The Language of (Perma)Crisis:
Discourses and Politics of the 'New Normal'

The notion of crisis has emerged as a defining concept of global reality, but the language surrounding it is radically changing at the moment. While crisis was traditionally used to denote moments of major social and political transformation, the word is increasingly taking on a meaning of “a state of greater or lesser permanence” (Krzyzanowski et al. 2023). Marked by a global pandemic, a longstanding climate crisis, and the eruption of new waves of conflict, the third decade of the 21st indeed seems to be ushering in a new language of permacrisis that is clearly never just about naming. The rhetoric of a permanent ‘new normal’ has by now proven to carry much potential to reinforce inequality and exclusion. The open-ended semantics of crisis are a worrying echo of their historical use to strengthen politics of violence and even genocide as unavoidable (Pollack 2020). Their dynamics, nevertheless, are far from predictable, as felt in the ongoing tug-of-war over the meanings of words like ‘freedom’, ‘solidarity’, '(dis)information or ‘truth’.

This conference explores varied aspects of language that construct the contexts of crisis in the public realm. Within a broadly sociolinguistic and critical discourse perspective, it will examine different forms of crisis discourse, with a particular interest in representations of collectivity, division and solidarity. Bringing together scholars from a range of linguistic and geopolitical contexts, we hope to stimulate conversations about the role of language – as well as language scholars and academia – for all the power to perpetuate polarization, but also for the potential to imagine alternatives beyond normalizing the global systemic collapse as the only possibility for the future.