Recent research brings to the surface a distinction between the media representations of Ukrainia... more Recent research brings to the surface a distinction between the media representations of Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country when it was invaded by the Russians in February 2022, and those of refugees from Asian and African countries arriving in the EU: the former are portrayed in more favorable terms than the latter. Such a discriminatory distinction occurred and was debated in the Greek public sphere as well, when the then Minister of Migration and Asylum N. Mitarakis characterized Ukrainian refugees as real refugees explicitly stating that Asian or African refugees arriving in Greece are illegal and should not be granted the same benefits as Ukrainians. The present study offers a critical analysis of how these statements and the ensuing discussions were reported in articles coming from 3 Greek newspapers with different political orientation. More specifically, we investigate whether the texts under scrutiny reproduce racist and/or antiracist discourses and how they evaluatively frame politicians' statements on the topic at hand. To this end, we exploit specific discursive strategies from Reisigl & Wodak's (2001) discourse-historical approach as well as certain evaluative parameters identified by Bednarek (2006) in journalistic discourse. The analysis of our data reveals that all the newspapers under scrutiny reproduce refugee representations ascribing to racist discourse despite their more or less pronounced antiracist political orientation. Such representations pertain not only to those refugees who come from Asia and Africa, but also to Ukrainian refugees. ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου, ειδησεογραφική αξιολόγηση, ουκρανοί/ές πρόσφυγες/ισσες, αναπαραστάσεις, αντι/ρατσισμός
Signs of Europe: discourses, mythologies, politics of representation, 2023
The coexistence of different cultural, social, and linguistic identities in contemporary societie... more The coexistence of different cultural, social, and linguistic identities in contemporary societies gradually leads to questioning symbolic national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries (Blommaert and Rampton 2012). As a reaction to this situation, national discourse is reinforced, as it enhances cultural and linguistic homogeneity, and constructs relations of inequality among immigrants/refugees and majorities (Archakis 2016). The present study aims to investigate the way in which refugees are represented in television news extracts, and the extent to which this representation converges to or deviates from national discourse. This article focuses on two excerpts that reflect the views of majority members and local institutions on refugees settling in their area or refugee children attending Greek schools. Following the framework of critical discourse analysis, we draw on Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001) discourse strategies to bring to the surface and interpret the way refugees are represented. The findings of this study suggest that the analyzed television extracts reproduce the national discourse either by representing refugees as a ‘threat’ or by marginalizing them through promoting a relation of inequality among majority members and refugees.
The presence of immigrants and refugees in Western nation-states challenges symbolic national bou... more The presence of immigrants and refugees in Western nation-states challenges symbolic national boundaries and is perceived as a threat to the dominant majorities. In this context, hate speech is reinforced in the form of both violent racist (speech) acts (hard hate speech) and-mostlymitigated rejection and covert discriminatory practices (soft hate speech). In both cases hate speech draws on and simultaneously entrenches national discourse, aiming at representing the nation as a linguistically and culturally homogeneous entity. Studies concentrating on hate speech usually investigate public discourse produced by adults. The present study explores the reproduction of (soft) hate speech among immigrant students in the Greek educational context and the ways in which national discourse is reinforced among them. Adopting a Critical Discourse Studies perspective, we employ analytical tools from the Discursive-Historical Approach, allowing us to identify how specific discursive strategies contribute to the reproduction of soft hate speech, which seems to draw on national discourse in the form of either racist discourse or humanitarian discourse. ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: ανθρωπιστικός λόγος, εθνικός λόγος, μαθητές/τριες, μετανάστες/τριες, πρόσφυγες/ισσες, ρατσιστικός λόγος, ρητορική μίσους
Linares Bernabéu, Esther (ed.) The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, [P&bns 335]., 2023
The article deals with online interactional humour in user comments on YouTube. Drawing on an ext... more The article deals with online interactional humour in user comments on YouTube. Drawing on an extensive dataset of verbal reactions to a video discussing the (in)appropriateness of joking about the 2019 burning of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the analysis traces how online commenters recontextualise the disaster and how they jointly produce humorous interaction on a sensitive topic. The analysis focuses on the emergence of joking threads, which consist of jokes shared by the commenters and additional (non-)humorous metapragmatic comments that develop the interaction in various directions. The data reveal that commenters cooperatively engage in a rich range of humour-related practices on a socially sensitive topic, which oscillate between disaster humour and religious humour.
Recent research brings to the surface a distinction between the media representations of Ukrainia... more Recent research brings to the surface a distinction between the media representations of Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country when it was invaded by the Russians in February 2022, and those of refugees from Asian and African countries arriving in the EU: the former are portrayed in more favorable terms than the latter. Such a discriminatory distinction occurred and was debated in the Greek public sphere as well, when the then Minister of Migration and Asylum N. Mitarakis characterized Ukrainian refugees as real refugees explicitly stating that Asian or African refugees arriving in Greece are illegal and should not be granted the same benefits as Ukrainians. The present study offers a critical analysis of how these statements and the ensuing discussions were reported in articles coming from 3 Greek newspapers with different political orientation. More specifically, we investigate whether the texts under scrutiny reproduce racist and/or antiracist discourses and how they evaluatively frame politicians' statements on the topic at hand. To this end, we exploit specific discursive strategies from Reisigl & Wodak's (2001) discourse-historical approach as well as certain evaluative parameters identified by Bednarek (2006) in journalistic discourse. The analysis of our data reveals that all the newspapers under scrutiny reproduce refugee representations ascribing to racist discourse despite their more or less pronounced antiracist political orientation. Such representations pertain not only to those refugees who come from Asia and Africa, but also to Ukrainian refugees. ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου, ειδησεογραφική αξιολόγηση, ουκρανοί/ές πρόσφυγες/ισσες, αναπαραστάσεις, αντι/ρατσισμός
Signs of Europe: discourses, mythologies, politics of representation, 2023
The coexistence of different cultural, social, and linguistic identities in contemporary societie... more The coexistence of different cultural, social, and linguistic identities in contemporary societies gradually leads to questioning symbolic national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries (Blommaert and Rampton 2012). As a reaction to this situation, national discourse is reinforced, as it enhances cultural and linguistic homogeneity, and constructs relations of inequality among immigrants/refugees and majorities (Archakis 2016). The present study aims to investigate the way in which refugees are represented in television news extracts, and the extent to which this representation converges to or deviates from national discourse. This article focuses on two excerpts that reflect the views of majority members and local institutions on refugees settling in their area or refugee children attending Greek schools. Following the framework of critical discourse analysis, we draw on Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001) discourse strategies to bring to the surface and interpret the way refugees are represented. The findings of this study suggest that the analyzed television extracts reproduce the national discourse either by representing refugees as a ‘threat’ or by marginalizing them through promoting a relation of inequality among majority members and refugees.
The presence of immigrants and refugees in Western nation-states challenges symbolic national bou... more The presence of immigrants and refugees in Western nation-states challenges symbolic national boundaries and is perceived as a threat to the dominant majorities. In this context, hate speech is reinforced in the form of both violent racist (speech) acts (hard hate speech) and-mostlymitigated rejection and covert discriminatory practices (soft hate speech). In both cases hate speech draws on and simultaneously entrenches national discourse, aiming at representing the nation as a linguistically and culturally homogeneous entity. Studies concentrating on hate speech usually investigate public discourse produced by adults. The present study explores the reproduction of (soft) hate speech among immigrant students in the Greek educational context and the ways in which national discourse is reinforced among them. Adopting a Critical Discourse Studies perspective, we employ analytical tools from the Discursive-Historical Approach, allowing us to identify how specific discursive strategies contribute to the reproduction of soft hate speech, which seems to draw on national discourse in the form of either racist discourse or humanitarian discourse. ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: ανθρωπιστικός λόγος, εθνικός λόγος, μαθητές/τριες, μετανάστες/τριες, πρόσφυγες/ισσες, ρατσιστικός λόγος, ρητορική μίσους
Linares Bernabéu, Esther (ed.) The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, [P&bns 335]., 2023
The article deals with online interactional humour in user comments on YouTube. Drawing on an ext... more The article deals with online interactional humour in user comments on YouTube. Drawing on an extensive dataset of verbal reactions to a video discussing the (in)appropriateness of joking about the 2019 burning of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the analysis traces how online commenters recontextualise the disaster and how they jointly produce humorous interaction on a sensitive topic. The analysis focuses on the emergence of joking threads, which consist of jokes shared by the commenters and additional (non-)humorous metapragmatic comments that develop the interaction in various directions. The data reveal that commenters cooperatively engage in a rich range of humour-related practices on a socially sensitive topic, which oscillate between disaster humour and religious humour.
This book deals with the construction of diverse forms of humor in everyday oral, written, and me... more This book deals with the construction of diverse forms of humor in everyday oral, written, and mediatized interactions. It sheds light on the differences and, most importantly, the similarities in the production of interactional humor in face-to-face and various technology-mediated forms of communication, including scripted and non-scripted situations. The chapters analyze humor-related issues in such genres as spontaneous conversations, broadcast dialogues, storytelling, media blogs, bilingual conversations, stand-up comedy, TV documentaries, drama series, family sitcoms, Facebook posts, and internet memes. The individual authors trace how speakers collaboratively circulate, reconstruct, and (re)frame either personal or public accounts of reality, aiming -among other things-to produce and/ or reproduce humor. Rather than being "finished" products with a "single" interpretation, humorous texts are thus approached as dynamic communicative events that give rise to diverse interpretations and meanings. The book draws on a variety of up-to-date approaches and methodologies, and will appeal to scholars in discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, ethnography of communication, and social semiotics.
Less than 10 years ago, Bayley (2004:9) claimed that ''notwithstanding the interest that has been... more Less than 10 years ago, Bayley (2004:9) claimed that ''notwithstanding the interest that has been shown in political language, there have been few studies in the language of parliament''. This was due to several reasons: first, parliaments were not considered the most powerful political arenas ever since the media, political lobbies, and governments evolved into the main sites of political decision-making and deliberating. On the other hand, parliamentary discourse itself did not easily reach the electorate either because it did not attract the attention of the media or because a limited number of speakers had access to it. This does not seem to be the case nowadays: at least in Western democracies, most parliaments offer open access to most of their procedures and records, while the media resort to such resources in their quest for confrontational (and hence reportable) political discourse (Archakis and Tsakona, 2010). Consequently, parliaments are returning to the centre of political attention and parliamentarians exploit this kind of publicity to project and defend their policies and ideologies.
Μεταδιδακτορική ερευνήτρια του προγράμματος «Χιούμορ και Κριτικός Γραμματισμός» για τη δημιουργία... more Μεταδιδακτορική ερευνήτρια του προγράμματος «Χιούμορ και Κριτικός Γραμματισμός» για τη δημιουργία μιας Ανοιχτής Πρόσβασης Επισημειωμένης Βάσης Δεδομένων για τον Χιουμοριστικό Λόγο, η οποία θα χρησιμοποιηθεί ως εργαλείο για τη διδασκαλία της ελληνικής ως ξένης γλώσσας (προχωρημένο επίπεδο) και για την καλλιέργεια του κριτικού γραμματισμού στο πλαίσιο της γλωσσικής διδασκαλίας στη δευτεροβάθμια εκπαίδευση. Το πρόγραμμα εκπονείται από το Πανεπιστήμιο του Kent του Ηνωμένου Βασιλείου.
Κύριος σκοπός του έργου είναι ο εντοπισμός και η κριτική ανάδειξη των υπόρρητων μηνυμάτων που ανα... more Κύριος σκοπός του έργου είναι ο εντοπισμός και η κριτική ανάδειξη των υπόρρητων μηνυμάτων που αναπαράγουν ρατσιστικές πρακτικές και ιδεολογίες στον αντιρατσιστικό λόγο της ευρωπαϊκής δημόσιας σφαίρας ο οποίος πραγματεύεται τη μεταναστευτική και την προσφυγική κρίση. Οι μαζικές προσφυγικές και μεταναστευτικές ροές στον ευρωπαϊκό χώρο κατά τα έτη 2015-2017 και οι επακόλουθες έντονες συζητήσεις σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο, οδήγησαν στην ανάδυση και την κυκλοφορία ποικίλων στάσεων και πρακτικών εκ μέρους των ευρωπαϊκών κρατών, οι οποίες κυμαίνονται από αλληλέγγυες έως ξενοφοβικές. Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, επιδίωξή μας είναι να αποκαλύψουμε ότι οι ρατσιστικές αντιλήψεις δεν καλλιεργούνται μόνο μέσα από τον λόγο μίσους, ο οποίος στιγματίζει και δαιμονοποιεί απροκάλυπτα τους μεταναστευτικούς και προσφυγικούς πληθυσμούς, αλλά και μέσα από τον (φαινομενικά) αντιρατσιστικό λόγο, ο οποίος ενώ έχει στόχο να καταγγείλει ρατσιστικές πρακτικές, καταλήγει να απηχεί ανισότητες, να τις συγκαλύπτει και να τις αναπαράγει.
Ειδικότερα, θα προχωρήσουμε στη σύσταση και την ανάλυση ενός ψηφιακού σώματος αντιρατσιστικών κειμένων, το οποίο θα περιλαμβάνει κείμενα του μιντιακού και του θεσμικού λόγου. Αξιοποιώντας βασικές αρχές της Κριτικής Ανάλυσης Λόγου, θα διερευνήσουμε τις ποικίλες γλωσσικές και άλλες σημειωτικές στρατηγικές με τις οποίες ο ρατσιστικός λόγος εμφιλοχωρεί στον αποκαλούμενο ‘αντιρατσιστικό’. Πρόθεσή μας είναι να συνθέσουμε μια κριτική εργαλειοθήκη που θα συμβάλει στη βελτίωση της κριτικής επίγνωσης τόσο των θεσμικών φορέων όσο και της ευρωπαϊκής εκπαίδευσης που προωθεί, μεταξύ άλλων, ζητήματα της ευρωπαϊκής πολιτειότητας. Τέλος, στόχος μας είναι η ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού γι’ αυτό το είδος του λανθάνοντα ρατσισμού μέσα από έντυπο υλικό, βίντεο, καμπάνιες στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης.
This project focuses on institutionalized/ official anti-racist discourse of the European public ... more This project focuses on institutionalized/ official anti-racist discourse of the European public sphere, which refers to the migration and refugee crisis. The eruption of the migrant and refugee crisis in European cities (2015-2018) led to the rise of different stances and practices on behalf of European states, ranging from solidarity to xenophobia. In this context, this research program intends to reveal that racist views are not cultivated only through hate speech, which stigmatizes and overtly demonizes migrant and refugee populations, but also through seemingly anti-racist discourse, which aims at denouncing racist practices, but ends up disguising, reproducing and sedimenting inequalities.
To this end, the first aim is the creation of a corpus of anti-racist (multimodal) texts including, on the one hand, media texts such as advertising campaigns, news articles, TV shows, cartoons, and, on the other, institutional texts such as educational material, parliamentary proceedings, and other political and legal texts, which circulate in European countries. This corpus will be annotated and analyzed in order to detect texts indirectly perpetuating social and/or sociolinguistic inequalities: what we tentatively call ‘racist’ anti-racist texts. More specifically, drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, the analysis concerns the various linguistic and other semiotic strategies through which racist views infiltrate discourse intended as anti-racist. Through the creation of a critical toolkit (TRACE) based on the findings of the analysis, the main intention is to enhance individuals’ critical awareness so as to be able to detect racism in anti-racist discourse. The ultimate goal of the program is to inform and sensitize the public, particularly educational and institutional bodies, on this kind of latent racism via the use of printed and audio-visual material.
In the present project, we explore the possibility to introduce mass cultural texts to Greek scho... more In the present project, we explore the possibility to introduce mass cultural texts to Greek school language arts, through the design, development and assessment of learning material targeted to raise students critical awareness of linguistic variation phenomena, namely to promote their sensitization and critical thinking about the social conditions of language use. The present project is contextualized within the developments occurring in the social sciences due to the acknowledgment of the central role of mass culture in today's postmodern societies ("linguistic turn") as well as the efforts made by educationalists to implicate more actively students to school practices by introducing subjects which address the students' everyday experiences and social needs. The raising of critical language awareness through mass culture offers many translational results for student populations, and especially for the unprivileged ones, such as access to school knowledge through the respect and acceptance of their linguistic capital at school, as well as empowerment and emancipation through the enhancement of their communicative competence and critical thinking. From a scholarship perspective, the project contributes to the bridging of research questions associated with a social constructionist theory of language, as critical discourse analysis (e.g. the role of language in the shaping of social reality), with issues that more traditional social approaches to language have been concerned with, as variationist sociolinguistics (e.g. linguistic variation). From a methodological perspective, the project attempts to employ a synthesis of innovative and diverse methodological tools: •combination of qualitative (observation, focus groups, semi-structured interviews) and •quantitative research methods (questionnaires); •adoption of reflexive ethnographic approaches (action research, comparison of Etic and Emic categories).
Ο παρών Τόμος αποτυπώνει τις εργασίες της διημερίδας «Γλώσσα, μαζική κουλτούρα και κριτικός γραμματισμός» που πραγματοποιήθηκε τον Ιούνιο του 2015 στη Φλώρινα, στην Παιδαγωγική Σχολή του Πανεπιστημίου Δυτικής Μακεδονίας, στο πλαίσιο της διάχυσης των αποτελεσμάτων του ερευνητικού προγράμματος Θαλής (2011-2015) με τίτλο: «Γλωσσική ποικιλότητα και γλωσσικές ιδεολογίες στα κείμενα μαζικής κουλτούρας: Σχεδιασμός, ανάπτυξη και αξιολόγηση παιδαγωγικού υλικού για την ανάπτυξη της κριτικής γλωσσικής επίγνωσης» (Επιστημονικά Υπεύθυνη: Αναστασία Στάμου, Φορέας Χρηματοδότησης: Υπουργείο Παιδείας, Έρευνας & Θρησκευμάτων, Επιχειρησιακό Πρόγραμμα «Εκπαίδευση και Δια Βίου Μάθηση»). Δεν είναι στις προθέσεις μας να καταγραφεί στον παρόντα Τόμο το σύνολο των ερευνητικών αποτελεσμάτων ενός πολυετούς προγράμματος αλλά να αποτυπωθούν οι εκπαιδευτικές προτάσεις του προγράμματος, με στόχο την πιθανή δοκιμή και αξιοποίησή τους στο γλωσσικό μάθημα όλων των βαθμίδων της εκπαίδευσης. Ειδικότερα, στο πρόγραμμα Θαλής εξετάσαμε τη δυνατότητα εισαγωγής κειμένων μαζικής κουλτούρας (π.χ. από τηλεοπτικά προγράμματα, διαφημίσεις, ταινίες, διαδίκτυο, εφημερίδες κ.λπ.) στο γλωσσικό μάθημα όλων των βαθμίδων της εκπαίδευσης (νηπιαγωγείο, δημοτικό, γυμνάσιο). Ως εκ τούτου, επιχειρήσαμε τον σχεδιασμό, την ανάπτυξη και την αξιολόγηση κατάλληλου εκπαιδευτικού υλικού, με σκοπό την καλλιέργεια του κριτικού γραμματισμού των μαθητών/τριών σε φαινόμενα γλωσσικής ποικιλότητας, δηλαδή την ευαισθητοποίηση και προώθηση της κριτικής τους σκέψης όσον αφορά τις κοινωνικές συνθήκες της γλωσσικής χρήσης.
Lay and Social Science Discourses on identity, migration and citizenship (LSSDMIC)
The LSSDMIC p... more Lay and Social Science Discourses on identity, migration and citizenship (LSSDMIC)
The LSSDMIC project aimed to examine the ways in which the principles used in the social sciences to explain the social world might interact with the interpretative resources that are used by lay social actors to make sense of this world. The project aimed to examine this by focusing on the underlying processes of interaction between social scientific and everyday lay discourses: the different ways in which social-scientific discourses are synthesized, how these discourses are filtered back to lay discourses, and how these discourses are taken up by lay social actors. The topics selected to probe into these issues are identity, citizenship and migration as there have been global developments in these areas since the 1990s and there has been a proliferation of both social scientific and lay discussions concerning them. The interaction between social scientific and lay discourses has been studied by conducting a systematic review of social science texts on identity, citizenship and migration and by interviewing immigrants and locals in Central Macedonia, Greece. The ways in which these social science texts and interview data correspond in terms of the themes they emphasise and the arguments that are developed, has been the object of scrutiny of the project. The role of policy has also been considered for how it is manifested in those discourses. The project emphasised the role of discourse in constructing social reality and the notion that discourse is distributed across different settings.
As the project draws onto a close, the conference on Identity, Otherness and Citizenship in Contemporary Europe is held to address these issues beyond the disciplinary, epistemological, methodological and spatial confines of the project. The conference brings together contributions from social psychology, social anthropology, sociolinguistics, history and law to discuss identities and intergroup relations in educational contexts, the relationship between citizenship, multiculturalism and integration, the implications of representations of extremism and of racist discourse on identities, intergroup relations and citizenship, social accounting for new identities, migration and citizenship, dilemmas of national identity and citizenship, the functions of deprivation of citizenship, lay theories of citizenship for the study of residential mixing, and the relationship between otherness and hospitality. The contributions are based on studies in Greece, the UK, Northern Ireland and Australia and draw on accounts of Greeks and immigrants in Greece, Greek emigrants in Melbourne, long-term residents and recent incomers in Belfast, parents, school governors, teachers and politicians in the UK.
The conference aims to promote a dialogue and produce insights on identity, otherness and citizenship in contemporary Europe from these different settings and approaches in relation to identities, inclusion/exclusion, intergroup relations and integration regimes.
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Papers by Villy Tsakona
ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: ανθρωπιστικός λόγος, εθνικός λόγος, μαθητές/τριες, μετανάστες/τριες, πρόσφυγες/ισσες, ρατσιστικός λόγος, ρητορική μίσους
ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: ανθρωπιστικός λόγος, εθνικός λόγος, μαθητές/τριες, μετανάστες/τριες, πρόσφυγες/ισσες, ρατσιστικός λόγος, ρητορική μίσους
Ειδικότερα, θα προχωρήσουμε στη σύσταση και την ανάλυση ενός ψηφιακού σώματος αντιρατσιστικών κειμένων, το οποίο θα περιλαμβάνει κείμενα του μιντιακού και του θεσμικού λόγου. Αξιοποιώντας βασικές αρχές της Κριτικής Ανάλυσης Λόγου, θα διερευνήσουμε τις ποικίλες γλωσσικές και άλλες σημειωτικές στρατηγικές με τις οποίες ο ρατσιστικός λόγος εμφιλοχωρεί στον αποκαλούμενο ‘αντιρατσιστικό’. Πρόθεσή μας είναι να συνθέσουμε μια κριτική εργαλειοθήκη που θα συμβάλει στη βελτίωση της κριτικής επίγνωσης τόσο των θεσμικών φορέων όσο και της ευρωπαϊκής εκπαίδευσης που προωθεί, μεταξύ άλλων, ζητήματα της ευρωπαϊκής πολιτειότητας. Τέλος, στόχος μας είναι η ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού γι’ αυτό το είδος του λανθάνοντα ρατσισμού μέσα από έντυπο υλικό, βίντεο, καμπάνιες στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης.
To this end, the first aim is the creation of a corpus of anti-racist (multimodal) texts including, on the one hand, media texts such as advertising campaigns, news articles, TV shows, cartoons, and, on the other, institutional texts such as educational material, parliamentary proceedings, and other political and legal texts, which circulate in European countries. This corpus will be annotated and analyzed in order to detect texts indirectly perpetuating social and/or sociolinguistic inequalities: what we tentatively call ‘racist’ anti-racist texts. More specifically, drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, the analysis concerns the various linguistic and other semiotic strategies through which racist views infiltrate discourse intended as anti-racist. Through the creation of a critical toolkit (TRACE) based on the findings of the analysis, the main intention is to enhance individuals’ critical awareness so as to be able to detect racism in anti-racist discourse. The ultimate goal of the program is to inform and sensitize the public, particularly educational and institutional bodies, on this kind of latent racism via the use of printed and audio-visual material.
The present project is contextualized within the developments occurring in the social sciences due to the acknowledgment of the central role of mass culture in today's postmodern societies ("linguistic turn") as well as the efforts made by educationalists to implicate more actively students to school practices by introducing subjects which address the students' everyday experiences and social needs. The raising of critical language awareness through mass culture offers many translational results for student populations, and especially for the unprivileged ones, such as access to school knowledge through the respect and acceptance of their linguistic capital at school, as well as empowerment and emancipation through the enhancement of their communicative competence and critical thinking.
From a scholarship perspective, the project contributes to the bridging of research questions associated with a social constructionist theory of language, as critical discourse analysis (e.g. the role of language in the shaping of social reality), with issues that more traditional social approaches to language have been concerned with, as variationist sociolinguistics (e.g. linguistic variation).
From a methodological perspective, the project attempts to employ a synthesis of innovative and diverse methodological tools:
•combination of qualitative (observation, focus groups, semi-structured interviews) and
•quantitative research methods (questionnaires);
•adoption of reflexive ethnographic approaches (action research, comparison of Etic and Emic categories).
Ο παρών Τόμος αποτυπώνει τις εργασίες της διημερίδας «Γλώσσα, μαζική κουλτούρα και κριτικός γραμματισμός» που πραγματοποιήθηκε τον Ιούνιο του 2015 στη Φλώρινα, στην Παιδαγωγική Σχολή του Πανεπιστημίου Δυτικής Μακεδονίας, στο πλαίσιο της διάχυσης των αποτελεσμάτων του ερευνητικού προγράμματος Θαλής (2011-2015) με τίτλο: «Γλωσσική ποικιλότητα και γλωσσικές ιδεολογίες στα κείμενα μαζικής κουλτούρας: Σχεδιασμός, ανάπτυξη και αξιολόγηση παιδαγωγικού υλικού για την ανάπτυξη της κριτικής γλωσσικής επίγνωσης» (Επιστημονικά Υπεύθυνη: Αναστασία Στάμου, Φορέας Χρηματοδότησης: Υπουργείο Παιδείας, Έρευνας & Θρησκευμάτων, Επιχειρησιακό Πρόγραμμα «Εκπαίδευση και Δια Βίου Μάθηση»).
Δεν είναι στις προθέσεις μας να καταγραφεί στον παρόντα Τόμο το σύνολο των ερευνητικών αποτελεσμάτων ενός πολυετούς προγράμματος αλλά να αποτυπωθούν οι εκπαιδευτικές προτάσεις του προγράμματος, με στόχο την πιθανή δοκιμή και αξιοποίησή τους στο γλωσσικό μάθημα όλων των βαθμίδων της εκπαίδευσης. Ειδικότερα, στο πρόγραμμα Θαλής εξετάσαμε τη δυνατότητα εισαγωγής κειμένων μαζικής κουλτούρας (π.χ. από τηλεοπτικά προγράμματα, διαφημίσεις, ταινίες, διαδίκτυο, εφημερίδες κ.λπ.) στο γλωσσικό μάθημα όλων των βαθμίδων της εκπαίδευσης (νηπιαγωγείο, δημοτικό, γυμνάσιο). Ως εκ τούτου, επιχειρήσαμε τον σχεδιασμό, την ανάπτυξη και την αξιολόγηση κατάλληλου εκπαιδευτικού υλικού, με σκοπό την καλλιέργεια του κριτικού γραμματισμού των μαθητών/τριών σε φαινόμενα γλωσσικής ποικιλότητας, δηλαδή την ευαισθητοποίηση και προώθηση της κριτικής τους σκέψης όσον αφορά τις κοινωνικές συνθήκες της γλωσσικής χρήσης.
The LSSDMIC project aimed to examine the ways in which the principles used in the social sciences to explain the social world might interact with the interpretative resources that are used by lay social actors to make sense of this world. The project aimed to examine this by focusing on the underlying processes of interaction between social scientific and everyday lay discourses: the different ways in which social-scientific discourses are synthesized, how these discourses are filtered back to lay discourses, and how these discourses are taken up by lay social actors. The topics selected to probe into these issues are identity, citizenship and migration as there have been global developments in these areas since the 1990s and there has been a proliferation of both social scientific and lay discussions concerning them. The interaction between social scientific and lay discourses has been studied by conducting a systematic review of social science texts on identity, citizenship and migration and by interviewing immigrants and locals in Central Macedonia, Greece. The ways in which these social science texts and interview data correspond in terms of the themes they emphasise and the arguments that are developed, has been the object of scrutiny of the project. The role of policy has also been considered for how it is manifested in those discourses. The project emphasised the role of discourse in constructing social reality and the notion that discourse is distributed across different settings.
As the project draws onto a close, the conference on Identity, Otherness and Citizenship in Contemporary Europe is held to address these issues beyond the disciplinary, epistemological, methodological and spatial confines of the project. The conference brings together contributions from social psychology, social anthropology, sociolinguistics, history and law to discuss identities and intergroup relations in educational contexts, the relationship between citizenship, multiculturalism and integration, the implications of representations of extremism and of racist discourse on identities, intergroup relations and citizenship, social accounting for new identities, migration and citizenship, dilemmas of national identity and citizenship, the functions of deprivation of citizenship, lay theories of citizenship for the study of residential mixing, and the relationship between otherness and hospitality. The contributions are based on studies in Greece, the UK, Northern Ireland and Australia and draw on accounts of Greeks and immigrants in Greece, Greek emigrants in Melbourne, long-term residents and recent incomers in Belfast, parents, school governors, teachers and politicians in the UK.
The conference aims to promote a dialogue and produce insights on identity, otherness and citizenship in contemporary Europe from these different settings and approaches in relation to identities, inclusion/exclusion, intergroup relations and integration regimes.