Cover not available
Part of
Greece in Crisis: Combining critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives
Edited by Ourania Hatzidaki and Dionysis Goutsos
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 70] 2017
► pp. 191–222

Chapter 6
Self-constructed and ascribed identity of the Greek protesters in Syntagma Square

From “where we are” to “who they are”

In this chapter we contrast our findings from a previous study of the textual, discursive and social practices of the Greek protester movements, based on data from the General Assembly proceedings and their resolutions (Goutsos and Polymeneas 2014), with how the protesters in Syntagma square were viewed by others, namely the Greek media in a series of articles coinciding with or following the protests. The protesters’ own linguistic and discursive practices are thus juxtaposed to their recontextualizations and representations by others. A pronounced difference is found between self-constructed and ascribed identity as indicative of the representational power of the media, which have attempted to interpret the protesters’ identity within the existing political context.
Keywords: identity, media, protest movements, space
Article outline
  • 1.The Greek crisis and its protesters
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Identity and public space in the Greek protests
  • 4.Contemporary media texts
  • 5.Later media texts
  • 6.Conclusion: Constructed and ascribed identity of the Greek protests
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 26 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.70.06gou
References (31)
References
Babiniotis, George. 2002. [Μπαμπινιώτης, Γεώργιος. 2002]. Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής γλώσσας [Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language]. Athens: Lexicology Centre. 2nd edition.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1991. The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bergvall, Victoria L. 1999. “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Language and Gender”. Language in Society 28: 273–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cotter, Colin. 2010. News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Rycker, Antoon, and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2013. “Discourse in Crisis, Crisis in Discourse.” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker, and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 3–65. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Douzinas, Costas. 2013. Philosophy and Resistance in the Crisis. Greece and the Future of Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in Press. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Giovanopoulos, Christos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos. 2011. Democracy under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents. Athens: A/sinechia.Google Scholar
Goffman, Ervin. 1968. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. London: Pelican.Google Scholar
Goutsos, Dionysis, and George Polymeneas. 2014. “Identity as Space: Localism in the Greek Protests of Syntagma Square.” In “Occupy: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movements”, ed. by Luisa Martín – Rojo. Special issue of Journal of Language and Politics 13 (4), 675–701. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Groom, Nicholas. 2010. “Closed-class Keywords and Corpus-driven Discourse Analysis.” In Keyness in Texts, ed. by Marina Bondi, and Mike Scott, 59–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Christian Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science. New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Houndsmills: Palgrave-Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Discourse, Grammar and Ideology. Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hecht, Michael L. 1993. “A Research Odyssey: Towards the Development of a Communication Theory of Identity.” Communication Monographs 60: 76–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2004. Language and Identity. National, Ethnic, Religious. Houndsmills: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kitis, Dimitris E. 2013. “The 2008 Urban Riots in Greece: Differential Representations of a Police Shooting Incident.” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker, and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 323–362. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Louw, William. 1993. “Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. by Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polymeneas, George. 2012. “‘Greek December’ in Political and Media Discourse: Analysing the PM’s Addresses and Newspaper Reports.” In Current Trends in Greek Linguistics, ed. by Georgia Fragaki, Thanasis Georgakopoulos, and Charalambos Themistocleous, 197–219. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Richardson, John E. 2007. Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Houndsmill: Palgrave-Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, John McH. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. Trust the Text. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scott, Michael. 2008. WordSmith Tools. Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Sotiris, Panagiotis. 2011. “Days of Unrest and Hope.” Greek Left Review. Available at: [URL]
Theocharis, Yannis, Will Lowe, Jan W. van Deth, and Gema García-Albacete. 2015. “Using Twitter to Mobilize Protest Action: Online Mobilization Patterns and Action Repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi Movements.” Information, Communication and Society 18 (2): 202–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsitsanoudi-Mallidi, Nicoletta. 2012. “‘Αγανακτισμένων συνθήματα’: Γλωσσικές πραγματώσεις και ιδεολογικό πλαίσιο [‘Slogans of the Indignados’. Linguistic Uses and Ideological Context].” Nea Paideia 143: 47–64.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.Google Scholar
2010. “Political Identities in Parliamentary Debates.” In European Parliaments under Scrutiny: Discourse Strategies and Interaction Practices, ed. by Illie Cornelia, 29–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vradis, Antonis, and Dimitris Dalakoglou. 2011. Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a Present Yet to Go and a Future Yet to Come. Oakland and London: AK Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Sakellariou, Aggeliki & Dionysis Goutsos
2021. Corruption in a Greek context: Analyzing a newspaper’s discourse on a major political scandal. Discourse & Society 32:6 ► pp. 746 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.