Subtle discriminatory political discourse on immigration

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 894-915
Author(s):  
Gema Rubio-Carbonero

Abstract Overt constructions of discrimination in political discourse towards immigrants are easy to detect and have been traditionally associated with far-right parties. However, mainstream political discourse on immigration delivered by so-called center or center-left parties has transformed into more subtle forms of discursive discrimination, which might not be obvious and need a closer analysis in order to be spotted in discourse. Overt discriminatory discourse has been studied by disciplines, such as political sociology, social psychology and Critical Discourse Studies, but subtle discriminatory constructions have been rather neglected. By combining these three disciplines, we propose here a multidisciplinary and multitheorical framework to systematically analyze subtle discriminatory political discourse on immigration. It aims at contributing to the development of a methodology for a socio-political analysis that allows to detect subtle discriminatory political discourse on immigration. Such framework is composed by four strategies with different degrees of subtleness: highlighting, diminishing, homogenizing and normalizing.

Author(s):  
Salomi Boukala

This article advances research on the normalisation of far-right rhetoric on the “migration issue” by analysing statements from the current Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the ruling political party New Democracy political figures. Having presented the discourse-historical approach (DHA) from critical discourse studies (CDS) as a suitable theory and method of analysis of political discourses, I use an argumentative-based DHA approach and add the argumentative schemes of Aristotelian topoi and fallacies to explore how the leadership of the conservative New Democracy government adopted far-right rhetoric on the refugee issue to justify its tough political agenda on security, law, and order. In particular, I focus on the representation of migration as a threat to national security and public health, the politics of hate, and theories of securitisation via an in-depth analysis of the current and former prime ministers’ discourses, the former government spokesman’s statement on the refugee issue and a popular journalist and New Democracy’s MP television interview, and intend to illustrate how extreme right rhetoric could serve the conservative New Democracy’s political strategies.


Author(s):  
Roxana Ciolăneanu

The chapter focuses on how language use mirrors the way people think and act. An interdisciplinary perspective will be used in the attempt to cross-fertilize insights form critical discourse approach and cognitive linguistics that will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of how the language employed conveys stereotyped ideas and metaphors that pervade (many times unconsciously) people's way of talking. Proverbs, taken as language samples potentially revelatory of some cognitive bases of the way people have been thinking and talking about women throughout time, will be analyzed. The idea that gender is socially and discursively constructed will be thus reinforced. Implicit stereotyping, a concept borrowed from social psychology, will be employed to demonstrate that unconscious exposure to stereotyped knowledge influences people's judgements and relations with other social categories. It will be equated to what is called cognitive metaphor in cognitive linguistics and ideology in critical discourse studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol III (II) ◽  
pp. 385-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rab Nawaz Khan ◽  
Abdul Waheed Qureshi

The current study is an attempt to critically analyze the role and politics of voice in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in terms of categorical and stereotypical representation of the Pashtuns. It is a critical discourse study (Norman Fairclough, 1989, 2018) of the selected data. Moreover, the data is viewed from the perspective of critical discourse studies. The novels under study are polyphonic in nature, and the characters belong to various Afghan ethnic backgrounds, like the Pashtuns, the Tajiks and the Hazaras. The study concludes that the novelist's choice of the characters with their respective voices and the roles assigned to them are political, ideological and somewhat biased. The Pashtuns have been stereotypically represented by categorizing them as the social, well-educated and more or less liberal Pashtuns, the tribal and traditionalist Pashtuns, extremist and fundamentalist Pashtuns, like Taliban. Misrepresentation of the tribal and fundamentalist Pashtuns as racists, ethnic nationalists, ideologists, sexists, exclusionists, traditionalists and power-abusers is indicative of the novelist's biasedness and exaggeration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-809
Author(s):  
Lyndon C.S. Way

Internet memes are the most pervasive and malleable form of digital popular culture (Wiggins 2019: vii). They are a way a society expresses and thinks of itself (Denisova 2019: 2) used for the purpose of satire, parody, critique to posit an argument (Wiggins 2019, see also Ponton 2021, this issue). The acts of viewing, creating, sharing and commenting on memes that criticise or troll authority figures have become central to our political processes becom[ing] one of the most important forms of political participation and activism today (Merrin 2019: 201). However, memes do not communicate to us in logical arguments, but emotionally and affectively through short quips and images that entertain. Memes are part of a new politics of affectivity, identification, emotion and humour (Merrin 2019: 222). In this paper, we examine not only what politics memes communicate to us, but how this is done. We analyse memes, some in mainstream social media circulation, that praise and criticise the authoritarian tendencies of former US President Donald Trump, taken from 4Chan, a home of many alt-right ideas. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies approach, we demonstrate how images and lexical choices in memes do not communicate to us in logical, well-structured arguments, but lean on affective and emotional discourses of racism, nationalism and power. As such, though memes have the potential to emotionally engage with their intended audiences, this is done at the expense of communicating nuanced and detailed information on political players and issues. This works against the ideal of a public sphere where debate and discussion inform political decisions in a population, essential pillars of a democratic society (Habermas 1991).


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-236
Author(s):  
Jingjing Wu ◽  
Yuxiu Sun

AbstractThis study explores the administrative law enforcement from three perspectives, namely, discourse, cognition and society, according to van Dijk’s theory of critical discourse studies. “Discourse” is the essential linguistic analysis of administrative law enforcement, which may lead to the tension between law-executors and law-breakers, as well as to ease the conflicts and achieve the balance, so that the discourse mode with considerable tolerance and explanation is of great significance for improving the current practice of administrative law enforcement. “Cognition” deals with psychological model based on cognitive and social psychology. In the interaction of administrative law enforcement, the social roles are institutionalized by the context, which is achieved through knowledge background, cognitive methods, communicative purpose, role expectations and information transmission. “Society” focuses on the investigation of institutions, powers and groups based on sociology. There are normative factors and non-normative variables in the administrative law enforcement: the former refers to superior will, judicial review, supervision and defense of law-breaker, while the latter involves administrative habits and experience, natural emotions, interest and mass media. In the institutional context, social variables affect the implementation of administrative law enforcement in different discourse modes.


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