‘I would never…’: Deictic shift and moralizing in anti-immigration reader comments
-
Milica Vuković Stamatović
Abstract
This paper studies how readers respond to a counterfactual request inviting them to imagine themselves in the shoes of an immigrant in a corpus of online reader comments to a Yahoo article on Latino immigration. We initially considered 7,000 comments and for our corpus and analysis selected those in which the commenters perform a deictic shift, i.e. assume the deictic center of the immigrant using the first-person pronoun I and the adjective my, which totalled to 452 comments. The discourse of the comments, however, turned out to be very moralizing – i.e. while managing to assume the spatial and the temporal position of the immigrants, they refused to share the same moral grounds as them, which resulted in a series of I would… and I would never… propositions, which frame the commenters as vastly morally superior to the immigrants. The commenters occupy the legality, good parenting, patriotism and gratitude moral high grounds and often revert to moral grandstanding.
References
Baider, F. and Kopytowska, M. 2017. “Conceptualising the other: online discourses on the current refugee crisis in Cyprus and in Poland”. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13(2). 203-233.10.1515/lpp-2017-0011Search in Google Scholar
Binns, A. 2012. “DON’T FEED THE TROLLS! Managing troublemakers in magazines’ online communities”. Journalism Practice 6(4). 547-562.10.1080/17512786.2011.648988Search in Google Scholar
Boyd, M. S. 2019. “Preaching from a distant pulpit.” In A. Musolff and L. Viola (eds.) Migration and Media. Discourses about Identities in Crisis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 291-315.10.1075/dapsac.81.13boySearch in Google Scholar
Cap, P. 2013. “Proximization theory and critical discourse studies: a promising connection?” International Review of Pragmatics 5(2). 293-317.10.1163/18773109-13050208Search in Google Scholar
Chen, G. M. 2017. Online incivility and public debate: Nasty talk. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-3-319-56273-5Search in Google Scholar
Chen, G. M., Fadnis, D., and Whipple, K. 2020. “Can We Talk About Race? Exploring Online Comments about Race-Related Shootings”. Howard Journal of Communications 31(1). 35-49.10.1080/10646175.2019.1590256Search in Google Scholar
Chilton, P. 2004. Analyzing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203561218Search in Google Scholar
Chilton, P. 2005. Discourse space theory. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 3. 78-116.10.1075/arcl.3.06chiSearch in Google Scholar
Chilton, P. 2014. Language, space and mind: The conceptual geometry of linguistic meaning. Cambridge: CUP.10.1017/CBO9780511845703Search in Google Scholar
Christopher, B. 2009. “WWW.HATE.COM: White Supremacist Discourse on the Internet and the Construction of Whiteness Ideology”. Howard Journal of Communications 20(2). 189-208.10.1080/10646170902869544Search in Google Scholar
Domalewska, D. 2016. “Immigration, stereotypes, and social security: The portrayal of migrant groups in public discourse”. Security and Defense Quarterly 13(4). 1531.10.35467/sdq/103231Search in Google Scholar
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. 1997. “Critical discourse analysis”. In Van Dijk, T. A. (ed.), Discourse Studies A multidisciplinary introduction, vol. 2. London: Sage. 258-284.Search in Google Scholar
Fielder, G. E. and Catalano, T. 2017. “Othering Others: Representing the Other in European Media Discourses”. In Chovanec, J. and Molek-Kozakowska, K. (eds.) Representing the Other in European Media Discourses. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 207–234.10.1075/dapsac.74.10fieSearch in Google Scholar
Filardo-Llamas, L., Hart, C. and Kaal, B. 2015. “Introduction for the special issue on space, time and evaluation in ideological discourse”. Critical Discourse Studies 12(3). 235-237.10.1080/17405904.2015.1013480Search in Google Scholar
Galasinska, A. 2009. “Small stories fight back: Narratives of Polish economic migration on an internet forum.” In: Galasinska, A. and Krzyzanowski, M. (eds.) Discourse and transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 188-203.10.1057/9780230594296_11Search in Google Scholar
Grover, T. et al. 2019. “Moral and affective differences in us immigration policy debate on twitter”. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 28(3-4). 317-355.10.1007/s10606-019-09357-wSearch in Google Scholar
Haidt, J. 2012. The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Graham, J. 2007. “When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize”. Social Justice Research 20(1). 98–116.10.1007/s11211-007-0034-zSearch in Google Scholar
Harlow, S. 2015. “Story-chatterers stirring up hate: Racist discourse in reader comments on US newspaper websites”. Howard Journal of Communications 26(1). 21-42.10.1080/10646175.2014.984795Search in Google Scholar
Hughey, M. W. and Daniels, J. 2013. “Racist comments at online news sites: a methodological dilemma for discourse analysis”. Media, Culture & Society 35(3). 332347.10.1177/0163443712472089Search in Google Scholar
Koleva, S. P. et al. 2012. “Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially purity) help explain culture war attitudes”. Journal of Research in Personality 46(2). 184–194.10.1016/j.jrp.2012.01.006Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenges to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Meier, B. P., Sellbom, M. and Wygant, D. B. 2007. “Failing to take the moral high ground: Psychopathy and the vertical representation of morality”. Personality and individual differences 43(4). 757-767.10.1016/j.paid.2007.02.001Search in Google Scholar
Noelle-Neumann, E. 1974. “The spiral of silence a theory of public opinion”. Journal of communication 24(2). 43-51.10.1111/j.1460-2466.1974.tb00367.xSearch in Google Scholar
Reagle Jr., J. M. 2015. Reading the comments: Likers, haters, and manipulators at the bottom of the web. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/10116.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Santana, A. D. 2015. “Incivility dominates online comments on immigration”. Newspaper Research Journal 36(1). 92-107.10.1177/0739532915580317Search in Google Scholar
Somaini, F. 2014. Essentially Criminals: A Transatlantic Content Analysis of Immigration Coverage and Readers’ Reactions. PhD Thesis. Eugine: University of Oregon Graduate School.Search in Google Scholar
Stockwell, P. 2002. An introduction to cognitive poetics. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Stroud N. J. , Van Duyn, E. and Peacock, C. 2016. “News commenters and news comment readers”. Retrieved from: https://mediaengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ENP-News-Commenters-and-Comment-Readers1.pdfSearch in Google Scholar
Tosi, J. and Warmke, B. 2016. “Moral grandstanding”. Philosophy & Public Affairs 44(3). 197-217.10.1111/papa.12075Search in Google Scholar
Tosi, J. and Warmke, B. 2020. Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780190900151.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Turiel, E. 1983. The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: CUP.Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 1993. “Principles of critical discourse analysis”. Discourse & Society 4(2). 249-283.10.1177/0957926593004002006Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 2000. Ideology and discourse: A multidisciplinary introduction. Barcelona: Pompeu Fabra University.Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 2001. “Critical discourse analysis”. In: Tannen D., Schiffrin, D. and Hamilton, H. (eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. 352371.Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 2005. “Discourse analysis as ideology analysis”. In Schäffner, C. and Wenden, A. L. (eds.), Language and Peace. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. 17-36.Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 2009. “Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach”. Methods of critical discourse analysis 2(1). 62-86.Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. 2017. “Socio-cognitive discourse studies”. In: Flowerdew, J. and Richardson, J. E. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. London Routledge. 26-43.10.4324/9781315739342-3Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, R. 2001. “The discourse-historical approach”. In: Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage. 63-94.10.4135/9780857028020Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds.) 2001. Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage.10.4135/9780857028020Search in Google Scholar
© 2022 Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Articles in the same Issue
- Table of contents
- Construction-specific effects of phonological similarity avoidance
- Can L2 learners acquire native-like typicality representation in categorization?
- The interpretation of urbanonyms in discourse: Reconciling theoretical accounts with experimental results
- Are Polish “DLA” and “KU” really synonymic purposive prepositions?
- Polgem – The recorded corpus of Polish geminate consonants
- ‘I would never…’: Deictic shift and moralizing in anti-immigration reader comments
- L2 rhythm production and musical rhythm perception in advanced learners of English
- The Cambridge handbook of systemic functional linguistics
Articles in the same Issue
- Table of contents
- Construction-specific effects of phonological similarity avoidance
- Can L2 learners acquire native-like typicality representation in categorization?
- The interpretation of urbanonyms in discourse: Reconciling theoretical accounts with experimental results
- Are Polish “DLA” and “KU” really synonymic purposive prepositions?
- Polgem – The recorded corpus of Polish geminate consonants
- ‘I would never…’: Deictic shift and moralizing in anti-immigration reader comments
- L2 rhythm production and musical rhythm perception in advanced learners of English
- The Cambridge handbook of systemic functional linguistics
