Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Adam Moustafa Humanities

Power of the People: Language, Wor(l)d Construction, and Peoples’ Perceptions of People’s Park

Scholars Journal

People’s Park’s rich history of counterculture activism, contentious present, and perilous future provides an exemplary case study to analyze the role of language in world construction. Adam will explore how language comes into contact and conflict through competing discourses among different Berkeley publics. He will examine the way the “homeless” identity is developed through language found in different Bay Area newspapers. Adam will then explore any correlations between the language of newspaper representations and contemporaneous policy language. The project will examine the way language constructions may shape discourses of different Berkeley publics with the goal of providing a more nuanced understanding of the interconnectedness of knowledge and power, the way these constructions have shaped worlds (the ways people live among and understand the issue) and may have influenced worldbuilding (policy).
Adam Moustafa
Major: Rhetoric
Mentor: Michael Mascuch, Rhetoric
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