This research examined the affective canon in the context of media discourses about institutional language policies in Germany. The canon, i.e., the accepted emotional response in the mainstream, normalizes feelings of exclusion or fear when others speak foreign languages, illegitimating claims of emotional attachment to minority languages.
Ideologies surrounding language choice and societal multilingualism are often brought to light when language policies are proposed or implemented. This research will analyze media discussions of language policies in institutional settings in terms of the concept of the affective canon.
Research on affective discourses (Weatherall et al. 2015, Burkitt 2014) note that discourses about culturally situated ways of experiencing the world legitimate certain emotional responses and disqualify others. The affective canon is the hegemonically accepted way of responding emotionally to certain situations. Media representations often rely on this canon, as it is immediately recognizable to a mainstream audience. However, social media is also a site for the contestation of the canon.
This study will examine social media discussions of recent events surrounding language policies, such as the discussion of the alleged requirement to speak only German, even while on break, for 20 Turkish workers in a BMW plant in Munich, and the proposal to require German proficiency for Imams from outside the EU seeking to enter Germany (both events in March 2019). In these data, the mainstream affective canon legitimates feelings of being excluded or threatened by conversation in languages other than German in the public sphere; normative monolingualism is also portrayed as in the best interest of immigrants' integration and necessary for unity and efficiency in the institutional setting. However, there are voices which challenge this canon by making emotional claims to a right to minority identity and individual freedom.
