#refugeesnotwelcome: Anti-refugee discourse on Twitter

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 498-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Kreis

In this study, I examine the online discourse of the European refugee crisis on the micro-blogging platform, Twitter. Specifically, I analyze 100 tweets that include #refugeesnotwelcome, and explore how this hashtag is used to express negative feelings, beliefs and ideologies toward refugees and (im)migrants in Europe. Guided by critical discourse studies, I focus on Twitter users’ discursive strategies as well as form and function of semiotic resources and multimodality. Twitter users who include this particular hashtag use a rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion to depict refugees as unwanted, criminal outsiders. These tendencies align with current trends in Europe where nationalist-conservative and xenophobic right-wing groups gain power and establish a socially accepted discourse of racism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deanna Demetriou

Abstract This article investigates online representations and evaluations of EU migrants, focusing on the notion of ‘benefit tourism’ and discursive strategies used in the (de)legitimization of new welfare restrictions in the UK. Through the examination of online newspapers and corresponding public comment threads, this article adopts theoretical and methodological premises from Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), drawing upon the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to provide both a politically motivated as well as reflexive account. Although new participatory structures allow for resistance to emerge, the openness, scalability and anonymity of the internet also allows for the spread of discrimination through the construction of EU migrants (in particular Bulgarians and Romanians) as the ‘Other’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Kreis

Abstract This study explores how U.S. President Donald Trump employs Twitter as a strategic instrument of power politics to disseminate his right-wing populist discourse. Applying the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, this article analyzes the meaning and function of Trump’s discursive strategies on Twitter. The data consists of over 200 tweets collected from his personal account between his inauguration on January 20, 2017 and his first address to Congress on February 28, 2017. The findings show how Trump uses an informal, direct, and provoking communication style to construct and reinforce the concept of a homogeneous people and a homeland threatened by the dangerous other. Moreover, Trump employs positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation to further his agenda via social media. This study demonstrates how his top-down use of Twitter may lead to the normalization of right-wing populist discourses, and thus aims to contribute to the understanding of right-wing populist discourse online.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 568-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia G Stamou

The field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) needs to extend its analytical scope and cross-fertilize with interactional accounts of identity. One the one hand, there is a constant and reflexive re-crafting of identities in late modernity. On the other hand, interaction is considered to be the major lens through which such identities in flux are studied. To this aim, I propose an analytical framework based on a synthesis of well-established CDS analytical tools with interaction-oriented ones, which results in the formation of ‘discursive strategies of identity construction in interaction’. I put the proposed synthesis under a ‘multiperspectival’ research agenda, which involves the compilation of a ‘package’ based on different approaches, on the condition that the theoretical and epistemological assumptions of each approach are taken into account. By way of illustration, I briefly discuss fictional interactions from two Greek TV commercials for the representation of age identities. It is shown that fictional data, which involve represented identities in talk by institutional agents, could become one possible ‘meeting point’ of CDS with interaction-oriented discourse analytical strands.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-388
Author(s):  
Wenge Chen

Abstract Ideology and power, the vital concerns of critical lexicography, are aspects of a dictionary that a lexicographer and a discerning dictionary user have to encounter in any serious lexicographical enterprise (Kachru 1995); however, critical lexicography as a theme did not receive much attention until Kachru and Kahane (1995). This term later appeared in Hornscheidt (2011) and Moon (2014). However, to date there has not been any systematic theoretical exemplification of what critical lexicography is and how critical lexicographical research is done. Additionally, the scope and function of critical lexicography is relatively limited when we consider the global context, since it fails to take into account theoretical and methodological inspirations from other disciplines such as Critical Discourse Studies and/or Postcolonial Studies, which would make it more theoretically robust and analytically explanatory. With this gap in mind, this paper proposes a discourse approach to Critical Lexicography, termed Critical Lexicographical Discourse Studies (CLDS), as a response to the call for lexicographers’ ‘social accountability’. Specifically, the article puts forward a definition of CLDS and its key concepts, denotes its ontological, epistemological and methodological orientations, delineates its principles, proposes a tentative analytic framework and demonstrates a simplified case study. The article argues that a discourse approach to critical lexicography opens up space to understand different meaning-making practices and contestation in lexicography. In doing so, this article contributes to the development of international (English) lexicography and the language(s) it represents.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Kalliandra Quevedo Conrad ◽  
Natália Martins Flores ◽  
Maria Ivete Trevisan Fossá

We analyze the production of meanings on the Brazilian political crisis in Rede Globo’s television program Profissão Repórter. Based on the Critical Discourse Studies and Social Theory of Discourse, Fairclough (2016), we focus on the discursive strategies used by the program in its Political Crisis edition (04/06/2016). The use of categories of vocabulary analysis, interactive control and intertextuality allowed us to locate regionalizations of meanings that form a Workers Party (PT) subject position, a worker subject position and a protester subject position. The Workers Party subject establishes an antagonistic relation with the protester subject and marks itself by conflict, tension and fear meanings. The protester subject is built by respect, education, defense of the motherland and fight against corruption meanings. The worker subject appears in an intermediate region, not linked to the protests. The discourse silences the meanings of "impeachment" and "coup", and, therefore, avoids addressing the complexity of the Brazilian political crisis. Analisamos a produção de sentidos sobre a crise política brasileira no programa Profissão Repórter, da Rede Globo. A partir dos Estudos Críticos do Discurso e da Teoria Social do Discurso, de Fairclough (2016), nos focamos nas estratégias discursivas utilizadas pelo programa na edição Crise Política (6/04/2016). O uso das categorias de análise de vocabulário, controle interacional e intertextualidade permitiu localizarmos regionalizações de sentido nas posições de sujeito petista, sujeito trabalhador e sujeito manifestante. O sujeito petista estabelece uma relação antagônica com o sujeito manifestante e é marcado pelos sentidos de conflito, tensão e medo. O sujeito manifestante é construído pelos sentidos de respeito, educação, defesa da pátria e luta contra a corrupção. O sujeito trabalhador aparece numa região intermediária, não sendo vinculado aos protestos. O discurso silencia os significados de “impeachment” e “golpe”, eximindo-se de abordar a complexidade da crise política brasileira.Analizamos la producción de sentidos sobre la crisis política brasileña en el programa Profissão Repórter, da Rede Globo de Televisión. A partir de los Estudios Críticos del Discurso y de la Teoría Social del Discurso, de Fairclough (2016), nos centramos en las estrategias discursivas utilizadas por el programa en la edición de Crisis Política (06/04/2016). El uso de las categorías de análisis de vocabulario, control interactivo e intertextualidad nos ha permitido localizar regionalizacións de significado en torno de posiciones de sujetos de sujeto PT, sujeto trabajador y sujeto manifestante. El sujeto PT establece una relación antagónica con el sujeto manifestante y está marcado por significados de conflicto, tensión y miedo. El sujeto manifestante se construye a partir de sentidos de respeto, educación, defensa nacional y lucha contra la corrupción. El sujeto trabajador aparece en una región intermedia, al no estar relacionado con las protestas. El discurso silencia los significados de "impeachment" y "golpe", eximiendo se a abordar la complejidad de la crisis política brasileña.


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).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document