The “legitimation” of hostility towards immigrants’ languages in press and social media: Main fallacies and how to challenge them
-
Andreas Musolff
Andreas Musolff graduated from Düsseldorf University and is Professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK). His research interests focus on Intercultural and Multicultural Communication, Cultural Metaphor Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. His publications include monographs –
Political Metaphor Analysis – Discourse and Scenarios (2016),Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust (2010),Metaphor and Political Discourse (2004) – and co-edited volumes –Metaphor and Intercultural Communication (2014),Contesting Europe’s Eastern Rim: Cultural Identities in Public Discourse (2010) andMetaphor and Discourse (2009).
Abstract
On the basis of internet forum and press media data, this article studies the expression of hostile attitudes towards multilingualism and multiculturalism in the context of debates about immigration. The forum data are drawn from the BBC’s Have Your Say website, which is a moderated forum that excludes polemical and abusive postings. Nevertheless, it still seems to provide its users ample opportunity for airing strongly anti-immigrant attitudes. The narratives in which these attitudes are being expressed are exemplary stories of the posters’ supposed encounters with the use of foreign languages in the street, in the workplace or at school. This presence of foreign languages in the British public sphere is evaluated as being (at least) problematic and is “explained” as a result of mass immigration, which serves to reinforce the scenario of a culture mix that will destroy British “home” culture. Media coverage of immigration partly supports such vilification of multilingualism and multiculturalism, and the reports and comments often seem to be drawn from similar narrative-argumentative templates as those of the discussions on Have Your Say. In conclusion, we argue that counterspeech informed by Critical Discourse Analysis has to develop alternative narratives and figurative scenarios that question the bias against linguistic and cultural diversity.
About the author
Andreas Musolff graduated from Düsseldorf University and is Professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK). His research interests focus on Intercultural and Multicultural Communication, Cultural Metaphor Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. His publications include monographs – Political Metaphor Analysis – Discourse and Scenarios (2016), Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust (2010), Metaphor and Political Discourse (2004) – and co-edited volumes – Metaphor and Intercultural Communication (2014), Contesting Europe’s Eastern Rim: Cultural Identities in Public Discourse (2010) and Metaphor and Discourse (2009).
Acknowledgement
The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under REA grant agreement no. 609305.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Suche in Google Scholar
Andersson, Lars G. & Peter Trudgill. 1990. Bad Language. London: Penguin.Suche in Google Scholar
Arnaut, Karel, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton & Massimiliano Spotti. 2015. Introduction: Superdiversity and sociolinguistics. In Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton & Massimiliano Spotti (eds.), Language and Superdiversity 1–17. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315730240Suche in Google Scholar
Arnaut, Karel, Martha Sif Karrebæk, Massimiliano Spotti & Jan Blommaert (eds.). 2016. Engaging Superdiversity: Recombining Spaces, Times and Language Practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781783096800Suche 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 and Society 19(3). 273–306.10.1177/0957926508088962Suche in Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos & Tony McEnery. 2013. Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511920103Suche in Google Scholar
Balch, Alex & Ekaterina Balabanova. 2014. Ethics, Politics and Migration: Public Debates on the Free Movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–2013. Politics 36(1). 19–35.10.1111/1467-9256.12082Suche in Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 2011. Multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism: How can we describe and understand the diversity of the world? Social Sciences in China 32(4). 52–58.10.1080/02529203.2011.625169Suche in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2013a. Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity. Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12(3). 193–196.10.1080/15348458.2013.797276Suche in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2013b. Ethnography, Superdiversity, and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781783090419Suche in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2015. Commentary: Superdiversity old and new. Language & Communication (Special Issue: The Social Life of Diversity Talk) 44. 82–88.10.1016/j.langcom.2015.01.003Suche in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan & Ben Rampton. 2015. Language and superdiversity. In Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton & Massimiliano Spotti (eds.), Language and Superdiversity 21–48. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315730240Suche in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2006. Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse & Society 17(5). 563–581.10.1177/0957926506066345Suche in Google Scholar
Curzan, Anne. 2014. Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139107327Suche in Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna, Didem Ikizoglu & Jeremy Wegner (eds.). 2017. Diversity and Super-Diversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives Washington: Georgetown University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Fielder, Grace E. & Theresa Catalano. 2017. Right-wing populism in UK media discourse on “new” immigration. In Jan Chovanec & Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (eds.), Representing the Other in European Media Discourses, 207–234. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.74.10fieSuche 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(5). 5–38.10.1177/0075424207311247Suche in Google Scholar
Gerard, Liz. 2016. The Press and Immigration: Reporting the News or Fanning the Flames of Hatred? Retrieved from: http://www.sub-scribe.co.uk/2016/09/the-press-and-immigration-reporting.html (accessed 5/4/2018).Suche in Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher. 2011. Force-interactive patterns in immigration discourse: A Cognitive Linguistic approach to CDA. Discourse & Society 22(3). 269–286.10.1177/0957926510395440Suche in Google Scholar
Holliday, Adrian. 1999. Small Cultures. Applied Linguistics 20(2). 237–264.10.1093/applin/20.2.237Suche in Google Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, Michał Krzyżanowski & Ruth Wodak. 2012. Dynamics of Representations in Discourse: Immigrants in the British Press. In Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder & Ruth Wodak (eds.), Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 283–295. Vienna: Springer.10.1007/978-3-7091-0950-2_26Suche in Google Scholar
Meissner, Fran. 2015. Migration in migration-related diversity? The nexus between superdiversity and migration studies. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(4). 556–567.10.1080/01419870.2015.970209Suche in Google Scholar
Meissner, Fran & Steven Vertovec. 2015. Comparing super-diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(4). 541–555.10.1080/01419870.2015.980295Suche in Google Scholar
Morpurgo Davies, Anna. 1987. History of Linguistics, IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics. London: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar
Musolff, 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/jlac.3.1.02musSuche in Google Scholar
Office for National Statistics 2013. Language in England and Wales 2011 Retrieved from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/articles/languageinenglandandwales/2013-03-04#proficiency-in-english (accessed 18/3/2018).Suche in Google Scholar
Paprota, Małgorzata. 2017. Representations of Eastern Europeans in the UK in reader comments of two British online newspapers. In Jan Chovanec & Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (eds.), Representing the Other in European Media Discourses 183–205. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.74.09papSuche in Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2014. Superdiversity and why it isn’t: Reflections on terminological innovation and academic branding. Paper at Conference on Sloganizations in Language Education Discourse Humboldt University, Berlin.Suche in Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2016. Drilling down to the grain in superdiversity. In Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton & Massimiliano Spotti (eds.), Language and Superdiversity 91–109. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Reyes, Angela. 2014. Linguistic anthropology in 2013: super-new-big. American Anthropologist 116(2). 366–378.10.1111/aman.12109Suche in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2015. How language communities intersect: Is “superdiversity” an incremental or transformative condition? Language & Communication 44. 7–18.10.1016/j.langcom.2014.10.015Suche in Google Scholar
Stein, Dieter. 2005. On the role of language ideologies in linguistic theory and practice: purism and beyond. In Nils Langer & Winifred Davies (eds.), Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages, 188–203. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110901351.188Suche in Google Scholar
Thomas, George. 1991. Linguistic Purism London: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6). 1024–1054.10.1080/01419870701599465Suche in Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 2015. Super-Diversity. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Walsh, Olivia. 2016. Linguistic Purism: Language Attitudes in France and Quebec. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/impact.41Suche in Google Scholar
Watts, Richard J. 2011. Language Myths and the History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327601.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Media texts and websites
BBC. 2010a. Have your Say: Should politicians be talking about immigration?http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/04/should_politicians_be_talking.html (last accessed 15/12/2013).Suche in Google Scholar
BBC. 2010b. Have your Say: How should immigration be tackled?http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/04/how_should_immigration_be_tack.html (last accessed 15/12/2013).Suche in Google Scholar
BBC. 2010c. Have your Say: Are immigration rules fair?http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/06/are_immigration_rules_fair.html (last accessed 15/12/2013).Suche in Google Scholar
BBC. 2018. Have Your Say. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/4180246.stm (last accessed 18/03/2018).Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Express 2015a. 311 languages spoken in our schools. Daily Express, 24 July 2015.Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Express 2015b. IPSO complaint upheld: English in schools. Daily Express, 16 December 2015.Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Express 2016. Muslim women MUST learn English in two years - or be kicked out of Britain, says Cameron. Daily Express, 18 January 2016.Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Express 2017. More than one MILLION schoolchildren do not speak English as first language. Daily Express, 18 January 2016.Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Mail 2016a. Cameron’s call to Muslim mothers to learn English to help beat fanatics as 700 Britons are now believed to have travelled to Syria to join jihadis. Daily Mail, 17 January 2016.Suche in Google Scholar
Daily Mail 2016b. I’m totally behind asking Muslim women to learn English but asking me to pay for it is a liberty in any language. Daily Mail, 19 January 2016 (author: Katie Hopkins).Suche in Google Scholar
Huffington Post 2015. English in Schools, Huffington Post UK, 16 December 2015; https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/16/daily-express-correction-english-dying-out-in-schools_n_8817296.html (accessed 5/4/2018).Suche in Google Scholar
The Guardian 2013. Who cares if immigrants have English as a second language? The Guardian, 11 March 2013 (author: Hugh Muir).Suche in Google Scholar
The Guardian 2014. How will ‘super diversity’ affect the future of British politics? The Guardian, 18 October 2014 (author: Rebecca Ratcliffe)Suche in Google Scholar
The Guardian 2016. Migrant spouses who fail English test may have to leave UK, says Cameron, The Guardian, 18 January 2016.Suche in Google Scholar
The Independent 2016. David Cameron calls on Muslim women to learn English to combat radicalization. The Independent, 17 January 2016.10.12968/indn.2016.5.17Suche in Google Scholar
The Observer 2017. Nurses who failed English test aimed at curbing immigration set for a reprieve. The Observer, 24 September 2017.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Narrating hostility, challenging hostile narratives
- Going beyond hate speech: The pragmatics of ethnic slur terms
- Online hate, digital discourse and critique: Exploring digitally-mediated discursive practices of gender-based hostility
- “Go to hell fucking faggots, may you die!” framing the LGBT subject in online comments
- In search of hate speech in Lithuanian public discourse: A corpus-assisted analysis of online comments
- The “legitimation” of hostility towards immigrants’ languages in press and social media: Main fallacies and how to challenge them
- “Rivers of blood”: Migration, fear and threat construction
- Strategies of othering through discursive practices: Examples from the UK and Poland
- Salam-Online: Preventive Measures against extreme online messages among Muslims in Germany. Insights into a pilot project at the Center for Islamic Theology, Münster
- Caught in the cross-fire: Tackling hate speech from the perspective of language and translation pedagogy
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Narrating hostility, challenging hostile narratives
- Going beyond hate speech: The pragmatics of ethnic slur terms
- Online hate, digital discourse and critique: Exploring digitally-mediated discursive practices of gender-based hostility
- “Go to hell fucking faggots, may you die!” framing the LGBT subject in online comments
- In search of hate speech in Lithuanian public discourse: A corpus-assisted analysis of online comments
- The “legitimation” of hostility towards immigrants’ languages in press and social media: Main fallacies and how to challenge them
- “Rivers of blood”: Migration, fear and threat construction
- Strategies of othering through discursive practices: Examples from the UK and Poland
- Salam-Online: Preventive Measures against extreme online messages among Muslims in Germany. Insights into a pilot project at the Center for Islamic Theology, Münster
- Caught in the cross-fire: Tackling hate speech from the perspective of language and translation pedagogy
