Artikel

Taal en groepsverhoudingen: de pragmatiek van het migrantendebat

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Abstract

Language and group relations. The pragmatics of the debate on the presence of the immigrants - This paper summarizes an analysis of discourse on the presence of immigrants in Flanders-Belgium, and elaborates on some theoretical and methodological aspects of this analysis. It starts from the observation that subjective social-theoretical phenomena such as ideologies, mentalities, etc. appear to be particularly difficult to locate and describe empirically. A pragmatic-linguistic approach is offered focusing on the actual processes of hegemonic control in communication. This approach is applied to a large corpus of texts on the ’immigrant problem’ in Belgium, issued by four communicators : policy-makers, media, scientists and educators. Each one of these communicators claims specific forms of authority, and together they form the majority’s voice on the issue of immigrants. This can be empirically demonstrated on the basis of implicit coherence at the level of implicit meaning and intertextuality between the various types of discourse. Despite important differences on the explicit level, all communicators seem to share a number of ideological assumptions, which determine their perspective on the immigrant problem in Belgium.

How to Cite:

Blommaert, J. & Verschueren, J., (1995) “Taal en groepsverhoudingen: de pragmatiek van het migrantendebat”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 40(1), 1–23. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95190