The Diffusion of the Culture Wars in North America and Europe

Americans are used to mediatized debates about the culture wars. But how recently have terms like “politically correct”, “Islamophobia”, “systemic racism”, “white privilege”, and “Black Lives Matter” entered our public lexicon? And how does this compare to their usage in primarily Anglophone countries like Canada and Britain, and non-Anglophone countries like France and the Netherlands? With William & Mary co-author A. Maurits van der Veen, Erik Bleich has been collecting newspaper data from these five countries mentioning key culture wars terms. Our interest is in seeing how usage of these words and phrases has changed across time and space, and to explore whether growth in one country affects the prevalence of the term elsewhere.