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The representation of refugees,

asylum seekers and immigrants

in British newspapers during

the Balkan conflict (1999) andthe British general election

(2005)

Article in Discourse and Society June 2009

Impact Factor: 1.41 DOI: 10.1177/0957926509104024

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Majid Khosravinik

Newcastle University

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Discourse & Society

DOI: 10.1177/09579265091040242009; 20; 477Discourse Society

Majid KhosraviNikelection (2005)

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KhosraviNik:The representation of RASIM in the British newspapers 477

The representation of refugees, asylumseekers and immigrants in British newspapersduring the Balkan conflict (1999) and the

British general election (2005)

M A J I D K H O S R A V I N I KL A N C A S T E R U N I V E R S I T Y , U K

A B S T R A C T This article is a CDA investigation into the representation of

refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants during two major events: the Balkan

conflict in 1999 and the British general election in 2005 as reflected in British

newspapers. The article is part of a larger project on the representation of

these groups of people between 1996 and 2006 in British newspapers. The

study shows that while there are major similarities in the micro-linguistic

categories used in representations of these groups in these two periods, e.g.

the metaphors, the overall communicated messages are not similar and the

macro-structural contexts behind the processes of interpretation of these

discourses play a determining role in transferring certain meanings. Theresearch also shows that while newspapers have different strategies in their

representations due to their political standpoints, in some important ways

they all contribute to a similar construction of these people.

K E Y W O R D S : asylum seekers and immigrants, British newspapers, critical discourseanalysis, in-groups, out-groups, RASIM project, refugees, representation of social actors

Introduction

The liberal and egalitarian discourses in modern societies have impacted on

the qualities of constructing the out-groups. It is argued that the major human

catastrophes of the Holocaust in Europe and slavery in the USA have influenced

the olderdiscourses on out-grouping and have oriented them to take on a quasi-

argumentative elaboration focusing on culture rather than race in the con-struction of us versus them (Van Dijk, 1991: 25; Billig, 2006).

Within such a context, British newspapers have increasingly been engagedin discourses on/about immigration, refugees and asylum seekers within the

last 10 years, throughout various domestic and international issues.1 The

present paper will focus on two critical points in time the Balkan conflict in

A R T I C L E

Discourse & SocietyCopyright 2009SAGE Publications

(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,Singapore and Washington DC)

www.sagepublications.comVol 20(4): 477498

10.1177/0957926509104024

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478 Discourse & Society20(4)

March 1999 and the British general election in May 2005, and account for dis-cursive representations of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants (henceforthRASIM) in the British newspapers. The analysis also attempts to account forthe differences and similarities in the qualities of discursive representationsof these groups among a variety of newspapers, i.e. liberal/conservative and

tabloids/broadsheets.The article first provides a discussion on critical discourse analysis and

reviews a number of studies on representations of RASIM. Next, the RASIMproject and the data selection procedures of the study will be reviewed. Theanalysis section will bring examples from the body of text analyses of the twoevents, and finally some general conclusions will be made in terms of the linkbetween language use, the contexts and the qualities of representation ofRASIM in the British newspapers.

Critical discourse analysis

Wetherell and Potter (1992), drawing on Foucault, describe modern ways ofpower enforcement as less obvious rituals, less clearly repressive and coercive in some ways less physical and more mental. That is, in modern societies powerhas a more discoursalnature it is acquired and accumulated through some formof collective consent (real or constructed) which may or may not be the outcomeof a true deliberation in a Habermasian sense. Consequently mass media and theapparatus of reaching out to collective minds gain a central role in proliferating,

topicalizing, de-topicalizing and creating knowings and/or beliefs.Van Dijk emphasizes the discursive nature of power in democratic societies

and the role of consensus-making practices, and argues that through such aframework, mass media are assigned a nearly exclusive control over the symbolicresources needed to manufacture popular consent, especially in the domain ofethnic relations (1991: 423). His study on the processes of discriminatory dis-course in interpersonal communications shows that discourses disseminatedthrough the mass media play a major intermediary role in the reproduction ofpublic conceptualizations of out-groups and provide the input for most adult

citizens thoughts and talks about ethnic groups (Van Dijk, 1987). Hartmann andHusband believe that mass media are capable of providing frames of referenceor perspective within which people become able to make sense of events and oftheir experience (1974: 16).

Critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA), as an approach in discourseanalysis, maintains that discourse is not only a container and carrier of ideo-logies but is also a social action on its own. CDA is socially and politically com-mitted (Van Dijk, 2001), and by definition needs to account for the links betweenits detailed textual linguistic analyses and various levels of socio-politicalcontexts affecting the processes of production, distribution and interpretation

of language.CDA holds that discourse as in language use in any form is both socially

constitutive as well as socially conditioned (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258).That is, not only does it reflect a picture, perhaps incomplete, of the ideology at

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work, but it also shapes those social cognitions. Thus, the relationship between

discourse and ideologies is dialectic (Fairclough, 2001). CDA deals with ideology

as one of its core concepts and aims to explain the dynamics of discourse

and society.

Ideologies are constantly formed and reshaped by new discourses and inter-

discursive dynamics. At the same time, power is not believed to derive from thelanguage per se. Power manifests itself in language, not only through micro-

linguistic choices within the text but also by the choice of a social occasion by

means of the genre of a text (Weiss and Wodak, 2003: 13) as well as topics and

argumentative strategies.Symbolic elites as people who have access to and control over mass public

discourses,2 e.g. politicians, journalists, scholars, writers, directors and policy

setting boards of internationally effective media, have preferential control

over the re/production and re/creation of hegemonic narratives in mass com-

munication events and hence acquire more power (Van Dijk, 2005). This is linkedto Thompsons (1990) encapsulation of ideology as social forms and processes

within which, and by means of which, hegemonic symbolic forms circulate in

the social world (cited in Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 3).

Criticality as a defining characteristic of CDA influences all levels of

an analysis, such as the identification of a social problem, data selection,

methodology and analysis. Criticality is directly linked with the concept of con-

textualization and hence the essential inter-disciplinarity of CDA. Contextual-

ization is the link that a CDA study makes between language and society in order

to gain a proper understanding of how language functions in constituting andtransmitting knowledge, in organizing social institutions or in exercising power

(Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 7). Contextualization in one sense is to accentuate the

role of historicity in the process of production and interpretation of discourse

and explicitly includes social-psychological, political and ideological com-

ponents and thereby postulates an interdisciplinary procedure (Meyer, 2001: 15).

While CDA may take an inductive or deductive approach in terms of accounting

for the links between linguistic analyses and socio-political contexts,3 it attempts

to make explicit the interconnectednss of things, revealing structures of power

and unmasking ideologies (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 78).Although CDA does not take this relationship between language and society

to be simply deterministic, it attempts to account for the mediation between lan-

guage and society. CDA is therefore not interested in investigating a linguistic

unit per se but in studying social phenomena (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 2). Such

an approach will be capable of accounting for absences as well as presencesin the

data (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001).

Wodak maintains that discourse (as in language) is a form of social practice

which functions as the starting point of a demystification journey in a CDA

study. Wodak (2001: 66) defines discourse as:

A complex bundle of simultaneous and sequential interrelated linguistic acts, which

manifest themselves within and across social fields of action and thematically inter-

relate semiotic, oral and written tokens, very often as texts, that belong to specific

semiotic types, that is genre.



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Wodak and Meyer (2009: 17) compare the relationship between discourse and

language use to grammar and actual language use. They argue that in the same

way as grammar characterises the structure of sentences, discourse rules char-

acterise utterances/texts that are acceptable within a certain practice.

CDA studies on RASIM

Critical discourse studies of the representations of RASIM and various ethnic

minorities in modern societies have attracted ample attention in CDA.4 Wodak

(1996) accounts for the socio-political and historical context of the development

of racist discourse in Austria in terms of argumentative strategies of con-structing a we discourse through self-justification. She maintains that:

the linguistic forms of realising this constitution of an in group and out group . . .

include the use of grammatically cohesive elements, such as personal pronouns,depersonalisation, generalisation, and equation of incommensurable phenomena; the

use of vague characterisations; and the substantive definition of groups . . . The aim

of . . . a discourse of self justification, which is closely wound up with we discourse,

is to allow the speakers to present herself or himself as free of prejudice or even as a

victim of so-called reverse prejudice. (1996: 116)

The study concludes that the semantic macro-structure of the anti-foreigner

discourse incorporates the elements of difference, devianceand perceived threat.

In this structure, the foreigners damage the host countrys socio-economic

interests while at the same time they are stereotyped as different in terms of

culture and mentality. Reisigl and Wodak (2001), reporting on studies of anti-

foreigner discourses around the Austria First petition campaign and the text of

the petition, identify certain topoi5 at work in discursive practices of the time.

A short general list of topoi includes: Topos of advantage/usefulness, Topos ofdanger/threat, Topos of definition/name interpretation, Topos of burdening/

weighting down, Topos of law/right, Topos of culture, Topos of abuse and Topos

of authority (see also Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999).

Teo (2000) presents a comprehensive study of the construction of immigrants

in the structure of newspapers in Australia, highlighting similar discursive

strategies of negitivization and criminalization of Asian immigrants in Australia.Similar to Van Dijk (1991) and Wodak (1996), Teo draws on Barkers (1981)

arguments for the newly assigned role for culture as a point of categorization,

distancing and blaming of RASIM (see also Clyne, 2005).

An interesting point regarding xenophobic/discriminatory discourses invarious contexts and times is the striking similarities among these discourses,

both in terms of micro-linguistic features and macro-argumentative structures.

Hartmann and Husband (1974), studying the representation of immigrants

in the media in the early 1970s, find major similarities between anti-Semitic

discourses regarding Jewish immigrants in the 1920s and arguments and dis-cursive strategies used in 1970s discourse on immigration, and argue that in

both historical instances news discourses drew on certain fallacious xenophobic

arguments. An example would be the argument that more immigration will



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cause racism inside the country towards the already established immigrants.

This theme of victimperpetrator reversal is also a widespread argumentative

strategy in contemporary xenophobic discourses (Wodak, 1996; Van Leeuwen

and Wodak, 1999; Teo, 2000).

Van Dijk (1987) confirms the findings of Hartmann and Husband (1974) and

argues that immigration and social problems are redefined as a race problemconcomitant with a clear us/them divide in which these groups are not repre-

sented as being part of British society, but as outsiders who preferably should be

kept out. Van Dijk (1991), in a major study on the British press, emphasizes the

genre-specific features of newspaper coverage, and shows how manipulation of

the features of a typical news report such as quotations and sources can play

a significant role in micro-linguistic practices based on a prejudicial ideology.

The RASIM project6

The present paper is part of a research project at Lancaster Universitys

Linguistics and English Language department. The study was a double-angled

investigation in the discursive representations of immigrants, asylum seekers

and refugees in the British newspapers between 1996 and 2006, with one strand

looking into the texts through the traditionally qualitative approach of CDA andthe other adopting the generally quantitative methodology of corpus linguistics

(for reports on the corpus linguistics strand of the project, see Gabrielatos and

Baker, 2008, and for the methodological synergy of the two, see Baker et al.,

2008). The present paper is, however, solely concerned with the CDA strand ofthe project and is restricted to the first and last period of analysis (see below).

F I G U R E 1. The frequency of articles on RASIM in British newspapers between 1996 and

2006.7

Source: Gabrielatos and Baker (2008).



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THETEXTS

Taking the frequencies of the number of articles on/about RASIM as the

starting point,8the CDA strand devised a systematic and sensitive mechanism

in downsizing the data.9

As shown in the graph, within the general rise in the number of articles

on/about RASIM, there are five spikes in which RASIM have received an unpre-cedented amount of attention and hence frequency of articles. These periods

are roughly linked to their relevant world events as follows:

Period 1: March 1999 NATO invasion in Kosovo and Kosovar refugees.Period 2: September 2001 the 9/11 attacks, issues of asylum seekers in Britain,

the Australian boat people case.

Period 3: May 2002 the second round of the French presidential election

LePen versus Chirac, the schooling of asylum seekers children, the

assassination of Pim Fortyun.Period 4: March 2004 the Madrid bombing, the asylum bill, East European

immigration checks, the expansion of the EU.

Period 5: May 2005 the campaigns leading up to the British general election.

Such a procedure made the data selection sensitive to the aims of deconstructing

the representation of RASIM in the context of relevant socio-political develop-

ments, instead of applying a randomized text selection which is usually advocated

by strictly quantitative approaches. In the next phase, three representative news-

papers (along with their Sunday editions) were selected in terms of their formats

and socio-political ideologies as follows: TheGuardian andThe Observer:liberal quality newspapers

The Times andThe Sunday Times:conservative quality newspapers

TheDaily Mail andTheMail on Sunday: tabloid newspapers.

For detailed textual analysis, the data were further restricted to the articles pert-

aining to the issues of RASIM in general and those which linked to the events.10

Methodology

Major CDA studies on the Self and Other presentation within Wodaks Discourse-

Historical and Van Dijks Socio-Cognitive approaches have developed useful

methodologies and proposed several analytical categories through which the

representations of these groups in discourse are accounted for.

The five-level analytical method proposed by the Discourse-HistoricalApproach, consisting of looking at Referential strategies (naming), Predicational

strategies (attribution), Argumentative strategies (topoi) and Perspectivization,

Mitigation and Intensification strategies, is relevant to the aims and scope of the

present study.

11

These discursive strategies12are mainly devised to account for questions:

1. How are persons, objects, phenomena/events, processes and actions named

and referred to linguistically?



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2. What characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to social actors,

objects, phenomena/events and processes?

3. What arguments are employed in the discourse in question?

4. From what perspectives are these nominations, attributions and arguments

expressed?

5. Are the respective utterances articulated overtly; are they intensified or

mitigated? (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 13)

Genre-specific features of the data (i.e. newspaper articles) play an important

role in rendering certain linguistic parameters more effective. Categories like

(i) topics, (ii) topic order, (iii) quotation patterns, (iv) naming the participantsand (v) the

distribution of grammatical agency proposed by Van Dijk (1991) in accounting

for British news discourses are relevant to this study. Some of Van Dijks (1991)

proposed categories overlap with DHAs methods, e.g. the macro-topics and the

strategy of naming the participant.Van Leeuwens (1996) socio-semantic approach to discourse analysis main-

tains that socio-semantic categorizations need to be taken as the starting point

of discourse analysis, and the representations of different social actors are to be

accounted for by linking these socio-semantic categories with their linguistic

realizations. Van Leeuwens socio-semantic categorization (1996: 66) functions

on a local intra-textual level and can be incorporated within DHAs referential

and predicational strategies. Some of Van Leeuwens most relevant categories

include: Foregrounding/Backgrounding, Passivation/Activation, Personalization/

Impersonalization, Individualization/Assimilation andFunctionalization.13

Analysis

MARCH1999 NATOINVASIONINKOSOVOANDKOSOVARREFUGEES

On 24 March 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) attacked

Yugoslav targets after negotiations failed to resolve the three-year-long conflict

between Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which

had caused a massive population displacement in Kosovo. After the attack, the

Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign was stepped up and within a week over300,000 Kosovar Albanians had fled into neighbouring Albania and Macedonia,

with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo, raising the total figure to

850,000 as reported by the United Nations in April 1999 (see Scorgie, 2004 for

the details and history of the conflict).14

Obviously, the key word for this period of analysis is refugee. In line with

the general macro-structure at work, the general evaluation of the situation of

refugees is positive.15Drawing on the intertextual and interdiscursive elements

of preceding and adjacent recurring topics, such as the Serbian ethnic cleansing

agenda, the widespread topic of an imminent humanitarian crisis and the Serbsnot cooperating with the international community, the analysed newspapers

reflect a generally sympathetic macro-structure. However, this is not to say that

all the newspapers adopted the same discursive and linguistic strategies.



10/24


TOPICSANDARGUMENTATION

On the topic analysis level,16 the Daily Mail generally presents itself as sym-

pathetic by drawing heavily on topoi of victimization, where the refugees are

represented as helpless, desperate, powerless and the victims of attack. Similarly,

it employs referential and predicational (Wodak, 2001) strategies of representing

refugees engaged in various normal activities. This, in turn, calls on other sub-sidiary linguistic strategies of individualization: singling out, using proper

names and affiliations, character building (quite the opposite to aggregation

and collectivization strategies widely found in other studies on representation of

RASIM, for example during the British 2005 election). The account incorporates

a substantial amount of narratives from refugees in accounting for their plights.

A typical example of this is in the Daily Mail, headlined Reports from Macedonia

on refugee familys plight (27 March 1999),which shows all these strategies in

one way or another, for example:

He was doing his homework when the tanks stormed the village, a five-year-old boy

sitting quietly at the table with his mother.

Similarly, using proper names, characterization and referring to individual dif-

ferences would work within the same macro-structure, for example:

Shortly before the Nato bombing started, the family decided to make a break for

freedom. With Bajrie in her arms, Azemine Ilazi led the way. Behind her were her

other children, aged between 13 and seven, and their 65-year-old grandmother Mrs

Arife Kazi.

The Serbian special police burst through the door and handcuffed a man, a simpleAlbanian farmer whose family had lived there for generations.

The Daily Mailemploys topoi of victimization and humanization by drawing on

discourses of genocide such as the articles headlined They were shoved into

water at gun point, then the soldiers opened fire and threw grenades until no

one was moving (29 March 1999), Flight from genocide (29 March 1999) andToo late for these tragic victims (31 March 1999), along with topos of ethical

responsibility, for example in the articles headlined How you can help, and Why

we must help them (both on 31 March 1999).

The Times coverage is also, generally, sympathetic towards this group of

refugees, both on the discourse topics and the micro-linguistic levels. The Times

draws on humanization and victimization in focusing on the plight of the refugees

by putting the events in narrative form with ample extensivization,by providing

detailed information on the names, places and conditions of the refugees. It also

uses a significant number of direct quotations on the part of the victims with afrequent use of proper names.

An example is The Timesarticle (30 March 1999) which is an account of a

fleeing family where there is no negative perspectivization or distancing strategy

through possible micro-linguistic techniques such as hedging, modality, reportingverbs or other mechanisms.

Bajrum Nikatssank to his knees as a farmer told him he had reached the safety of the

border. His wife, Baki,was convulsed in tears as she embraced her three young



11/24


children. Bajrumdescribed how gunmen burst into their home after dark and gave

them 45 minutes to leave: I walked outside and our whole village of Vil Lanishe

was leaving. My wifes father tried to protest so they just shot him. He was lying at

our feet, dying. They would not let my wife help him. She could not even touch him.

We had to step over his body to get away. We cannot bury him and I doubt we will

ever see our home again.

The accounts of this event (the representation of refugees in Kosovo) frequently

include references to the professions, education and lifestyles of these people,

while in unsympathetic accounts of refugees, none of these qualities are

usually referred to, and the accounts are usually collective with no reference tothe reasons for and conditions of the refugees flights, potential lifestyles, income

levels, education, etc.

While theDaily Mailmainly focuses on the dramatic aspect of the refugees

plight and the coverage of events on the ground, The Timesadditionally covers

in some articles the tension among the Serbian community in Australia, forexample in the article headlined Protest violence f lares in Australia (29 March

1999), and the amplification of the conflict within the Serbian diaspora inside

Britain, such as in the article headlined Live and let live in an anxious suburb

(25 March 1999).The Timesalso outlines the historical roots of Serbias claims on Kosovo, for

example in the article headlined Myths lie at the root of Serbias psyche, and the

potential threats of conflict to Europe, such as in the article headlined Europes

tinder box ready to ignite (both on 25 March 1999). There is also the focus on

the problems that refugees entering other countries may cause, in articles head-lined Officials impotent as refugees pour in (30 March 1999) and Albania

flooded by rising tide of refugees (29 March 1999).The Guardians account, on the other hand, while being within the same

macro-structure of support and victimization of Kosovar refugees, is much more

loaded with direct referential and predicational strategies against the protagonistSerbs and Milosevic, along with strong and explicit predications of atrocity,

murder and genocide to Serbian perpetrators. That is to say, the accounts of the

tabloid the Daily Mailand the conservative broadsheet The Timesmainly draw a

picture of a horrible situation in terms of describing a process, focusing on thevictims and insinuating potential problems for tensions inside the UK, whilstThe Guardians account agentivizes the role of the perpetrators, the Serbs, and

the causes of the plight.

MICRO-LINGUISTICFEATURES

Extensivization describing the actions and situations of refugees in detail and

adding as much subsidiary information as possible is another general strategy

in the positive representation of these groups, where various aspects of the

refugees horrible ordeal are accounted for. This is pursued by all the newspapers

in this period with varying degrees and qualities. For example, theDaily Mail(27 March 1999) writes:

The first thing Bajrie heard was gunfire. Then, the squeals of the cows and sheep as

they were slaughtered in the fields.



12/24


His mother had carried him in her arms through snowdrifts up to three feet deep,

with her other children and their grandmother trailing behind, to become unwilling

refugees of war.

And The Guardian (29 March 1999) writes:

As the traumatised and exhausted people crossed from Kosovo in misty, rainy weather,Serb police stripped many of the women of their jewellery. Cars had their licence

plates removed and every person, man, woman and child had their identity papers

confiscated in the hope they will never be able to prove they came from Kosovo,

and hence will not be allowed to return.

There are also processes of direct negative quotations against the Serbs and

humanization of the victims by identifying people with detailed qualities, such

as age and looks. An example can be found in TheGuardian (29 March 1999)

which writes:

The Serbs told us never come back; we dont want you back, said Myrdete Krasniqi

as she sat on a low wall outside the towns hospital. Sixteen years old, with

her curly hair pulled back behind her ears, she had premature lines around

her eyes.

TheDaily Maildirectionalizes its account by incorporating no hedging or othermicro-linguistic processes to perspectivize the content of the narration. For

example, the Daily Mail(27 March 1999) quotes:

My father was born there and so was his father. When we left I could see my neigh-

bours house was burning. They probably burned my house as well.

METAPHORSANDREFERENCESTOLARGEQUANTITIES

There is a remarkably high frequency of references to large numbers and meta-

phors of large quantities17 in the account of this event. There is an ample use

of the metaphors of large quantities such as water bodies, e.g. floods, influx or

exodus which have been found to construct a negative representation in other

studies and contexts (see note 4 for examples). However, the socio-political

context of this event and, more importantly, the macro-structure of inter-

pretation of discourses about refugees for this particular event constitute a dif-

ferent conclusion rule for the interpretation of these metaphors. Geographical

distance seems to play a role in how a macro-structure is formed regarding thisgroup of refugees in British newspapers.

Similar to the Daily Mail, e.g. in the article headlined The authorities and

aid groups were unprepared for yesterdaysinflux (31 March 1999), The Times

incorporates metaphors of natural phenomena, e.g. rising tide, significantly:

The refugees were welcomed by families in Kukes, but the ever-swelling numbers

could not be accommodated . . . Albania flooded by the rising tide of refugees.

(The Times, 29 March 1999)

Similar trends of emphasis on big numbers can be seen in The Guardian.The

use of metaphors like flood and tide do not seem to be working towards a

negative presentation of the refugees in this event and in fact they seem to argue



13/24


for more humanitarian help. This indicates that the use of typical metaphors

for refugees or immigrants (or perhaps any social group) does not automatically

create a negative representation of them, and the function of metaphor use

strictly depends on the social, cultural, political and cognitive elements con-

stituting the interpretative context. These context models will accentuate

certain information units specifically, for example whether the refugees are

pouring into Britain or other countries, or what the assumed reasons for

their arrival are.

THECRISISANDTHEBRITISHGOVERNMENT

Within the sympathetic representation of refugees in this period, the Daily

Mailin the meantime attempts to negatively present the government, and since

the UK had been participating in bombing campaigns against Serbs, the argu-

mentative schemata of the Daily Mail to represent the government negatively

and sympathize with the victims becomes potentially contradictory. The solutionis to adopt a rather contradictory perspective which blames the government for

escalating the violence by participating in the attacks against the Serbs while

promoting the urgency of the situation and the need for help for the victims. For

example, theDaily Mail(31 March 1999) writes:

For every act of barbarity, every slaughter of the innocent, says Tony Blair, Milosevic

must be made to pay a higher and higher price. Its empty, emotional rhetoric,

and its dangerous. Its the Albanian families who are paying the price for

NATOs bombs and they will pay for years to come. The air attacks havent

helped them.

Thus, a sympathetic representation of refugees and a shared macro-argument

of the need to help among the British newspapers become the subject matter of

political rivalry (see Baker et al., 2008 and KhosraviNik, 2009 for more detail).

Similarly, the conservative broad sheet, The Times, throws doubts on the

governments ability to handle the situation efficiently, e.g. arguing that the pol-

iticians must now let us know their true objectives (31 March 1999). The Times

also points to the signs of alarm and speculation at what the situation may

mean for the UK and tries to criticize the government. This point which is

vaguely pursued contradicts with the general macro-argument of urgency for

help and legitimacy of these refugees mobilization. The Times account is also

weary of the refugees coming closer. An example is The Times(30 March 1999)

which writes:

No government has yet announced that it is to open its doors to the displaced

Kosovo Albanians. As it did during the height of the Bosnian war, Britain is likely

to operate an extremely restrictive policy, making it hard for any Albanians

to reach safety in this country.

TheGuardianis more explicit in referring to the perpetrators and agentivizes theatrocities, thus topicalizing the responsibility of the Serbs and the international

community. This goes along with numerous direct narratives of the plights of the

refugees. The Guardianis also critical of the right-wing parties and the West for



14/24


having a double standard and paradoxes, e.g. in the article headlined Refugee

chic (31 March 1999).

It can also be argued that there are differences in discursive strategies found in

the conservative broadsheet (The Times) and the tabloid (theDaily Mail). The Times

is more reliant on argumentation whilst theDaily Mailpredominantly depends on

referential and predicational strategies. TheDaily Mail(perhaps expectedly) ismore sensational, through employing more vivid, graphic descriptions of the

situation by relying on emotion, human interest and first-hand experiences.

BRITISHGENERALELECTION, MAY2005

The key words used by the three newspapers under investigation in this period

are immigration and asylum seekers. As the political conservative discourses

tend to adopt a negative approach towards immigration and foreigners, there are

several stories in The Timesand theDaily Mailin which immigrants and asylum

seekers are presented as being involved in asocial or negative activities, e.g. theDaily Mail (3 April 2005). The conservative broadsheet (The Times) and the tabloid

(the Daily Mail) incorporate strategies of individualization in characterizing

RASIM only when they are involved in negative actions, for example in The Times

articleheadlined HIV assault appeal loss(18 March 2005) where the associ-

ation of asylum seekers and crime is topicalized in detail.

In the coverage of The Times, the issue of immigration at times becomes the

central element of political debates. On such occasions, the liberal broadsheet

newspaper, The Guardian, also merely resorts to numbers and collective cat-

egorization to argue against the rival party. This is where RASIM turn into ade-humanized issue, while The Guardians approach in these cases becomes

defensive and evasive.

The Guardian includes topics relating the stories of specific immigrants or

asylum seekers, e.g. in a story on a Malawian asylum seeker (18 March 2005).

Moreover, there are much more extensive and active accounts of immigrants and

asylum seekers, their conditions and backgrounds and their potential contri-

butions. The Guardiandraws on topoi of human rights, ethics, human values,

usefulness and contribution in the positive representation of immigrants and

refugees.TheDaily Mailsarticleheadlined White flight grows from the cities divided

by race (11 April 2005) can be taken as an example of negativization of RASIM

in creating a discourse of panic, urgency and battle. As the headline denotes, the

article associates the situation with a quasi-battle of races in which a group of

whites appear as being under attack and are fleeing the field. The out-group is

described to be involved in chain migration which is predicated as a challenge

to the identity of the majority but also implies some kind of mechanical/technical

and thus uncontrollable dynamism.

There is also an ambiguous use of we, where it is not clear if this we who

evaluates the situation as serious and urgent refers to we as the British peopleor we as the majority or we as conservatives or an anti-immigration coalition or

we as the journalists and writers of this article. Likewise, most of the propos-

itions of the writer are ambiguously attributed to the report rather than the



15/24


writers views as in the report said . . . , The new evidence . . . , It suggests that

. . . , the Migration watch think-tank, said . . . , It said . . . and so on.

Throughout the article, the ethnic minority members, who are at times nar-

rowed down to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and, at others, broadened to immigrants

in general (as the numbers and statistics afford), are referred to and talked about

through numbers, figures and percentages (topos of numbers). Overall, the im-migrants are constantly referred to in the plural and homogeneous forms.

As for the metaphoric references, the article employs metaphors of size and

quantity (such as container metaphors and natural catastrophe metaphors).

Moreover, the article positions itself in the macro argumentation strategy of war

and confrontation by trying to portray a Manichean picture of race relations in

which there are only two distinct groups, the Asians and us.

The Daily Mails article headlined Immigration and the demonising of

decency (11 April 2005) is another example of an account of RASIM which

taps into populism and scare tactics in a negative presentation of RASIM. Thereare several instances of collective generic reference to the vague notions of

people (four cases), they (people) (10 cases), public (three cases), British

(two cases). On the other hand, the immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees are

referred to through collective nominal groups such as numbers: huge numbers

and number of immigrants. Immigrants are de-humanized through the referential

strategy of calling them numbers, entrants and newcomers which are usually

accompanied with excessive quantity attributions like: enormousrise in immigration,hugenumbers, many[immigrants], uncontrolled [number], and unlimitednumbers.

There is also the strategy of positive Self presentation by associating the in-group with moral values, describing the in-group as a beleaguered majority

whose champion, Howard, stands against lies and smears of political correctness,

along with the negative other presentation of the Other as supporting lies

and smears.

He was also signalling to the beleaguered majority that at last they have

a champion who will stand up for mainstream decencies against the lies and

smears of political correctness.

For it touches some of the deepest feelings of the British people about fair play,

bullying and the makeup and orderliness of their country. Theyknow they arebeing taken for a ride, and that something of inestimable valueis being lost.

The article depicts a panic situation through various much more explicit

strategies such as referential strategy, with immigrants as crisis, uncontrolled,

unlimited, and huge; and predicational strategy, with immigrants threateningsociety, changing the face of the country, threatening British values and

the countrys orderliness, being the source of crimes, and having a relation to

terrorism.

The Guardians article headlined Deported from Dorset: The heartrending

case of a Malawian asylum seeker exposes the poisonous hypocrisy of Toryelection tactics (18 March 2005) is an example which employs the strategies

of individualization and humanization in terms of RASIM, as opposed to

general strategies of collectivization and functionalization of the conservative



16/24


broadsheet and the tabloid. The article humanizes the case in point by giving

the full background story. The group supporting the asylum seeker is described

as belonging to a church (positive presentation) supporting a Malawian

woman with four children (humanization) who are against forcible deportation

(negative Other presentation). Further victimization can be seen in accounting

for the personal conditions of Verah (the asylum seeker) through predications as

somebody who has sold everything to join her husband, and someone involved

in voluntary work in a charity shop.

Howards remarks in a TV debateHoward, appearing on a TV programme, stirred up a lot of discussion on the

subject of RASIM during the general election. The coverage of this event can shed

light on the journalistic mechanisms of manipulation and perspectivization as

well as genre-specific aspects of the data analysed.

TheDaily Mails article headlined Howard stands his ground on migrantsduring TV grilling (19 April 2005) foregrounds his remarks and propositions in

various ways. The headline may not contain the content of Howards arguments

but contributes to his good quality of standing his ground while it victimizes

him as the person under pressure and attack. This headline is a good example of

perspectivization where the author (or the newspaper) does not distance but

aligns herself/himself with Howard. On the same note, the other social actors

present in the article people who disagree with Howard are predicated as

ambushing him.

Other positive Self presentation through predicational strategy includesHowards defending his [our or in-group] grounds and standing by his views,

along with negative Other presentation through associating negative or unfair

actions to the out-group social actor, e.g. the opponents are conspirators, people

who attack unfairly, question aggressively, their approach is hostile, they

[presenter] press [Howard] and the attack has been co-ordinated.

There are also populist references to people as major social actors who

think the same as us, that community relations are at risk (victimperpetrator

reversal). The in-group is predicated as being people who are concerned about

community relations and the out-group immigrants are implicitly referredto as the threat to that.

In the Daily Mails coverage, the in-group social actor, Howard, is quoted

directly most of the time. The other parties who get to be reported directly are

the presenter and a young member of the audience. The presenter who is

represented as an out-group member is quoted directly only when he is asking

a question which is about Howards allegedly prejudiced arguments. In a way,

the question is the argument that Howard and the article intend to put forward,

thus it is quoted directly:

He said: Are you fearful that if there are more newcomers than you think are desirable

that there will be more Burnleys, more Bradfords and more Oldhams? Mr Howard

replied Yes and went on to say: I think people have to have confidence that there

is a proper system of control.



17/24


The second instance of direct quotation is from a member of the audience whois named as an 18-year-old Dean Delani, who shouts out an extreme expressionand calls Howard racist and xenophobic. Predictably, Howard is given full spaceand a direct quotation to reply to this expression.

It is worth noting that in theDaily Mailaccount, the out-group gets to be

quoted directly only in these two instances which both contribute to the positiveSelf presentation and negative Other presentation (they have the same fearsand questions like us in the first case and they are illogical extremists who donot want things to be debated in the second).

The Timesarticleheadlined Howard warns of new race riots(19 April 2005)adopts a series of strategies in reporting on a TV debate in which Howard directshis attacks at immigration. It begins by summarizing what he proposes in twoseparate quotes: one by the reporter and another by reporting the gist of what

Howard has said.

The Tory leader has raised fears of violence if people lose confidence in immigrationrules, Tosin Sulaiman reports.

Britain faces the threat of race riots if people believe that immigration is out of control,

Michael Howard said last night.

In the first one, fears is used in a nominal form with mystification of the agent,thus associating it with all peoples fear. Similarly, the process of suppressionand aggregation is seen by the typical use of Britain faces. This can also beconsidered as a form of strategic activation which topicalizes the subject of the

sentence, and aggregates whole Britain on the side of us, the conservatives.There are 10 instances where Howard is using aggregated words such as people,They (people) and we, which vaguely positions him as speaking for all peopleand relating the fears, anxieties and worries of everybody.

When reporting audience protest against Howards proposition, the articlein The Timesresorts to a series of backgrounding processes such as passivization(e.g. The Conservative leader [Howard] was accused of . . . ), using negativereporting verbs (accuse), negative evaluative adjectives (an angry audience)and patterns of direct and indirect quoting with a significant difference inspace allocations (e.g. while Howard is accused of pandering to xenophobia, he

defends his position in a direct quote).

The Conservative leader was accusedof pandering to xenophobia and hatred

by an angry audience at a TV show. On the first of the ITV1 series Ask the Leaders,

with Jonathan Dimbleby, Mr Howard defended his positionof putting immigration

at the centre of his election campaign. I think that immigration is out of control, he

said. It has tripled since Mr Blair came into power.

There are four aggregative references to people and their anxieties, andimmigrants are described as causes of anxiety, stress and a danger to good com-

munity relations (topoi of disadvantage and threat) with all these propositionsbeing reported in direct quoting.On the other hand, Howard is quoted indirectly for when he employs strategic

hedging in avoiding to directly describe immigrants as violent. Immediatelyfollowing that, he is quoted directly when saying:



18/24


we have to be vigilant if we are to make sure we continue to have good community

relations.

In terms of perspectivizing, of the people in the audience who ask questions,one is predicated as accusing Howard of an extreme and out of context

label, and two are described as being from a specific ethnic minority GilbertBarthley, an Afro-Caribbean and another one, Dean Velani, A young Asian man(18 years old). This is an example of irrelevant information where there is anunnecessary reference to ethnic backgrounds of people for ideological reasons(Van Dijk, 1991: 114). Such references here insinuate that these people cannotafford to keep an unbiased view as they are part of the ethnic minority and theirviews are blindly slanted against Howard. Another person asking a question isreferentially described as a disillusioned Tory voter and the last one is describedas Anthony Dunn. In three cases, the reporting verb for their opposition is theverb accuse and the other one is the verb attack.

Anthony Dunn accused Mr Howard of suggesting that immigrants were bringing

dirty diseases. Mr Howard replied: Controlled immigration is the key to ensuring

Britains security, managing demand on public services and guaranteeing good

community relations.

This article from The Times is an example of how social actors can be fore-grounded or backgrounded through (a) linguistic processes of passivization,activization, nominalization and quoting patterns; (b) argumentation strat-egies such as topoi of threat, burden, security and disadvantage; and (c) theschematic distribution of semantic information which predicts the readershipsschematic processes in decoding the information, such as reference to ethnicbackgrounds.

The Guardians article headlined Election 2005: Howard in TV clash overrace and immigration(19 April 2005) does what can be seen as opposite strat-egies to the conservative accounts. The event which is referred to as a blatantset up by theDaily Mailis called here a clash over race and immigration in theheadline. It adds to it the element of race to insinuate that the debate involvesissues beyond just immigration and numbers.

Opposite to the account of theDaily Mail, where Howard is depicted as the

victim who is under pressure in a set up where things happen to him, hereHoward is given a general agentive role as the person creating the clash:

Michael Howardlast night clashedwith members of a TV audience.

His remarks are associated with the cause of the angry response while theaudience is backgrounded as passive participants whose angry reactions are

justifiable because of Howards remarks.

Mr Howards suggestion, on Jonathan Dimblebys Ask the Leaders programme,

drew an angry responsefrom the audience.

In the DailyMailaccount, only one remark of the opponent party is mentioned andquoted. The person is described with his age, and his expression is quoted exactlywhen he blames Howard for inciting xenophobic feelings. This reference to the

protests against Howard is singled out and flagged as the only type of reaction.



19/24


The most salient features of positive Self presentation and negative Other

presentation in these three articles, which are on the same event, can be

summarized as:

(a) The patterns of quotations and space allocations in which the in-group

consistently gets both more quotations and space and is reported moredirectly.

(b) The strategies of perspectivization which are mostly enacted through

reporting verbs. The out-groups propositions and arguments are usually

provided (if at all) through some filters.

(c) The overall description of the communication event and the provision of

background knowledge, such as Howard being besieged and being in a set

up, Howard causing tension and clashes, or downplaying the coverage as

not a very important issue.

Conclusions

The qualities of ideological negative and positive representation of RASIM

throughout these two periods in British newspapers seem to be linked with the

proximity of these groups of people to the UK (among other contextual dif-ferences), and with how dramatic the events described are. These two elements

are cumulatively present in period one (Kosovo refugees) during which there

was a generally supportive, positive presentation of affected people in all the

newspapers accounts.The impact of political rivalry discourse on the representation of RASIM

is an important factor to be considered. As immigration constitutes to be a

core topic in British politics, RASIM tend to be automatically backgrounded in

significant ways throughout almost all debates, even in the liberal newspapers.

Such backgrounding mechanisms are mainly taken for granted semantically

and pragmatically, along with references to numbers and percentages.In terms of differences between the conservative broadsheet, The Times, and

the tabloid, the Daily Mail, it can be argued that theDaily Mail generally per-

petuates the existing known stereotypes and thus reproduces negative attitudes

(potentially) existing among its readership, whereas The Times is more creative

and refrains from reproducing the stereotypes explicitly. Hence, in terms of

prejudiced negative presentation of RASIM, theDaily Mailharvests and reflects

the existing prejudices while The Timescreates and introduces newer versions

(KhosraviNik, 2009).

Conservative accounts of RASIM (both in The Timesand the Daily Mail) hardlyrecognize these groups using their names or other qualities, unless they can be

positioned inside or adjacent to one of the negative topoi available, e.g. violence.

Liberal news reporters do make more of an effort to recognize diversities and

draw on topoi of human rights, ethics and human values.The study also shows that the negative representation of RASIM in the

British press in the events relevant to the UK (i.e. 2005 elections) mainly draws

on a series of common topoi including numbers, threat (threat to cultural



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identity, threat to community values) and danger. At the same time, RASIM

are systematically constructed as a homogeneous group, sharing similar char-

acteristics, backgrounds, motivations and economic status through processes of

aggregation, collectivization and functionalization. Aggregation is not restricted

to the pluralization of RASIM linguistically in the agent or patient positions of

the sentences, but it can be pragmatically communicated through common

political discourses dealing with the issue of RASIM.

The genre-specific features of the data (i.e. newspaper articles) prove to

be salient micro-linguistic mechanisms through which perspectivization in

representation of RASIM is achieved and reflected. Journalistic features like

the order of information, agenda setting, exaggeration, extensivization/sum-

marization and space allocation in general, and quotation patterns in particular,

play an important role in constructing and reproducing these particular

perspectives.

In terms of the link between macro-structures ideologies and micro-

linguistic structures, e.g. metaphors of large quantities, the study shows that

such a link does not constitute a one-to-one correlation. The process of inter-

pretation of micro mechanisms, such as linguistic foregrounding/backgrounding

in the first period (Kosovo refugees), essentially depends on the macro schema

at work, and it is within this framework that the incorporation of metaphors

linking refugees with natural disasters do not constitute a negative representation

in that case. Rather, it seems that the topos of numbers and quantity work in

favour of the refugees and victims as it denotes a call for the urgent need of help

and support.

That is to conclude that the topoi of numbers and large quantities or in fact

(with some reservation) any other linguistic micro structures do not constitute

negativity by themselves. Negativity is an aspect of the macro-structure of

interpretation of a discourse, rather than being an inherent feature of micro-

linguistic categories. The interpretation of negativity requires a complex

contextual sense-making apparatus which would include in itself (inter-)

discursive topics among several other relevant physical, emotional elements

which constitute a context of interpretation. However, when such a context is

shared, communicating negativity can fly in the most covert ways and

hence it can be deeply coded. This tacit, shared macro-structure orients,

regulates and provides keys to decode the meanings at the micro-linguistic

level. Hence, meanings reside within the society and social context, rather than

the language.

N O T E S

1. See Figure 1 on the increasing number of British newspaper articles on/about immi-

grants, refugees and asylum seekers between 1996 and 2006. 2. See Van Dijk (1996) for the role of access in defining the power of groups.

3. See Wodak and Meyer (2009: 22) for a systematization of various CDA approaches

in this regard.



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4. For CDA studies on anti-Semitism and anti foreigners discourses in an Austrian

context, see Wodak (1990, 1994, 1997); Mitten (1992); Wodak and Matouschek

(1993); Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999); and Reisigl and Wodak (2001). On the

representation of RASIM in a British context, see Hartmann and Husband (1974);

Van Dijk (1987, 1991); Lynn and Lea (2003); Jones (2006); and KhosraviNik

(2009). See Van Dijk (1987) for discriminatory discourses in a Dutch context andVan Dijk (2005) in the context of Spain and Latin America. On the role of language

in asylum application procedures in Belgium, see Blommaert (2001). For a study

of the French parliamentary discourses on immigration and nationality, see Van

der Valk (2006). For an investigation of extreme negative representation of the

Romani community in Romania, see Tileaga (2005), and see Pietikainen (2003) for

the representation of the aboriginal Sami community in Finland. For research in a

Hong Kong context and a representation of immigrant Chinese, see Flowerdew and

Tran (2002). On racism in the USA, see Santa Ana (1999) and on representation of

native New Zealanders, see Wetherell and Potter (1992). Finally, for research on

discursive dimensions of the representation of immigrants in Australia, see Teo(2000); Malcolm and Sharifian (2002); and Clyne (2005).

5. Reisigl and Wodak (2001) define topoi as parts of argumentation which belong

to the obligatory, either explicit or inferable premises. Topoi are the content-related

warrants or conclusion rules which connect the argument or arguments with

the conclusion, the claim. As such, they justify (a shortcut) transition from the

argument or arguments to the conclusion. Topoi are central to categorizations of

seemingly convincing arguments which are widely adopted in prejudice discourse

on out-groups.

6. See Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 19962006, ESRC-

funded project carried out in 20067 at the Department of Linguistics and EnglishLanguage, Lancaster University. For more information, please see http://www.ling.

lancs.ac.uk/activities/285/

7. Adapted from Gabrielatos and Baker (2008).

8. See Gabrielatos (2007) for query terms used in the data collection of the project.

9. The author appreciates the contributions of Dr Micha Krzyanowski in the design

of the down-sampling procedure.

10. It should be noted that, at this point, the actual reading of the content of the articles

was carried out and hence the study engages in actual qualitative analysis as of this

stage, i.e. the analysis of discourse topics.

11. See KhosraviNik (under review) for the role of perspectivization in the representationof in- and out-groups.

12. By strategies we generally mean a more or less intentional plan of practices

(including discursive practices) adopted to achieve a particular social, political,

psychological or linguistic goal. Discursive strategies are located at different levels

of linguistic organization and complexity (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 13).

13. An attempt has been made to systematize CDA methods in studies on representation

of social actors which incorporates analytical models of DHA, in Van Dijk and Van

Leeuwen (KhosraviNik, under review).

14. Scorgie, drawing on Abrahams (2000), maintains that the brutal policy of ethnic-

cleansing [had] by the end of the seventy-eight day war . . . resulted in 850,000

ethnic Albanian refugees, between 300,000 and 400,000 internally displaced people

within Kosovo, and approximately 10,000 killed (2004: 289).

15. Using the term positive referring to discourses on/about RASIM seems to be

essentially problematic. Quite a number of topoi which could be labelled as positive



22/24


by some, e.g. discourses of humanitarianism, responsibility and ethical values,

can be classificatory and/or exclusionary. Although such discourses are not essen-

tially negative, they can be used to perpetuate an us versus them divide in a

different way.

16. The topic analysis is based on one month of the data during the two periods.

17. Topos of numbers is usually used in a syllogism of communicating a negativeconclusion rule: the higher the number, the worse the event, e.g. the flood of

foreigners is paralysing our towns. However, the references to large numbers and

quantities in this particular event point to a different (or opposite) conclusion rule,

i.e. the severity of the humanitarian crisis and the need to help. Investigating the

mechanisms of such differences in conclusion rules can be an interesting topic for

further research.

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M A J I D K H O S R A V I N I K is a research associate and teaching assistant in the Linguistics and

English Language department at Lancaster University. He is working towards a PhD on

critical discourse analysis and discursive strategies of self and other representation in

news discourses. Majid has been involved in discourse analytical studies in the context ofIran, including a CDA analysis of political ideologies in Iranian newspapers. His research

interests include: critical discourse analysis, its theory and methodology, discourse and

discrimination, discourse and politics, language and identity, language and gender, and

language policy. See http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/Majid-KhosraviNik. A D D R E S S :

Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, LA1 4YT, UK.

[email: [email protected]]

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