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Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism: In between antiracist and racist discourse
Edited by Argiris Archakis and Villy Tsakona
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 341] 2024
► pp. 143–180

Chapter 6
Migrant voices in ‘antiracist’ video clips in Greece

Eliteness as a form of liquid racism

| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

As an attempt to manage cultural and linguistic divergences from the monocultural and monolingual norm, European nation-states, including Greece, tend to enact overt, or more recently, covert forms of racist discourses. In the present study, we analyze three video clips launched as part of antiracist campaigns in Greece against the backdrop of the current refugee ‘crisis’. The critical analysis of the data shows that the migrant voices of the videos are framed as non-elite in relation to the majority, while the non-assimilated migrant voices are also framed as non-elite in relation the assimilated ones. We therefore argue that eliteness is a representational resource for the perpetuation of liquid racism, as it normalizes the privilege of those constructed as elite in contrast to those constructed as non-elite (i.e. majority members vs. migrants, and assimilated migrants vs. non-assimilated migrants).

Keywords: Critical Discourse Studies, discursive strategies of identity construction, eliteness, indexicality, internalized racism, mediatization, migrants, national homogenizing discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discursive constructions and shifts for the preservation of national homogenization: From overt to covert forms of racism
  • 3.The Greek national homogenizing discourse and the refugee ‘crisis’
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Textual material
    • 4.2Analytical framework
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1The discursive strategy of positionality
    • 5.2The discursive strategy of relationality
    • 5.3The discursive strategy of perspectivization
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.341.06sta
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