Strategies for constructing social reality in media discourse: an analysis of immigration discourse in British newspapers

Abstract

The paper on the material of two leading British editorials – the Daily Mail and the Guardian in the context of critical discourse analysis analyzes immigration discourse which is the consequence of the political changes that swept Europe during the events of 2011 called the “Arab Spring”. The author reveals and analyzes the discursive strategies that form the discourse immigration, the linguistic mechanisms for their implementation, illustrating their use on specific examples. Within the framework of critical discourse analysis discourse is considered as a form of social interaction, which, in our opinion, allows us to clarify how ideology sets the formatting rules of discourse and determines its content. The relevance of such an investigation is due to the growing scientific interest in the phenomenology of political discourse and its various aspects. As a result of the analysis of publications, the discursive strategy of humane treatment of immigrants has been identified as one of the most common discursive strategies used by publications for the representation of immigrants. The paper substantiates the need for further study of immigration discourse and the development of discourse analysis for the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of speech interaction in the political sphere. The replacement of the lexeme “illegal” with “irregular” or simply “migrants”, the use of the term “irregular migration” in relation to immigrants in the context of their basic rights, smuggling and trafficking in their totality are those constitutive components of immigration discourse that realize the strategy of representing immigrants as helpless, desperate and powerless victims.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis
• political discourse
• immigration
• discursive strategy
• discourse practice
• social practice