Emplotting Outrage: How Charges of Indoctrination in North Carolina Schools Influence Public Understanding and Discourse

• In Event: The Politics of Divisive Concepts and Anti–Critical Race Theory Legislation

Abstract

In order to understand and counteract the consequences of invoking indoctrination without explicit argumentation, boundaries, or scrutiny, teachers, educational researchers, and the general public alike need tools to recognize and articulate the discursive processes that allow indoctrination to be taken up as a given in broader discourse about public education. I examine the Lieutenant Governor’s March 2021 press conference using emplotment, interactive vagueness, and undemocratic language as potential tools useable for discovery, understanding, and activism around discourses and policies impacted by charges of indoctrination. In this paper I ask:
1. What is the problem being described in this speech event?
2. How does this press conference speak to current and (potentially) changing discourse around schooling and indoctrination?

Author

• Taylor William Schmidt, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author