• A
  • A
  • A
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
Regular version of the site

The Image of a 'Foreigner' in the Contemporary Discourses of European Immigration

Student: Gruzdeva Daria

Supervisor: Alexandra Nagornaya

Faculty: School of Foreign Languages

Educational Programme: Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2019

The present paper focuses on the representation of European immigration in the English-speaking press. The issue of European immigration is extremely acute in the modern world due to the arrival of multiple groups of refugees in the European Union (EU) since 2013 and the enormous impact of this migratory flow on the European society. As immigration is one of the most relevant social issues, it has been widely covered in the media creating an extensive and heterogeneous field of discursive practices. The paper examines the news articles which focus on the events of the European refugee situation and the language strategies which have been employed to create a certain image of a typical immigrant in the English-speaking world. The object of the study is immigration processes in modern Europe, and the subject of the study is the mechanisms of creating the image of a ‘foreigner’ in modern English-speaking immigration discourses. The main purpose of the study is to identify the common linguistic approaches exploited to create a certain image of an immigrant. To this aim, the paper has been organized in the following way: a general definition of migration processes; cultural and linguistic aspects of migration processes in terms of clashes of cultures; description of immigration processes in Modern Europe; identification of immigration discourse as a type of political discourse; identification of common principles of creating an image of an immigrant in the media; the study of the functions of metaphors and their use in depicting an immigrant; analysis of modern English-speaking immigration discourses and the linguistic approaches used. The paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) turned out to be the most convenient methodological framework for analyzing metaphors employed in immigration discourses. The research material is articles from major online newspapers. The total amount of the articles examined is 70.

Full text (added May 20, 2019)

Student Theses at HSE must be completed in accordance with the University Rules and regulations specified by each educational programme.

Summaries of all theses must be published and made freely available on the HSE website.

The full text of a thesis can be published in open access on the HSE website only if the authoring student (copyright holder) agrees, or, if the thesis was written by a team of students, if all the co-authors (copyright holders) agree. After a thesis is published on the HSE website, it obtains the status of an online publication.

Student theses are objects of copyright and their use is subject to limitations in accordance with the Russian Federation’s law on intellectual property.

In the event that a thesis is quoted or otherwise used, reference to the author’s name and the source of quotation is required.

Search all student theses