Avec Johannes Angermuller, Professor of Discourse, Languages and Applied Linguistics at Open University (Milton Keynes – UK)
Infos & Inscriptions
Quand ? Mardi 31 mars 2026, 10h – 12h30
Où ? Local P61 (Rez-de-chaussée bâtiment Préfecture)
UCLouvain Saint-Louis – Bruxelles
119, Rue du Marias (entrée parking)
1000 – Bruxelles
Inscription : cliquez sur ce lien
What difference does it make for a discourse to turn out true or false? This question has become of pressing relevance in ongoing struggles over truths, untruths and post-truths in public discourse today. The climate controversy is a case in point where well-established scientific knowledge about the causes and effects of global warming has met with vocal criticism from those who denounce it as another leftist discourse. In this situation, it seems curious that mainstream discourse researchers stick to the idea that as such discourse should be taken as neither true nor false. In this talk, Johannes Angermuller wants to propose new directions for Discourse Studies by making the case for a radically discursive approach that acknowledges the hierarchy between true and untrue discourses while asking how both truths and untruths are constructed discursively.
His empirical discussion is based on the controversies over human-driven changes of the atmosphere, from the depletion of the ozone layer in the 1970s and 1980s to the acid rain panic in Germany of the 1980s and climate science since the 2010s. His examples testify to the complex and sometimes surprising dynamics of discourse in which the truth (or untruth) of certain claims are established. Inspired by Science and Technologies Studies, his approach defends both the epistemic and social value of discourses, articulating linguistic, social and material components. Discourse, in this view, designates a socioepistemic practice of valuing and devaluing the speakers and their claims about the material world. Against this theoretical background, the controversies over global gas emissions remind us that discourses do not become true simply because many people say they are true. Instead, discourse researchers would do well to acknowledge that some discourses are truer than others since not all discourses articulate material and non-material elements in ways that equally stand the test of time.
