Critical Approaches to Polycrisis

This book critically examines how polycrisis is recontextualised and (ab)used in contemporary discourse from across Europe. The book brings together established and emerging researchers in the field of discourse studies from around the world to explore the accelerating interconnected challenges of climate change, conflict, risk, Brexit, democracy, COVID-19, the rising cost of living, and migration. Recognising that polycrisis is socially produced, constructed and dismantled through discourse, the authors contemplate the discursive manifestations of crisis. Falling under the banner of critical discourse studies (CDS), the methodological approaches are heterogeneous, including, but not limited to, corpus-assisted CDS and multimodal CDS. The data are equally varied, ranging from focus groups to no-war letters, media representations to environmental protection commercials. The volume provides a comprehensive consideration of how critical approaches to discourse can help to make sense of, resist, and respond to (poly)crisis, and it will be of interest to students and scholars working in the remit of discourse studies, with a particular interest in crisis communication.

Tamsin Parnell is a Research Assistant at on the EDIFY project at the University of Nottingham, UK, where she uses qualitative methods to explore how young people with eating disorders post and view content about their lived experience on social media. Her first monograph, published by Bloomsbury, is titled Constructing Brexit Britain.

Tom Van Hout is associate professor of digital culture at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He teaches courses on conflict dynamics, taste regimes and attention economies. His research has been published in journals such as Text & Talk, Social Semiotics, and Journal of Pragmatics.

Dario Del Fante is junior assistant professor at University of Ferrara, Italy. He teaches courses on discourse analysis and English language and linguistics. His research has been published in journals such as Metaphorik.de, Meta, and Umanistica Digitale. His first monograph, published by Peter Lang, is titled Migrating across times and cultures.