Neigiamo pabėgėlių įvaizdžio kalbinė raiška naujienų portale DELFI ; Linguistic expressions creating negative image of refugees in delfi news portal

Abstract

Linguistic Expressions Creating Negative Image of Refugees in DELFI News Portal The aim of this MA thesis is to analyze collocations of the token refugee, and nouns of negative connotation in a broader context, and find out what linguistic constructs are used to convey the negative image of refugees in the DELFI news portal. Also, to determine what traits of hate speech are used to form this negative image. The material of this study consists of corpora compiled by the author of this paper and is based on all articles published on the DELFI from 2011 to 2017 November that had the token refugee mentioned at least once. The total amount of words of the corpora is 2 963 152. The corpora is available at Vilnius university, Faculty of Philology, Institute of Applied Linguistics studies department. After analyzing the token's refugee grammatical forms, the use of feminine and masculine gender, and corpora's most common negative nouns, three collocations were discovered to be most commonly used: war refugees, refugee problem and refugee crisis. After carrying out the analysis of the most common words that go with these collocations, it was decided to concentrate only on those examples that portray refugees in a negative context. While analysing the data both quantitative (corpus linguistics) and qualitative methods were applied and 49 examples were examined. Given the results of the study, the following conclusions can be drawn. The negative image of refugees is constructed by comparing them with terrorists, portraying them as a mass or a group of people, avoiding to show them as individuals, and naming groups of them as objects that can be shared (sharing the burden of refugee crisis, the question of further sharing). The use of water metaphors (tide, flood, flow) create the impression that refugees pose an unstoppable and destructive effect. It was also discovered that refugees are often portrayed within negative themes, the presented information about them is half true or false, refugees are frequently named next to other negative phenomena of the time (terrorist attacks, economic migrants). Furthermore, refugees are portrayed as a threat and danger to society, and politicians, journalists, and columnists tend to use negatively connotated lexis that incite fear for safety (real danger, potential threat). These findings could be useful for linguists, sociologists, and journalists, and contribute to the improvement of the refugee image, taking notice in media's and country leaders' publicly used lexis.