Protest, Protestieren, Protestkommunikation

The opportunity to protest legitimises democratic societies. In protests, their constitutive social and cultural pluralism is negotiated and alternative fields of political action are opened up. Language is not merely used to express protest; rather, protest is created through the use of language and other signs in the first place. Linguistic protest research therefore focuses on semiotic practices of protest communication. Protesting becomes relevant through its publicity and mediality. The way in which people protest has changed over time. The debate therefore centres on the changing relationship between protest communication, media and the public sphere. The diversity of historical and medial protest practices challenges their research and diversifies the field of data and methods relevant to linguistic protest research. This volume therefore brings together works of linguistic protest research that deal empirically with questions of the pragmatic relevance of linguistic and pictorial forms of political protest, their medialities and modalities as well as their historicity.