Discourse of Cancel Culture in Anglo-Saxon Academia

The article analyses linguo-pragmatic characteristics of cancel discourse, which reflects and develops cancel culture, considered to be public disapproval and rejection of a social subject who has committed an offensive and unacceptable act, causing intolerance and wide discussion in digital, network and real public space. Cancel culture in different spheres of social life, including academic area, is considered from various perspectives. Linguistic means of cancelling (deplatforming, blacklisting, trolling, cyber-bullying, boycott, ostracism, etc.) in on-line and off-line cancel discourse, its communicative situations and topics, discursive practices and strategies, intentions and outcomes of participants’ interaction are studied. The topics causing the most severe cancelling in the academia environment (racial, gender, religious, social discrimination, etc.) are identified. Different types of administrators’ responses to faculty and student cancelling practices are revealed. It is argued that emphasizing offensive facts and rhetoric in the name on social justice, political correctness, and tolerance has become the new norm of Western university discourse, generating restrictions of ideas and speech freedom, which have traditionally been values developed in academia in young people. The study indicates that the discourse of cancellation unfolds around the accusatory ascriptive, which is accompanied by ridiculing/mocking the opponent, belittling their status, discrediting and defaming them, attributing to them infernal characteristics, silencing or canceling their presence in the information space.