A critical discourse study of the portrayal of immigrants as non-citizens in a sample from the Spanish press

This study intends to contribute to critical discourse analysis (CDA) by observing how the discourse of the press represents immigrants. The objective of this paper is to observe the main linguistic charac­teristics used by the press to portray sub-Saharan immigrants as non-citizens, in a sample fro...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Martínez Lirola, María
Format: article
Publication Date:2022
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Alcalá (UAH)
Repository:e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/53078
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10017/53078
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Sub-Saharan immigrants
Critical discourse analysis
Spanish press
Citizenship
Journalistic language
Inmigrantes subsaharianos
Análisis crítico del discur­so
Prensa española
Ciudadanía
Lenguaje periodístico
Lingüística
Sociología
Linguistics
Sociology
Description
Summary:This study intends to contribute to critical discourse analysis (CDA) by observing how the discourse of the press represents immigrants. The objective of this paper is to observe the main linguistic charac­teristics used by the press to portray sub-Saharan immigrants as non-citizens, in a sample from the Spanish press. The corpus consists of the news items published in the digital editions of the newspapers El País and ABC from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019. The main discursive characteristics analysed to observe the representa­tion of immigrants as non-citizens are lexis, the use of figures and the passive voice. The methodology combines qualitative and quantita­tive data. The analysis will show that the discourse of the press tends to rep­resent immigrants in a negative way, to reproduce the dichotomy 'we-they' and to represent immigrants as 'the other'. The findings indicate that the recurrent use of certain words to refer to immi­grants, the use of figures that evoke a sense of invasion and the rep­resentation of them as passive individuals do not favour integration but rather the exclusion of immigrants from Spanish society, which thus promotes non-citizenship.