„Us” and „them” in the language of conservative islamophobia - referential and predicational strategies in Polish right-wing press discourse on the migration crisis in 2015

Abstract

As Vincent Geisser noted in his book, La Nouvelle Islamophobie, islamophobia can be defi ned as a form of cultural racism which puts emphasis especially on religion (Islam) as the agent of distinction between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, based usually on a phantasmatic idea of Islam and Muslims. The islamophobic phenomenon increased radically in Poland during the peak of the migration crisis in the second half of 2015, following numerous press articles and columns which provide a background for such prejudice. The right-wing press titles provided space for authors voicing discriminative opinions about (mostly Muslim) refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa. Using a Discourse-Historical Approach (Wodak, Reisigl), the author analysed which predicational and referential strategies are used to designate social actors and where the line of distinction is drawn between the categories of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in right-wing press discourse on the migration crisis. The analysis suggests that right-wing publicists distinguish two diff erent subcategories of ‘Them’: a) refugees and immigrants (usually Muslim) and b) the liberal political and media elites. Therefore, the analysed texts could be perceived as examples of ‘conservative islamophobia’, as defi ned by Monika Bobako, in which European Christian identity is the basis for prejudice against Muslims and liberal advocates of multi-culturalism.