Debating Hate Crime

Delving into the language used by parliamentarians, senators, and committee witnesses to debate Canada’s hate laws, this book analyzes passionate discourse surrounding victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.

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Debating Hate Crime examines the language and argumentation used by parliamentarians, senators, and committee witnesses to debate Canada’s “hate-crime” laws. These lively, and at times raucous, legislative debates and committee hearings reveal much about party politics, public policy, and social issues of the day, including citizenship, nationhood, and Canadian values. Drawing on discourse analysis, semiotics, and critical psychoanalysis, Allyson Lunny explores how the tropes, metaphors, and other linguistic signifiers used in these debates expose the particular concerns, trepidations, and anxieties of Canadian lawmakers and the expert witnesses called before their committees. In so doing, Lunny reveals and interrogates the meaning and social signification of the endorsement of, and resistance to, hate law. The result is a rich historical and analytical account of some of Canada’s most passionate public debates on victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.