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Free speech or obedient speech? Revisiting liberal speech norms in ‘closed contexts’

Free speech or obedient speech? Revisiting liberal speech norms in ‘closed contexts’ Qualitative researchers can usually discern the difference between obedient speech and fearless, critical, or oppositional speech. Yet the context in which speech acts are performed is necessarily uneven, such that the same people who might speak freely in one place are often quick to engage in obedient speech in another. Speech acts also depend on the speaker's positionality, meaning that some speakers may have the privilege to act as ‘truth‐tellers’ and speak freely, whereas the positionality of others does not enable this. This paper considers how these contextual factors can be overlooked when liberal speech norms are taken for granted. Engaging with Michel Foucault's writing on parrhesia, I highlight the issues of positionality and context in defining how socio‐political borders are drawn around free (‘fearless’) speech as opposed to obedient (‘performative’) speech. I show how parrhesia opens up key questions for qualitative research about the politicisation of free versus obedient speech through space and time. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Area Wiley

Free speech or obedient speech? Revisiting liberal speech norms in ‘closed contexts’

Koch, Natalie
Area , Volume 55 (4) – Dec 1, 2023
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References (72)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2023 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
ISSN
0004-0894
eISSN
1475-4762
DOI
10.1111/area.12874
Publisher site
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Abstract

Qualitative researchers can usually discern the difference between obedient speech and fearless, critical, or oppositional speech. Yet the context in which speech acts are performed is necessarily uneven, such that the same people who might speak freely in one place are often quick to engage in obedient speech in another. Speech acts also depend on the speaker's positionality, meaning that some speakers may have the privilege to act as ‘truth‐tellers’ and speak freely, whereas the positionality of others does not enable this. This paper considers how these contextual factors can be overlooked when liberal speech norms are taken for granted. Engaging with Michel Foucault's writing on parrhesia, I highlight the issues of positionality and context in defining how socio‐political borders are drawn around free (‘fearless’) speech as opposed to obedient (‘performative’) speech. I show how parrhesia opens up key questions for qualitative research about the politicisation of free versus obedient speech through space and time.

Journal

Area – Wiley

Published: Dec 1, 2023

Keywords: authoritarianism; Foucault; liberalism; parrhesia; qualitative methods; speech

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