Lecture - Discourse Towards Minorities - Masako Suzuki Takahashi - 3rd Better World Conference

Lecture - Discourse Towards Minorities - Masako Suzuki Takahashi - 3rd Better World Conference from Alfred Snider on Vimeo.
An approach to analysis on discourse toward minority, Masako Suzuki Takahashi, Research Center for Foreign Language Education, Keio University, Japan
This research aimed to analyze problems in language expressions towards minority groups of the society frequently appearing in communication among pulurilingual/pluricultural parties.
In our increasingly pluricultural world, it is essential to respect each other regardless of cultural, religious, ethnical, gender, (dis)abilities and economic background. New task for language education is to provide students opportunities to grow their ability to understand pains of others with different identity. In order to raise students who can advocate their views without hurting others, we first need to understand what expressions should be avoided.
There has been many insightful research works in the past namely Said’s “Orientalism” and Foucault’s “Maladie Mentale Et Psychologie”. However, background of minority is more diverse in the current society and so as shapes of oppression. An individual who belongs to minority in terms of one aspect of his/her identity can belong to majority in terms of another. Studies on bilateral relationship of groups are therefore not enough relevant in the current society. What we need now is more decent definition of insensitivity in general. Quantitative analysis on appeared insensitivity in the community must be very helpful in understanding the problem as well.
This research first analyzes Code of Conducts/Ethics of diverse international assemblies to discuss on general direction of pluricultural communities. Second, we discuss on possible definition of insensitive speech toward minority comparing with fallacy analysis by Pragma-Dialectical approach. Last, we discuss on further possibility to classify the insensitive speech using example statements collected at international and domestic debating events.
Further details can be found at the conference websites:
Basic information at debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​better/​Welcome.html
News blog at betterworldconference.blogspot.com/
The conference was organized by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor in Slovenia uni-mb.si/ , ZIP, Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga/Pro et contra, institute for culture of dialogue zainproti.com/ , and the World Debate Institute of the University of Vermont debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​wdi/​Welcome.html .
The organizers are grateful for the support of our sponsor QatarDebate qatardebate.org/ .
Thanks to organizers Boris Vezjak, Alfred Snider and Bojana Skrt. Special thanks to Peter Mesarec, Monica Sobocan and Aljoša Polšak.