Linguistics Circle Seminar - Dr Hanae Trola Skalli

Migration is not only a political and social phenomenon but also a discursive one. The ways in which migration and migrants are represented in the media contribute to the construction and negotiation of social images and imaginaries surrounding migration.

From a critical discourse perspective, this raises questions about how migration and migrants are discursively represented and how the different social actors involved are positioned in relation to one another. In this context, particular attention can be paid to the opposition between an ingroup (“us”) and an outgroup (“them”), as conceptualised within Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to critical discourse studies and, more specifically, through the notion of the ideological square. This framework considers the ways in which discourse may emphasise positive aspects of the ingroup and negative aspects of the outgroup, while mitigating negative aspects of the ingroup and positive aspects of the outgroup.

A corpus-based linguistic perspective allows these questions to be addressed through the examination of linguistic and discursive patterns in media discourse, with particular attention to how such patterns contribute to the construction of images and imaginaries surrounding the migration phenomenon in Spain.

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