism. Social Semiotics 30:4, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10350330.2020.1766193  

• Krzyżanowski, M. (2020b). Discursive Shifts and the Normalisation of Racism: Imaginaries of Immigration, Moral Panics and the Discourse of Contemporary Right-Wing Populism. Social Semiotics 30:4 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10350330.2020.1766199 

• Krzyżanowski, M. & P. Ledin. (2017). Uncivility on the Web: Populism in/and the Borderline Discourses of Exclusion. Journal of Language & Politics 16(4). https://benjamins.com/catalog/jlp.17028.krz 

• Krzyżanowski, M., M. Ekman, P-E. Nilsson, M. Gardell & C. Christensen. (2021). Uncivility, Racism, and Populism: Discourses and interactive practices in anti- & post-democratic communication. Nordicom Review 42(S1). https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/nor-20210003 

• Krzyżanowski, M. & M. Ekström (2022). The Normalisation of (Right-Wing) Populism and Nativism Authoritarianism: Discursive Practices in Media, Journalism and the wider Public Sphere/s. Discourse & Society 33:6 https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095406

• Krzyżanowski, M. & H. Ekström (2024). “No longer the haven of tolerance”? The Press and Discursive Shifts on Immigration in Swden 2010-2022. Social Semiotics  https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2024.2352656  

• Krzyżanowski, M. & N. Krzyżanowska (2024). Conceptual Flipsiding in/and Illiberal Imagination: Applying Discourse-Conceptual Analysis to Explore Ambiguities in Current Rhetoric of the European Far-Right. Journal of Illiberalism Studies 2/2024 (in press). 

• Krzyżanowski, M., R. Wodak, H. Bradby, M. Gardell, A. Kallis, N. Krzyżanowska, C. Mudde, & J. Rydgren. (2023). Discourses & Practices of the ‘New Normal’: Towards an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda on Crisis and the Normalization of Anti- & Post-Democratic Action. Journal of Language & Politics 22(4). https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23024.krz  Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

• Wodak, R. & M. Krzyżanowski. (2017). Right-Wing Populism in Europe & USA: Contesting Politics & Discourse beyond ‘Orbanism’ and ‘Trumpism’. Journal of Language & Politics 16:4, https://benjamins.com/catalog/jlp.17042.krz  

Professor Michał Krzyżanowski holds the Chair in Media and Communication Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden, where he is Deputy Head of School/Department of Informatics and Media as well as Director of the Uppsala University Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR). He is one of the leading international scholars working on critical discourse studies of public discourse in the context of normalisation of illiberalism and neoliberalism. His focus is on communication, media and social change, and specifically on anti-immigration rhetoric, racism, social inequality and discursive dynamics in challenges to liberal democracy. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the international Journal of Language and Politics and a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies and on a number of boards in various journals in critical discourse studies and wider critical/qualitative social research. He is also widely known for his teaching of qualitative methods and critical discourse studies across social and political sciences and humanities across Europe, Australia, Asia and the USA. More information: https://katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N20-1042