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Vieten, Ulrieke M. and Gawlewicz, Anna
(2016).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0804-4
Abstract
There is a growing interest in – and urgency around – the understanding of cultural difference in and across European societies. Language matters crucially to how difference is perceived and conceptualised. Against this backdrop, the consequences of encountering difference through language still require research. In response to this need, this chapter looks into the use of prejudiced terms addressing difference with respect to axes of gendered ethnicity/religion (Muslim men) and gendered class (male underclass) in two European cities. In doing so, it traces the vernacular embedding of perceptions of specifically coded difference in Poland and the UK. As such, it explores how the same categories of difference are discursively produced in two national contexts and enquires in what ways perceptions differ, overlap or refer to an increasingly global discursive framework.