Chapter published in:
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. 293–330

Chapter 9
“Tragic event” vs. “cowardly murder”

A longitudinal study of Golden Dawn’s lexicogrammatical choices and discourse strategies

This chapter discusses the representation, in texts published on the Golden Dawn official website, of Pavlos Fyssas’ murder by a Golden Dawn member and the subsequent murders of two members of this party by as yet unidentified perpetrators. The diachronically-sensitive analysis of keywords, clusters and concordances relating to processes and participants suggests that the discourse treatment of the two cases differs fundamentally: lexicogrammatical choices position the two incidents at removed points on a detachment vs. involvement scale, and also reveal significantly different levels of interest in the actor(s) and abettors associated with each incident. The discourse strategies identified in the texts (e.g. denial, variously downtoning or foregrounding of events, counterattack by reversal of accusations) concur with these choices and allow Golden Dawn to appear as a victim (victim-victimizer reversal).
Keywords: diachronic corpus analysis, discourse strategies, Golden Dawn, lexicogrammatical choices
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Classification of the Golden Dawn texts under analysis
  • 4.Lexicogrammatical choices in the F and F&K subcorpora
    • 4.1Process
    • 4.2Patients
    • 4.3Actors
    • 4.4Circumstances: Place of action
  • 5.Discourse strategies
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 July 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.70.09geo
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