This study aims to describe the strategic political communication of the Identitarian Movement in Austria (in German known as Identitäre Bewegung Österreich) and concentrates on identifying means of persuasive language on the homepage of the movement, which is known to be nationalistic and critical towards migration. The study is based on a corpus containing a selection of blog entries, as well as a sample of images published on the homepage, and is carried out using a qualitative method combining discourse linguistics, systemic-functional linguistics and multimodal theory. The analysis sets off by describing the field component of systemic-functional theory and proceeds to examining tenor and mode. The focus will be specifically on firstly, investigating a) discourse participants and the processes they engage in and b) interaction between the implied sender and recipient in the verbal material; and secondly, describing how these meanings are reproduced visually in the image sample used. The findings suggest that the movement not only strives to portray itself as powerful and authoritative but also relies on means of solidarity in order to convince the recipient of its message. More specifically, it is shown that the migrant participants are discriminated and depersonalised whilst a close synthetic relationship is established with the implied reader, i.e. the homepage visitor. Furthermore, the movement makes an effort to picture itself as a representative of numerous groups and interests in society. By doing so it apparently attempts to simulate a representative discourse, in order to present the xenophobic stance it agitates for as a majority opinion. The analysis shows also that these practices can be seen throughout the corpus, that is, in the verbal texts as well as in the imagery.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-169644 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Juopperi, Jesse |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Tyska |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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