Debating Hate Crime

Debating Hate Crime examines the language used by parliamentarians, senators, and committee witnesses to debate Canadas hate laws. 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. Lunny reveals the meaning and social signification of the endorsement of, and resistance to, hate law. The result is a rich historical account of some of Canadas most passionate public debates on victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.