Abstract
Migration, superdiversity and conspiracy theories
Migration and its impact in terms of socio-cultural "superdiversity" (Vertovec 2023) have been controversial and emotionally and ideologically highly loaded topics of public debates for a long time, but the relatively recent emergence of "post-truth" culture and the concomitant boom of "conspiracy theories" (CTs) have added further dimensions of xenophobic responses to cultural diversification. In my paper I study the links between COVID-19 related CTs and the debates about Migration in Britain and Germany 2020-2023, to elucidate narrative and argumentative scenarios that have been construed to legitimise forms of populist resistance against migration and multi- and intercultural communication. The results are intended to feed into a reassessment of chances for deconstructing CT-based anti-migration narratives.
Andreas Musolff read Linguistics, German and English Philology at the Universities of Dűsseldorf and London (SOAS, UCL). After finishing the first degree, he worked at a School for Disabled Children and the Volkshochschule Dűsseldorf. In 1989, he obtained his PhD for work on the history of psycholinguistics and in 1996 his habilitation for work on political discourse analysis. In 2013 he held a Visiting Fellowship at the Truman Institute, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in 2009 a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, Queen Mary University of London and in 2004 a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, Queen Mary University of London. In 1993, he was awarded the Unilever Prize for innovative language teaching.
His research interests are in the areas of Intercultural Communication, Cognitive Linguistics, Political Discourse Analysis, Historical Semantics and Pragmatics and the History of Applied Linguistics. His recent work has focused on cross-cultural comparison of metaphor use, language and racism, and quotation in intercultural communication.