Portraitfoto Fiona Makulik

Fiona Sophie Makulik

Abortion – Diachrony of a Counter Discourse

The subject of this paper are the so-called practices of contradiction that were used in the German abortion discourse. This refers to statements that are directed against something, i.e. that are used to contradict something. The actors taken into account can largely be assigned to the feminist camp or the women’s rights movement, whereby the data comes from various women’s archives. Three time periods are taken into account, which stand out due to concise discursive events: 1971-75, 1990-94, 2018-2022. Thus, a diachronic perspective is taken on a partial discourse that resists the dominant discourse. Due to its subject matter and the underlying theory, the work is assigned to feminist linguistics as well as discourse and political linguistics.

Research interests
  • feminist linguistics
  • discourse linguistics
  • political linguistics
  • internet linguistics
Vita
  • since 2023
    elected member of the Care, Equality and Diversity Board at the RTG Contradiction Studies
  • 2022
    Master’s degree in language and communication studies at the University of Greifswald
  • 2020
    Internship at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Zurich).
  • 2019 – 2021
    Student assistant at the Institute for German Philology (University of Greifswald; Prof. Dr. Konstanze Marx).
  • 2018
    Bachelor in German Studies and Philosophy at the University of Bremen
  • 2017
    student assistant at the conference Contradiction Studies: Mapping the Field
  • 2015 – 2017
    Student assistant in the project Linguistic Practices of Paradoxical Recognition of Person and Thing in German Colonialism at the University of Bremen, Prof. Philipp Dreesen
  • 2022
    Member of the Working Group on Linguistic Pragmatics e.V.
  • 2018
    Member of the Working Group Language in Politics e.V.
Publications
  • 2024
    Relationen. Das verknüpfende Glied zwischen Positionierung und Widersprechen. Eine Illustration anhand des feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurs. In ThemaTalkers (Lara Berlage, Julian Engelken, Peter Ernst, Jan Hensellek, Lara Herford, Louis Hypius, Sargis Poghosyan, Angelina Schellin, Susanne Sophie Schmalwieser & Ingo H. Warnke) (eds.), Debattieren, Opponieren, Protestieren. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf sprachliche Praktiken des Widersprechens, OpenAccess U Bremen, 48-57. Accessible at: https://doi.org/10.26092/elib/3135
  • 2024
    Zur Ästhetik von Widerspruchspraxen am Beispiel des feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurses in den 1970er Jahren In Wengeler, Martin & Kersten Sven Roth (eds.) aptum, Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 20 (01). Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag GmbH
Talks, Workshops and Events
  • 2024
    Talk Positionswechsel – ein diachroner Blick auf den feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurs in Deutschland at the conference Zur Debatte, Bioethik-Kontroversen, Sprachliche, philosophische und historische Aspekte. 09.09.2024-10.09.2024, Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas in Marburg.
  • 2024
    Talk Zwischen Linguistik, Widersprüchen und Feminismus. Ein Werkstattbericht zum Promotionsprojekt Abtreibung – Diachronie eines Gegendiskurses at the seminar Sprache, Wissen, Macht in biomedizinischen Diskursen (Dr. Constanze Spieß and Lesley-Ann Kern). 25.01.2024, University of Marburg
  • 2023
    Talk Nur Widersprüche oder doch diskursive (disruptive) Ereignisse? [Only contradictions or discursive (disruptive) events after all?] at the Conference: Discourses in/of Disruption. 16.11.-17.11.2023, TU Dresden
  • 2023
    Talk Zur Beziehung von Positionierung und Widersprechen am Beispiel des feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurses in Deutschland. [On the Relation between Opponing and Objecting in Feminist Discourse on Abortion in Germany]. at the Conference: Debate, Oppogne, Protest – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Practices of Objecting. International Student’s Conference 05.05-06.05.2023
  • 2016
    Talk at the junior symposium of the conference network Discourse – interdisciplinary at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim
Teaching
  • Summer Term 2024
    Lecture Einführung in die Syntax
    with Jonas Trochemowitz
every day

“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”

Gisela Febel
ideal of a contradiction-free world

“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

Michi Knecht
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”

Kerstin Knopf
Bhabha on enlightenment and coloniality

“Homi Bhabha says about the contradiction between the ideals of the enlightenment, claims to democracy and solidarity and simultaneous colonization and ongoing coloniality: ‘That ideological tension, visible in the history of the West as a despotic power, at the very moment of the birth of democracy and modernity, has not been adequately written in a contradictory and contrapuntal discourse of tradition.’”

Kerstin Knopf