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- Volume 5, Issue, 2017
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 5, Issue 2, 2017
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Thinking globally, acting locally
Author(s): Fabienne H. Baiderpp.: 178–204 (27)More LessThe aim of this study is to show how trans-national right-wing linguistic strategies and global xenophobic attitudes are reworked at national levels, and how, as a result, specialized country- and culture-specific coercion and legitimization strategies arise. Using a detailed, quantitative-qualitative method of analysis, we look at the Greek Cypriot extreme-right party ELAM to see how the party’s anti-migration rhetoric construes any foreign presence as threat, by proximizing it linguistically as ‘invasion.’ This strategy allows the conflation of the current ‘Other’ (migrants) with archetypical adversaries, such as Turkey. Indeed, anchoring the migration issue in the main national narrative, i.e., the long-standing Cypriot conflict, gives their xenophobic language conceptual coherence and strengthens its textual cohesion. In particular two figures of speech are the basis of this invasion script, the word metanasteftiko ‘the immigration phenomenon’ conceptualized as the kipriako (the Cyprus problem, i.e., the political division of the island). This parallelism opens the way for a number of inferences, while it also enables a conceptual shift from the real phenomenon known as globalization and multiculturalism to the imagined idea of a (white/Western) genocide. Data include comments responding to ELAM followers’ YouTube videos and mainstream press representations. Methodology includes corpus linguistics and discourse analysis focused on the fundamental metaphors found in the data such as migration as unbearable weight and migration as dirt.
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Conditional support for territorial migrations in Serbian national discourse
Author(s): Jelena Petrovicpp.: 205–226 (22)More LessAfter more than a decade of Serbia’s investment in the EU integration, its citizens are still imagining their national identities from the externally assigned position of ‘flawed’ Europeans. To respond to this subject position in the context of ongoing migration trends in Europe, these individuals engage in identity politics that both celebrate elements of otherness, and also locate them in the country’s own internal and Eastern Others. This study uses critical discourse analysis to examine the ideological effects of these negotiations in response to the 2010/2011 asylum-seeking crisis, when a number of Serbian citizens applied for asylum in several EU countries, which defined this as an abuse of Schengen system. The analysis of more than 1,000 online comments shows that newsreaders offer conditional support for asylum seekers to (re)inscribe preferred social hierarchies. Represented simultaneously as suffering citizens and immoral internal other, asylum seekers serve as the strategic means by which ethnic discrimination becomes an invisible element of everyday nationalism.
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In transit
Author(s): Tatjana Radanović Felberg and Ljiljana Šarićpp.: 227–250 (24)More LessThis article investigates the representation of migration and migrants in Croatian and Serbian public broadcasters’ online portals during the “migrant crisis” in 2015/2016. The study shows that there are similarities in representations in the two portals at both the macro- and micro-linguistic levels. The migrants are generally represented in positive terms congruent with the official policies of Croatia and Serbia. However, this positive representation was frequently used for positive self-evaluation in contrast to negative evaluation of others – in this case, neighboring countries.
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“We mustn’t fool ourselves”
Author(s): Agnes Bolonyai and Kelsey Campolongpp.: 251–273 (23)More LessThe historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ ( Wodak 2015 ) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies through fractal recursion. We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orbán’s RWP political persona or type.
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“A great and beautiful wall”
Author(s): Massimiliano Dematapp.: 274–294 (21)More LessThis paper focuses on Trump’s aggressive language on immigration. By analyzing a data set made of public speeches, interviews, and statements from Trump’s official website, the paper will look at how certain lexico-grammatical and intertextual choices in Trump’s representation of immigration display all the typical features of a populist agenda. Trump’s texts will be analyzed according to Wodak’s Discourse-Historical approach: Trump’s own “politics of fear” and language on immigration are evidence of the strong currency held by values associated with right-wing, ethno-nationalist populism, once the core ideological tenets only of certain fringe movements such as the Tea Party, but now firmly established in mainstream politics.
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Xenophobic Trumpeters
Author(s): Natalia Knoblockpp.: 295–322 (28)More LessImmigration has been and remains a conspicuous topic in American political debate, and the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, exasperated by the Syrian conflict, has brought the issue of Muslim immigration into focus. The topic has been exploited, among others, by the presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. achieved great resonance and stimulated passionate discussion. This discussion, which displayed a high degree of xenophobia and verbal aggression, is the target of this paper’s investigation. Material was collected from Trump’s official Facebook page and was analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistic methods. The results highlight the strategies employed in discourse that aims to posit Muslims as “Others” and as incompatible with American society, as well as dangerous, aggressive, and inferior, through the choice of semantic, syntactic, and rhetorical discursive structures.
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Donald Trump supporters and the denial of racism
Author(s): Nicholas Close Subtirelupp.: 323–346 (24)More LessDonald Trump’s campaign to become president of the United States was shocking for many people. His negative representations of racialized immigrant groups were one of the most controversial aspects of the campaign, leading to frequent accusations of racism. This study explores how his supporters responded to such accusations. Discussions of racism within a pro-Trump reddit community, called “The_Donald”, were analyzed. The_Donald users adamantly denied that Trump’s statements or proposed policies were racist. Their dismissal of these accusations drew on and extended the logic of color-blind racism. They argued that such accusations were merely cynical political tactics and advocated that Trump supporters respond to them as such. Their favored response strategies superficially resembled genuine debate but were apparently intended to incite emotional responses from accusers and to compel them to disengage from conversations. The article discusses these strategies in light of the ongoing polarization of political debate around immigration.
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The hate that dare not speak its name?
Author(s): Robbie Love and Paul Baker
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