Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Research in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Discourse Exchange” Around Brex(L)It: Post-Brexit British Literature
Muharrem Can Sarıtaş
ABSTRACT:
After the departure of UK from the EU, the problematic consequences of populism rose both in the world and in the field of humanities. This study aims to show that it is useful to look at literature as a source when it comes to understanding the turmoil and ambiguity among the people of UK and demonstrate that populist discourses, by nature, are without any concrete ideology. Although there have been numerous studies in the field of linguistics, politics and humanities in general, an interdisciplinary approach has been scarce. The objective of this study is to put forward the term of “discourse exchange”. In today’s reality where political agendas are changing rapidly to satisfy the daily interests of the public, discourses may shift across the political spectrum. This phenomenon causes various problems in the societies where the lack of long-term commitments and strong values, regenerate the identity crisis and hopelessness. For the methods, critical discourse analysis is used along with the identification of literary devices that can reflect the captured state of UK’s public in the novel of Autumn by Ali Smith. With the analysis of the book, it has been shown that populism did not only caused confusions that led to Brexit, but it also amplified the identity crisis during the aftermath of it. The goal of this study is to further the understanding of populist discourses and the results of them. The sponsor of this study is 2209-A program of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
keywords: discourse; discourse exchange; populism; Brexit; identity