In this talk, I discuss the presence and role of nostalgia in contemporary discourses of migration in the UK. I start by examining nostalgia in immigration discourses and take the case-study of the Windrush generation to illustrate how we can empirically test for nostalgia in current representations by focussing on a single linguistic feature: metaphor. Through this analysis, narratives such as the warm history of welcome are reconsidered as recurring rhetorical devices that legitimate hostility. In the second phase, I focus on nostalgia around emigration from the UK, identifying mismatches in how movement from the UK has been framed at different points in time, including the erasure of forced mobility. I argue that nostalgia around past mobility is integral to the maintenance of hostile discourses of immigration because it backgrounds and elides shared experiences of migration between so-called static and mobile populations.

Dr. Charlotte Taylor is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the relationship between language and conflict using the methodologies of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. Her publications include Corpus Approaches to Discourse (with Anna Marchi), Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse (with Melani Schroeter), Mock Politeness in English and Italian, and Patterns and Meanings in Discourse (with Alan Partington and Alison Duguid).

Zoom link: https://hku.zoom.us/j/97904392360?pwd=MlRVQTZiT3JwOXgrRTFJNmZ1VnBudz09 

Meeting ID: 979 0439 2360 
Password: 429877

In view of the current pandemic situation, all face-to-face events or activities shall be suspended in accordance to the notice issued by Task Force. As a matter of fact, the upcoming seminar will be shifted from hybrid mode to online mode only.