The Standpoints Framing Syrians as the ‘Other’ on Twitter and the Arguments Defending these Standpoints

Abstract

This study aims to set forth how Syrians in Turkey are framed as ‘other’ during some social events discussed in Twitter platform. As a theoretical framework, the study adopts Discourse-Historical Approach, which critically evaluates the exploitation of discourse by power groups in such a way as to distance a particular social group. Framing Syrians as ‘the other’ is studied from an argumentative perspective, based on the standpoints raised by the Twitter users and the arguments they use to defend these standpoints. Accordingly, argumentative analysis is achieved by implementing the reconstructive methodology offered by Pragma-Dialectics and evaluated based on the Discourse-Historical Approach. On analysing 186 tweets, 18 negative labels and standpoints were detected, corresponding to 15 different themes. As a case in point, the most frequently used label ‘privileged’ is exemplified, along with the standpoint ‘The privileges that are not given to the Turkish people are awarded to the Syrians’, and its supporting arguments.

Keywords

• syrians
• other
• discourse-historical approach
• pragma-dialectal reconstruction