Language in Times of Conflict / Conflict in Language: The Language of the Cold War (a guest-lecture by Siegfried Weichlein)

Department: European Languages and Studies

Date and Time: November 15, 2017 | 2:00 PM-3:30 PM

Event Location: HG 1010

Event Details


Language in Times of Conflict / Conflict in Language: The Language of the Cold War (a guest-lecture by Siegfried Weichlein)
In times of conflict, language and its discourses traditionally serve at least two needs: naming the enemy and the stakes of the conflict. Both functions are typically interwoven: defining the conflict often meant identifying the enemy. That changed in the Cold war which brought the “we vs them” antagonism to its ultimate apogee. Around the Cuban missile crisis, the enemy got lost by becoming more and more unspecific. Crises scenarios of nuclear warfare and later pollution began to dominate the language of conflict. With the lingering specter of radiation omnipresent, the image of an invisible enemy haunted the imaginary of the time and the scenarios of conflict were more and more internalized. The most dangerous enemy was the enemy from within. The talk will take a closer look at how the nature of conflict itself was altered and how its discourses shifted: the language of conflict was indeed no longer “we vs them”, but “we vs ourselves”.

Siegfried Weichlein is professor of history at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is currently leading a major interdisciplinary research project on “The Cold War as Political Imagination”.

The talk will be in English and is open to all.

Contact: Professor Peter Frei (pfrei@uci.edu)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwcS9mk5YjpkYUNRWnd2c0hEOGc/view?usp=sharing