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Article published In:
Discourses of aggression in Greek digitally-mediated communication
Edited by Ourania Hatzidaki and Ioannis E. Saridakis
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:2] 2020
► pp. 232–261

Liquid racism in the Greek anti-racist campaign #StopMindBorders

ORCID logo | National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
ORCID logo | University of Patras
ORCID logo | University of Patras

This study examines the opaque reproduction of racism in an online, anti-racist campaign officially aiming to denounce hate speech and challenge widespread stereotypes concerning migrants. In particular, we investigate the video clips of the #StopMindBorders campaign launched by the Greek branch of the International Organization for Migration. We specifically concentrate on the liquid racism attested in these video clips, namely a highly ambivalent form of racism encouraged in the mass media and usually hard to detect, as it involves multiple interpretations, some of which may not be assessed as racist (Weaver 2016). The multimodal critical analysis of the representation of migrants reveals that these video clips tacitly promote migrants’ linguocultural assimilation as a prerequisite for their acceptance in the host country. In this sense, although the anti-racist campaign under scrutiny attempts to refute discourses of aggression and mainstream stereotypes against migrants, it ends up naturalizing hate speech and reproducing assimilative and monoculturalist ideologies.

Keywords: liquid racism, anti-racist discourse, hate speech, stereotypes, assimilation, monoculturalism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Racism, hate speech, and liquid racism
  • 3.The data of the study
  • 4.Analytical framework
    • 4.1Reisigl and Wodak’s discursive strategies
    • 4.2van Leeuwen’s multimodal approach
  • 5.Analysis and discussion
    • 5.1Discursive strategies in hate speech
      • 5.1.1Referential and predicational strategies
        • 5.1.1.1Reference/predication for somatization
        • 5.1.1.2Reference/predication for culturalization
        • 5.1.1.3Reference/predication for social problematization
        • 5.1.1.4Reference/predication for collectivization
      • 5.1.2Argumentation strategies
      • 5.1.3Perspectivation, framing, or discourse representation
    • 5.2The visual representation of migrants
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00036.tsa
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