Since at least the Danish cartoon crisis, which highlighted racialization and anti-Muslimism sentiments in Denmark (Hervik, 2011) as well as the international #MeeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, there has been intensified debates about what words and images are possible to use in relation to issues of diversity. The language (words, phrases, terms, discursive connotations) used around issues of diversity has become a matter of not only wording but wor(l)ding diversity (Haraway, 2016). Such ‘wor(l)ding-debates’ not only reflect the power struggles and tensions of minority-majority, racialization, or sexual harassment. They also materialize generational tensions and differences between (grand) parents and their (grand) children, educators, and students. During ethnographic research at two Danish gymnasiums, we encountered words used by students and teachers around diversity issues that are affectively charged. They bring forth discomfort, embarrassment, feelings of righteousness, and aspirations for change. While students wor(l)ded diversity in a more straight forward, easy-going manner, the educators ‘ran out of words’, stumbled, and expressed discomfort about the vocabulary available in relation to issues of gender, cultural, racial, and sexual diversity. We examine how the language of everyday diversity work takes generational shapes and how different generations have varied ways of approaching their common day language around diversity. The object of our analysis is not only words, phrases, and terms, but the atmospheric tensions around these wor(l)dings. This makes us wonder how diversity is affectively performed through wording and gestures; and through what may be termed, ‘nice’ pedagogical language versus the ‘dark language’ where the cut-of-words, like the N-word and even ‘race’, is haunting the conversations and creating tense ambiances (Ladson-Billing 1998; Gordon 2008). To embark on how generational differences around the diversity vocabulary come into tensions we deploy analytical concepts from feminist new materialism (Barad, 2010; Bennet, 2010; Chen, 2012) and affect studies (Ahmed, 2014) that emphasize the affective entanglement of words and worlding (Haraway 2011). Approaching diversity work as mood work (Ahmed, 2014) we go beyond content and discourse analysis. Instead, we work with a performative cartography (Staunæs & Mengel 2023): First, this involves ethnographic observations and 20 interviews with students and educators. Second, a computer-animated visualization of highlights and absences of diversity words used in the interview material; and finally, two online learning labs involving 10 students and educators, where using these visual interfaces facilitated reflections upon diversity work, language, and intergenerational moods.

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