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Part of
Representing the Other in European Media Discourses
Edited by Jan Chovanec and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 74] 2017
► pp. 235–258

Chapter 10
The othering of Roma migrants in British and Czech online news discussion forums

The article addresses the discursive process of othering in online news discussion forums. It is based on a comparative analysis of data from reader comments in British and Czech online newspapers on the topic of recent Roma immigration to the United Kingdom. Applying the discourse historical and the cognitive-pragmatic approaches to CDA, the analysis identifies several common patterns in the two data sets. The first similarity concerns the central importance of place, with the theme of relocation being very prominent. The second point involves the role that intertextual quotations from popular culture play in activating the commenters’ search for relevant, implicitly communicated meanings. Finally, attention is paid to extensive narrativization of reader comments that contain elaborate discursive scripts of othering. It is argued that these strategies not only establish highly polarized collective identity of the ingroup but also postulate an absolute incompatibility between the ingroup and the outgroup. These extreme forms of differentiation appear to be particularly salient in discriminatory discourse involving the Roma.

Keywords: discussion forum, immigration discourse, othering, critical discourse analysis, prejudicial discourse, the Roma
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Othering through delocalization
      • 4.1.1The placelessness of the Roma
      • 4.1.2Relocation proposals
    • 4.2Constructing collective ingroup identity through popular culture
      • 4.2.1The “good old days” without the “other”
      • 4.2.2Explicit and implicit othering
    • 4.3Narrative scripts of (de)legitimization
      • 4.3.1Self-legitimization through establishment of historical links
      • 4.3.2Perspectivization and argumentation in narrative scripts of othering
        • Expression of negative emotion
        • Family lineage
        • Contrast between US and THEM
        • Cultural incompatibility & superiority v. inferiority positioning
        • Spatial incompatibility & physical relocation
      • 4.3.3Additional observations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.74.11cho
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