Startseite Linguistik & Semiotik Refugees’ dehumanization in the Spanish media: A corpus-assisted study within the semantic preference framework
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Refugees’ dehumanization in the Spanish media: A corpus-assisted study within the semantic preference framework

  • Gema Alcaraz-Mármol ORCID logo EMAIL logo und Jorge Soto-Almela ORCID logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 20. Februar 2020

Abstract

The dehumanization of migrants and refugees in the media has been the object of numerous critical discourse analyses and metaphor-based studies which have primarily dealt with English written news articles. This paper, however, addresses the dehumanizing language which is used to refer to refugees in a 1.8-million-word corpus of Spanish news articles collected from the digital libraries of El Mundo and El País, the two most widely read Spanish newspapers. Our research particularly aims to explore how the dehumanization of the lemma refugiado is constructed through the identification of semantic preferences. It is concerned with synchronic and diachronic aspects, offering results on the evolution of refugees’ dehumanization from 2010 to 2016. The dehumanizing collocates are determined via a corpus-based analysis, followed by a detailed manual analysis conducted in order to label the different collocates of refugiado semantically and classify them into more specific semantic subsets. The results show that the lemma refugiado usually collocates with dehumanizing words that express, by frequency order, quantification, out-of-control phenomenon, objectification, and economic burden. The analysis also demonstrates that the collocates corresponding to these four semantic subsets are unusually frequent in the 2015–16 period, giving rise to seasonal collocates strongly related to the Syrian civil war and other Middle-East armed conflicts.

References

Abid, Raith Z., Shakila A. Manan & Zuhair A. Rahman. 2017. ‘A flood of Syrians has slowed to a trickle’: The use of metaphors in the representation of Syrian refugees in the online media news reports of host and non-host countries. Discourse & Communication 11(2). 121–140.10.1177/1750481317691857Suche in Google Scholar

Allen, William L. 2016. A decade of migration in the British press. Migration observatory report. Oxford: COMPAS, University of Oxford. http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Report-Decade_Immigration_British_Press-1.pdf (accessed 25 May 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Arcimaviciene, Liudmila & Sercan H. Baglama. 2018. Migration, metaphor and myth in media representations: The ideological dichotomy of “Them” and “Us”. SAGE Open 8(2). 1–13.10.1177/2158244018768657Suche in Google Scholar

Asociación para la investigación de los medios de comunicación. 2017. Encuesta General de Medios. Marco General de los Medios de España. https://www.aimc.es/a1mc-c0nt3nt/uploads/2018/02/marco18.pdf (accessed 3 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyzanowski, Tony McEnery & Ruth Wodak. 2008. A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society 19(3). 273–306.10.1177/0957926508088962Suche in Google Scholar

Bandura, Albert. 2002. Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education 31(2). 101–119.10.1080/0305724022014322Suche in Google Scholar

Bañón Hernández, Antonio M. 2004. La representación periodística de los inmigrantes y la enseñanza del análisis crítico del discurso. Glosas Didácticas 12. 127–142.Suche in Google Scholar

Bar-Tal, Daniel. 2000. Shared beliefs in a society: Social psychological analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.10.4135/9781452204697Suche in Google Scholar

Bednarek, Monika. 2008. Semantic preference and semantic prosody re-examined. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 4(2). 119–139.10.1515/CLLT.2008.006Suche in Google Scholar

Bleiker, Roland, David Campbell, Emma Hutchison & Xzarina Nicholson. 2013. The visual dehumanization of refugees. Australian Journal of Political Science 48(4). 398–416.10.1080/10361146.2013.840769Suche in Google Scholar

Blinder, Scott & William L. Allen. 2016. Constructing immigrants: Portrayals of migrant groups in British national newspapers, 2010–2012. International Migration Review 50(1). 3–40.10.1111/imre.12206Suche in Google Scholar

Boeva, Alyona. 2016. Discursive construction of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in British and American news sources. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 236. 53–58.10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.12.018Suche in Google Scholar

Bublitz, Wolfram. 1996. Semantic prosody and cohesive company: Somewhat predictable. Leuvense Bijdragen 85. 1–32.Suche in Google Scholar

Catalano, Theresa. 2017. When children are water: Representation of central American migrant children in public discourse and implications for educators. Journal of Latinos and Education 16(2). 124–142.10.1080/15348431.2016.1205988Suche in Google Scholar

Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS). 2017. Actitudes hacia la inmigración. http://www.mitramiss.gob.es/oberaxe/ficheros/documentos/ActitudesCIS_X.pdf (accessed 9 September 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS). 2019. Barómetro de febrero 2019. http://www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/-Archivos/Marginales/3240_3259/3240/es3240mar.pdf (accessed 9 September 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Ceobanu, Alain & Xavier Escandell. 2010. Comparative analyses of public attitudes Toward immigrants and immigration using multinational survey data: A review of theories and research. Annual Review of Sociology 36(1). 309–328.10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102651Suche in Google Scholar

Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2006. Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse and Society 17(5). 563–581.10.1177/0957926506066345Suche in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam & Edward Herman. 2000. Los guardianes de la libertad. Barcelona: Crítica.Suche in Google Scholar

Cisneros, J. David. 2008. Contaminated communities: The metaphor of “Immigrant as Pollutant” in media representations of immigration. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11(4). 569–602.10.1353/rap.0.0068Suche in Google Scholar

Collins English Dictionary. 1994. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english (accessed 4 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Costello, Kimberly & Gordon Hodson. 2009. Exploring the roots of dehumanization: The role of animal−human similarity in promoting immigrant humanization. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 13(3). 3–22.10.1177/1368430209347725Suche in Google Scholar

Crespo Fernández, Eliecer & María Martínez Lirola. 2012. Lexical and visual choices in the representation of immigration in the Spanish press. Spanish in Context 9. 27–57.10.1075/sic.9.1.02creSuche in Google Scholar

Croteau, David & William Hoynes. 2003. Media/society: Industries, images and audiences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Dervinyté, Inga. 2009. Conceptual emigration and immigration metaphors in the language of the press: A contrastive analysis. Studies about Languages 14. 49–55.Suche in Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun van. 2005. Discourse and racism in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.14Suche in Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun van. 2006. Discurso de las élites y racismo institucional. In Manuel Lario Bastida (ed.), Medios de Comunicación e Inmigración, 16–34. Murcia: CAM.Suche in Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun van. 2011. Sociedad y Discurso: cómo influyen los contextos sociales sobre el texto y la conversación. Barcelona: Gedisa.Suche in Google Scholar

Esses, Victoria M., Stelian Medianu & Andrea S. Lawson. 2013. Uncertainty, threat, and the role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees. Journal of Social Issues 69(3). 518–536.10.1111/josi.12027Suche in Google Scholar

Fotopoulos, Stergios & Margarita Kaimaklioti. 2016. Media discourse on the refugee crisis: on what have the Greek, German and British press focused? European View 15(2). 265–279.10.1007/s12290-016-0407-5Suche in Google Scholar

Gabrielatos, Costas & Paul Baker. 2008. Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1996–2005. Journal of English Linguistics 36(1). 5–38.10.1177/0075424207311247Suche in Google Scholar

Granados, Antolín & Marta Granados. 2013. La inmigración extranjera informada por los media en España. Nuevos apuntes para comprender su representación. In Antolín Granados (ed.), Las representaciones de las migraciones en los medios de comunicación, 19–37. Madrid: Trotta.Suche in Google Scholar

Hart, Christopher. 2007. Critical discourse analysis and conceptualisation: Mental spaces, blended spaces and discourse spaces in the British national party. In Christopher Hart & Dominik Lukeš (eds.), Cognitive linguistics in critical discourse analysis: Application and theory, 106–130. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Suche in Google Scholar

Haslam, Nick. 2006. Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10(3). 252–264.10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_4Suche in Google Scholar

Henry, Frances & Carol Tator. 2002. Discourses of domination: Racial bias in the Canadian English-language press. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.10.3138/9781442673946Suche in Google Scholar

Hier, Sean & Joshua Greenberg. 2002. Constructing a discursive crisis: Risk, problematization and illegal Chinese in Canada. Ethnic and Racial Studies 25(3). 490–513.10.1080/01419870020036701Suche in Google Scholar

Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming. A new theory of words and language. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

International Organization for Migration – IOM. 2018. World Migration Report 2018. Geneva: The UN Migration Agency.Suche in Google Scholar

KhosraviNik, Majid. 2008. British newspapers and the representation of refugees, Asylum seekers and immigrants between 1996 and 2006. Centre for Language in Social Life 128. 3–40.Suche in Google Scholar

KhosraviNik, Majid. 2010. The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers: A critical discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1). 1–28.10.1075/jlp.9.1.01khoSuche in Google Scholar

Landau, Mark J., Michael D. Robinson & Brian P. Meier (eds.). 2013. The power of metaphor: Examining its influence on social life. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.10.1037/14278-000Suche in Google Scholar

Leyens, Jacques-Philippe, Paola M. Paladino, Ramón Rodríguez-Torres, Jeroen Vaes, Stéphanie Demoulin, Armando Rodríguez-Pérez & Ruth Gaunt. 2000. The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups. Personality and Social Psychology Review 4(2). 186–197.10.1207/S15327957PSPR0402_06Suche in Google Scholar

Lynn, Nick & Susan Lea. 2003. A phantom menace and the new Apartheid: the social construction of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom. Discourse & Society 14(4). 425–452.10.1177/0957926503014004002Suche in Google Scholar

Machin, David & Andrea Mayr. 2012. How to do critical discourse analysis: A multimodal introduction. Los Angeles: Sage.Suche in Google Scholar

Martínez Lirola, María. 2008. Las relaciones entre las características lingüísticas y visuales de las noticias sobre inmigración en la prensa gratuita y su relación con la audiencia. Discurso Y Sociedad 2(4). 799–815.Suche in Google Scholar

Moldes-Anaya, Sergio, José Luis Romero-Béjar & Francisco Jiménez-Bautista. 2017. Diagnóstico de factores de riesgo del rechazo social a inmigrantes en un municipio del Poniente Almeriense según un modelo Logit. Revista De Paz Y Conflictos 10(2). 235–263.Suche in Google Scholar

Movimiento contra la Intolerancia. 2018. Informe Raxen: Racismo, Xenofobia, Antisemitismo, Islamofobia, Neofascismo y otras manifestaciones de Intolerancia a través de los hechos. http://www.mitramiss.gob.es/oberaxe/ficheros/documentos/informeraxenespecial2018.pdf (accessed 6 July 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Mussolf, Andreas. 2015. Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1). 41–56.10.1075/bct.93.02musSuche in Google Scholar

O’Halloran, Kieran. 2007. Critical discourse analysis and the corpus-informed interpretation of metaphor at the register level. Applied Linguistics 28(1). 1–24.10.1093/applin/aml046Suche in Google Scholar

Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión. 2012. Medios controlados. https://www.ojd.es/medios-controlados (accessed 3 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Partington, Alan. 2004. “Utterly content in each other’s company”: Semantic prosody and semantic preference. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9(1). 131–156.10.1075/ijcl.9.1.07parSuche in Google Scholar

Real Academia Española. 2001. Diccionario de la lengua española. http://www.rae.es (accessed 4 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Ridao, Susana. 2006. Inmigración y Educación. A propósito de su representación discursiva. In Manuel Lario Bastida (ed.), Medios de Comunicación e Inmigración, 215–236. Murcia: CAM.Suche in Google Scholar

Rinken, Sebastian. 2015. Actitudes hacia la inmigración y los inmigrantes: ¿En qué es España excepcional? Migraciones 37(1). 53–74.10.14422/mig.i37.y2015.003Suche in Google Scholar

Scott, Mike 2012. WordSmith Tools [Version 6.0.]. http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/downloads/ (accessed 3 March 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Sinclair, John. 1996. The search for units of meaning. Textus 9(1). 75–106.10.4324/9780203594070-6Suche in Google Scholar

Sinclair, John. 1998. The lexical item. In Edda Weigand (ed.), Contrastive lexical semantics, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.171.02sinSuche in Google Scholar

Soto-Almela, Jorge & Gema Alcaraz-Mármol. 2017. Comparing the portrayal of immigration in two Spanish newspapers: a semantic prosody analysis. Onomázein 38(6). 147–168.10.7764/onomazein.38.03Suche in Google Scholar

Stubbs, Michael. 2001. On inference theories and code theories: corpus evidence for semantic schemas. Text 21(3). 437–465.10.1515/text.2001.007Suche in Google Scholar

Stubbs, Michael. 2002. Two quantitative methods of studying phraseology in English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 7(2). 215–244.10.1075/ijcl.7.2.04stuSuche in Google Scholar

Taylor, Charlotte. 2009. The representation of immigrants in the Italian press. CIRCaP Occasional Papers 21. 1–40. https://www.circap.org/uploads/1/8/1/6/18163511/occ_21_2009.pdf (accessed 5 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2018. Global trends. Forced Displacement in 2017. The UN Refugee Agency. https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/ (accessed 3 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Vezovnik, Andreja. 2018. Securitizing migration in Slovenia: A discourse analysis of the Slovenian refugee situation. Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies 16(1). 39–56.10.1080/15562948.2017.1282576Suche in Google Scholar

Whitsitt, Sam. 2005. A critique of the concept of semantic prosody. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10(3). 283–305.10.1075/ijcl.10.3.01whiSuche in Google Scholar

Wike, Richard, Bruce Stokes & Katie Simmons. 2017. Europeans’ fear wave of refugees will mean more terrorism, fewer Jobs: Sharp ideological divides across EU on views about minorities, diversity and national identity. Pew Research Centre. http://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Pew-Research-Center-EU-Refugees-and-National-Identity-Report-EMBARGOED-UNTIL-1800EDT-2200GMT-July-11-2016.pdf (accessed 1 June 2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Xiao, Richard & Tony McEnery. 2006. Collocation, semantic prosody, and near synonymy: A cross-linguistic perspective. Applied Linguistics 27(1). 103–129.10.1093/applin/ami045Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2020-02-20
Published in Print: 2022-09-27

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 31.12.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2019-0069/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen