Shaping our representations has to come prior to creating effective policy.

I opened this article by asking about both dominant and contested strategies for r senting homelessness in the public sphere. By looking at the dominant discourse rounding a local homeless movement, we have seen how those experiencing homelessness were attached to deviant attributes through the deployment of powerful cultural tropes Descriptions of camps and the people who live in them revolved around how dirty spaces were, the proliferation of drugs, and the danger that the assumed housed au experienced by their very presence in the neoliberal city. Those representationa tices often associated with racism (Van Dijk, 2000a), anti-Semitism (Reisigl and Wo 2001 ), and anti-immigration discourses (Santa Ana, 1999; Van Der Valk, 2003; Van 2000b) were also of central importance in the discursive dehumanization of hom persons, serving to further the reproduction of the categorical inequalities that str much of modern institutional life (Massey, 2008). Those linguistic strategies that held particular resonance when producing homeless subjectivities fell under three bas lytic categories: the use of metonyms and processes of synechdochization (Reisig Wodak, 2001 ; Van Leeuwen, 1996), the use of metaphors (Lakoff, 1987), and the (o lexicalization of deviant attributes (Fowler, 1991; Stubbs, 2001; Thurlow and Jawor 2006; Van Dijk, 1991). Looking across categorical domains at linguistic strategies may help to inform cross-issue organizing efforts that highlight common problem an integrated critique of dominant social institutions. To best understand how groups of people were characterized as deviant 'dr and druggies', or as 'dirty', 'scary homeless people', we need to look beyond dominant discourses that serve to marginalize and stratify, and examine also those strategies that participants employed to change the stories that structured their lives. I described how This content downloaded from All use subject to https:/ 804 Discourse & Society 25(6) SHARE/WHEEL and Nickelsville 'self- pants to speak to each other about th social policy through symbolic action on structural determinants and context public dialog, however. Instead, particip tive deviance, drawing primarily on tw labels that were attached to homelessn own right, and they were replicated in  dence of how people living outside we figuratively 'swept' under the rug (Baw residents at places like Nickelsville cons homes that directly countered dominan claim that the camp was 'clean' and 'sob violence', ensuring a 'safe' environme strategy is a form of normative refram ing "fit" of the existing norm to the r terms of an alternative norm that they context' (p. 200). Attention to the conte our analysis from one that privileges po recognize the value of peripheral/subor social change. This analysis has focused on the lingui some of the nuanced ways in which  course by balancing a critique of dom across organizational spaces and textua did serve to shift some of the ways tha accounts of homelessness, but they still experiencing homelessness were or were take seriously the insight that a semant then effective use of those discourses m factors that perpetuate the material po erty, debt, housing costs, low wages, etc infatuation away from personal respo might actually foster a more just and e normative reframing (Raymond et al.,  for shifting the focus of debate through and change the norm itself, rather tha illustrated, however, that even as parti the self-managed community clearly of poverty, the social context of dominant continued to be a powerful cultural tro to our alignment with those discourses  then our efforts at strategic interventio those discourses as we weave together a research should focus on how we cing, 2008). I described how This content downloaded from 104.28.153.123 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:52:26 +00:00 All use subject to https:/ 804 Discourse & Society 25(6) SHARE/WHEEL and Nickelsville 'self- pants to speak to each other about th social policy through symbolic action on structural determinants and context public dialog, however. Instead, particip tive deviance, drawing primarily on tw labels that were attached to homelessn own right, and they were replicated in  dence of how people living outside we figuratively 'swept' under the rug (Baw residents at places like Nickelsville cons homes that directly countered dominan claim that the camp was 'clean' and 'sob violence', ensuring a 'safe' environme strategy is a form of normative refram ing "fit" of the existing norm to the r terms of an alternative norm that they context' (p. 200). Attention to the conte our analysis from one that privileges po recognize the value of peripheral/subor social change. This analysis has focused on the lingui some of the nuanced ways in which  course by balancing a critique of dom across organizational spaces and textua did serve to shift some of the ways tha accounts of homelessness, but they still experiencing homelessness were or were take seriously the insight that a semant then effective use of those discourses m factors that perpetuate the material po erty, debt, housing costs, low wages, etc infatuation away from personal respo might actually foster a more just and e normative reframing (Raymond et al.,  for shifting the focus of debate through and change the norm itself, rather tha illustrated, however, that even as parti the self-managed community clearly of poverty, the social context of dominant continued to be a powerful cultural tro to our alignment with those discourses  then our efforts at strategic interventio those discourses as we weave together a research should focus on how we cing, 2008). I described how This content downloaded from 104.28.153.123 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:52:26 +00:00 All use subject to https:/ 804 Discourse & Society 25(6) SHARE/WHEEL and Nickelsville 'self- pants to speak to each other about th social policy through symbolic action on structural determinants and context public dialog, however. Instead, participative deviance, drawing primarily on the labels that were attached to homelessness own right, and they were replicated in blogs, editorials, and academic reports as evidence of how people living outside we figuratively 'swept' under the rug (Baw residents at places like Nickelsville cons homes that directly countered dominan claim that the camp was 'clean' and 'sob violence', ensuring a 'safe' environme strategy is a form of normative refram ing "fit" of the existing norm to the r terms of an alternative norm that they context' (p. 200). Attention to the conte our analysis from one that privileges po recognize the value of peripheral/subor social change.. This analysis has focused on the linguistic production of deviance, and illustrated some of the nuanced ways in which  course by balancing a critique of dominant discourses with social efforts across organizational spaces and textual genres. These normative reframing efforts  did serve to shift some of the ways that social stigmas were describes in journalistic acccounts of homelessness, but they still left the semantic attention of whehter people experiencing homelenssnes were or were not ‘filthy’, ‘drunk’ ‘criminals’. If we are are to take seriously the inisght that a semantic approach to issue contestation might offer, then effective use of those discourss  most able to illustrate the underlying structural factors that perpetuate the material poverty of homelessness – unemployment, poverty, debt, housing costs, low wages etc – might be more likely to shift our collective infatuation away from personal responsibility and toward those social policies  accounts of homelessness, but they still experiencing homelessness were or were take seriously the insight that a semantic then effective use of those discourses m factors that perpetuate the material poverty, debt, housing costs, low wages, etc. infatuation away from personal responsibility might actually foster a more just and e normative reframing (Raymond et al.,  for shifting the focus of debate through and change the norm itself, rather that illustrated, however, that even as participatory collective sense-making practices in the self-managed community clearly of poverty, the social context of dominant continued to be a powerful cultural trope. If our ability to speak and be heard is tied to our alignment with those discourses  then our efforts at strategic intervention  require a more complicated engagement with those discourses as we weave together alternative explanations for participants’ poverty, the social context of dominant media environments ensured that devianced continued to be a powerful cultural trope. If our ability to speak and be heard is tied to our alignemnt with those discourses that are powerful in a given cultural moment, then our   Future research should focus on how we can effectively connect our rebuttal of deviance  as a measure of social importance to structural understandings of social stratification that might more readily translate into effective public polic