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RASIM in the News: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of RASIM in Italian and US Newspapers

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RASIM in the News:

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of RASIM

in Italian and US Newspapers

MA in Language and Society (English) Universiteit van Amsterdam

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Abstract

This study investigates the discursive strategies employed in the representation of RASIM (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants) in four newspapers, placing itself in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis. It analyses two national contexts, i.e. Italy and the U.S.A., in the period of time between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. Two predominant tendencies emerge: first, RASIM are functionalised in relation to what they do, i.e. migrating; second, they are depicted as a homogeneous group, regardless of differences in provenance, age, backgrounds, motives, etc. Some divergences between the two national contexts are observed too. First, they differ in terms of activation patterns and participant roles, with the US newspapers giving substantially more agency to RASIM. Second, the US articles directly quote RASIM and give expression to their thoughts and feelings. This is seldom found in the Italian broadsheets.

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Table of contents

1. Introduction……….………..1

2. Theoretical Background……… ………...3

3. RASIM in Previous Literature………..7

3.1. Van Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic Categorisation of Social Actors………...11

3.2. Halliday’s Transitivity System………...16

3.3. Media Discourses………...18

3.4. The RASIM Project………19

4. Significance and Research Question……….…...21

5. Methodology………...………….23

5.1. Criteria for the Selection of Newspapers………23

5.2. Criteria for the Selection of Articles………...25

5.3. Categories Employed for the Analysis: Van Leeuwen and Halliday…………..26

6. Discussion of the Results……….28

6.1. La Repubblica……….28

6.2. Il Corriere della Sera………..36

6.3. The New York Times………..44

6.4. The Wall Street Journal………..51

7. General Analysis……….58

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Introduction

In recent years, the debate around migration and immigration policies has increasingly gained ground in the political and public arena, becoming the basis of political propaganda, both in the Italian and US context, which are here examined. Immigration has been predominant in the political campaign that led Matteo Salvini, an Italian politician and leader of the League, to dominate the 2018 general elections (together with the head of the Five Star Movement, Luigi di Maio), becoming Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of the Interior in June 2018. Likewise, the political campaign promoted by Donald Trump for the 2016 Presidential Election relied consistently on anti-immigrant stances. In both contexts, immigration has been at the heart of a public discourse, construing migrants as an out-group threatening – culturally and economically – the constructed in-out-groups of Americans and Italians. The treatment of the issue by the newspapers promotes this practice of systematically ‘othering’ migrants. Discourse is always ideological (Van Dijk, 1993), and the discourse of the news is no exception. Through the representational choices newspapers make, in terms of naming, citing, editing, etc., they construct and re-construct migrants as outsiders. The goal of this thesis is to decode the discursive strategies and linguistic choices they make and show their partial reconstruction of reality, as one possible version of the facts out of many other potential interpretations.

The topic of migrants and their depiction in the press is not new to Sociolinguistics. Many previous investigations have already been published, and many of them have come to some very similar conclusions about the nature of contemporary racism, and how it has evolved since the Second World War. A ‘new racism’ (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 34) has been delineated, which is mainly discursive and which justifies itself on the basis of cultural differences (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 34). This concept of a new racism will be further elaborated below.

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At the basis of this research are the major works by Halliday (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1994; Halliday et al., 2014) and Van Leeuwen (2013) on the representation of social actors. The former formulated the transitivity system. Its basic concept is that the clause itself models experience, primarily through ‘the principle that reality is made up of processes’ (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1994, p. 106). Thus, according to the type of process a participant in the clause is involved in, the participant itself is assigned different functions by the grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1994). This method allows for an analysis of the grammatical roles assigned to migrants in relation to the actions in which they are involved. Van Leeuwen (2013) developed the socio-semantic categorization of social actors, for the analysis of the representational choices made in the depiction of social actors, by mapping all the possible linguistic realizations of a sociological concept, e.g. agency. Sociologically speaking, agency has been defined ‘as the property of those entities (i) that have some degree of control over their own behavior, (ii) whose actions in the world affect other entities’(and sometimes their own), and (iii) whose actions are the object of evaluation (e.g. in terms of their responsibility for a given outcome)’ (Duranti, 2004, p. 453). In other words, sociological agency concerns some intentionality, causality, and responsibility. But, Van Leeuwen (2013) suggests, sociological agency does not always coincide with grammatical agency. Thus, this approach is very fruitful for the study of representation of groups precisely because Van Leeuwen’s (2013) ‘primary focus is on sociological categories (‘nomination’, ‘agency’, etc.) rather than on linguistic categories (‘nominalisation’, ‘passive agent deletion’, etc.) and [...] the system network, the ‘array of choices’ [he] shall present [...] will find its unity in the concept of ‘social actor’, rather than in a linguistic concept’ (p. 34).

Finally, even though the literature on the topic is rich, to my knowledge, a recent comparative research on the Italian and US scenario is still missing. This paper is a work of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) that explores the discursive strategies employed in the public discourse around

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RASIM (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants) in the US and Italian contexts, and more specifically in newspapers. This research studies a short but very recent period of time, from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019. Its aim is to explore possible similarities in the representation of RASIM in newspapers in the two national contexts. The current similar political situation would suggest that we will find common traits. However, the different national history of the two countries might also entail some dissimilarities. On the one hand, the U.S.A., founded by immigrants, and which, from its foundation, has always been a destination of migrants. On the other hand, Italy, for which immigration on this scale is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back to the 1970s (King, 1993).

Theoretical Background

Van Dijk identifies the focus of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as ‘the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance’ (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 249). Dominance and discourse are fundamentally intertwined: in human society, what is true or natural or legitimate is what the dominant group presents as such, perpetuating certain beliefs and ideologies. The Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci claims that dominance is not to be understood only as overt coercion or physical power (Ives, 2004, p. 6). On the contrary, using the term hegemony (Gramsci, 1992) Gramsci illustrates how power and political consent work through culture and the structuring of everyday life (Ives, 2004, p. 4).

Politics, for him, cannot be conceived exclusively in narrow terms of the state and government but must encompass the wide range of human activity often seen as non-political, such as our everyday beliefs and behavior, from the books we read

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and the films we enjoy to our religious feelings and perceptions of the world. (Ives, 2004, p. 3)

Therefore, Gramsci puts on the same level the social analysis of governments and the functioning of the state to that of newspapers, the entertainment industry, book publishers, schools, etc. in order to understand power relations and processes of legitimization (Ives, 2004, p.71). As an example, Western capitalistic society has come to legitimize the fact that some people are extremely wealthy, while some other extremely poor. Nowadays, the idea is generally accepted as a self-evident ‘state of affairs’. However, it is the product of an individualistic society which has built itself on the notion of individual initiative. The American dream1, glorified through literature and the film industry, praises the wealthy

as self-made individuals who succeeded in their pursuit of happiness. Therefore, Gramsci claims that we can better understand why people continue to legitimize and give their consent to ‘governments – and entire social and political systems – that continually work against their interests’ (Ives, 2004, p. 6) because supposedly trivial, cultural and everyday matters are actually of political significance.

Herman and Chomsky’s (2010) ‘Propaganda model’ describes the functioning of power in the media industry. They describe a complex system of legitimization of the ‘powerful societal interests that control and finance’ (Herman & Chomsky, 2010, p. xi) the industry. Thus, through the selection of editors, journalists, and experts who constitute the source of authority of the news, and through the definition of newsworthiness, the ‘power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers of the news […] also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies’ (Herman & Chomsky, 2010, p. xi).

1 The American Dream, as ratified by The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, is the idea that everybody has the opportunity and freedom to pursue happiness.

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When we say that discourse is intrinsically ideological, it means that it is always, with no exception, one way of talking about something, i.e. one possible interpretation (Hall, 1992, p. 93). When talking or writing, an infinite array of rhetorical, linguistic and grammatical choices are at our disposal: each and every one of these choices cooperates to create one version of reality. Thus, discourse does not convey, but ‘produces knowledge’ (Hall,1992, p. 93). Dominance is preserved by producing knowledge that molds the perceptions and social practices of individuals or groups of people (Hall, 1992, p. 93). Thus, social inequality is legitimized.

According to Van Dijk (1993), still one piece is missing in the description of the functioning of dominant discourse, ideologies and social practices: social cognition, i.e. ‘the necessary theoretical (and empirical) ‘interface’, if not the ‘missing link’, between discourse and dominance’ (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 251). By social cognition, Van Dijk (1993) means the cognitive processes and models that are at the basis of the individual’s understanding of texts (understood in the largest sense of the term). Discourse production and interpretation is possible only because of mental models, or mental representations, to which we are familiarized since birth. Thus,

‘mental models on the one hand embody the personal history, experiences and opinions of individual persons, but on the other hand also feature a specific instantiation of socially shared beliefs. Most interaction and discourse is thus produced and understood in terms of mental models that combine personal and social beliefs – in a way that both explains the uniqueness of all discourse production and understanding, and the similarity of our understanding of the same text’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 369).

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Manipulative discourses are aimed at changing mental models. As an example, Van Dijk (2006) explains that when governments want to change mental models on the topic of immigration, e.g. in order to gain consent to limit it, they will associate immigration and the topic of criminality in public discourses. Thus, they manipulate people to believe that immigration entails more delinquency (p.368). Consequently, they will affect ‘what people do and say in many situations over a relatively long period’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 369).

In conclusion, CDA explores the relationships between language, power and ideology, or, in other words, it attempts to lay bare what ideologies and social practices are constructed and re-constructed in public discourse, and how it occurs. Also, it attempts to link discourse structures to the formation of cognitive processes and social (mental) representations. (Van Dijk, 1993). Its major goal is the understanding of social issues; it has to do with macro structures, i.e. power, dominance, social inequality, ideologies, and therefore, it must adapt its methods and approaches to this purpose. For this reason, Wodak (Fairclough, 2013) proposes CDA to be a program rather than a theory of discourse analysis (p. 186), which has to bend its methodologies and remain flexible in order to maintain a strict relation to reality, nevertheless remaining transparent and objective. Van Dijk (1993) expresses this same conception of CDA, insisting that when complex social problems are the focus of study, the boundary lines between theory, interpretation and application must be less fixed (p. 252). Therefore, Van Leeuwen’s (2013) socio-semantic categorization of social actors2, which this paper relies on, gives

priority to the definition of sociological categories, e.g. ‘nomination’, ‘agency’, before analyzing their linguistic realizations, e.g. ‘nominalisation’, ‘passive agent deletion’ (p.32). Van Leeuwen (2013) explains this choice by claiming that ‘meaning belongs to culture rather than to language and cannot be tied up to any specific semiotic’ (p. 33). As an example, sociological agency can be realized when 2 Van Leeuwen’s socio-semantic inventory will be described in depth in the next chapter

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grammatical agency is missing. In the sentence ‘the authorities manage the arrival and registration of migrants’, the ‘migrants’ are grammatically passive. On the other hand, sociologically they are both passive (being subject to the activity of managing by the authorities) and active (with respect to the actions of arriving and registering). Therefore, it is fundamental that CDA gives priority to meaning over theory and method.

RASIM in Previous Literature

Studies about RASIM are not new to Linguistics: a number have already been carried out in different geographical contexts, some focusing on single national discourses, other encompassing larger areas, looking for common patterns in the western world.

Thus, among the many, Wodak & Matouschek (1993), Reisigl and Wodak (2005), Wodak (2008), Krzyżanowski & Wodak (2009) wrote on the Austrian context, Teo (2000) on the Australian context, Van Dijk (1984) on the Dutch context, Van Dijk (1987) on the US context and Van Dijk (1991) on the British context. Moreover, Van Dijk (2000) carried out a study concerning the broader context of western Europe and North America in general. On the British context, also KhosraviNik, Krzyzanowsky & Wodak (2012) and, as part of a larger project (the RASIM project at Lancaster University), Gabrielatos & Baker (2008), Baker, Gabrielatos, Khosravinik, Krzyzanowski, McEnery, & Wodak (2008), KhosraviNik (2008, 2009, 2010a 2010b).

These major works delineate some recurrent processes in the construction of RASIM in public discourse. More specifically, a new racism emerges in opposition to the old racism. Old racism, i.e.

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racism before 1945 (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993), was ‘overt and often violent’ (Teo, 2000, p. 7). Wodak and Matouschek (1993) claim that a neo-racist discourse became necessary after Second World War, when overtly manifesting antisemitic prejudices was declared illegal (p.231). Their work examines the neo-racist discourse that developed in Austria in the period after the end of communist Eastern Europe. Its collapse entailed mass migrations towards Austria, and consequently, a rise in anti-immigrant stances. According to the authors, neo-racist discourse is defined by its claims about lack of prejudice (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993). Therefore, new racism is characterized by a denial of racism. Typically, it aligns with egalitarian beliefs, thus explicitly supporting equal rights for everybody. However, distrust towards ethnic minorities is justified by the prejudiced belief that ethnic minorities are themselves responsible for their own social circumstances. As an example, they are often accused of being lazy (Teo, 2000, p. 8). This reasoning has originated a racism that is much more insidious than the old one, because it conceals itself behind a facade of egalitarianism.

Wodak and Matouschek (1993) claim that cultural difference, deviance and perceived threat are the major elements at the basis of any racist discourse, regardless of the out-group to which it is addressed (p. 233). They show that anti-foreigner prejudices, in Austria in the period under analysis, were independent from the specificity of the addressed out-group. Within the Austrian neo-racist discourse, foreigners, regardless of provenance, ethnicity or background, are construed as (a) a threat for the in-group’s socio-economic interests, (b) culturally and mentally different, (c) involved in criminal or somehow deviant behavior (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 234). The authors show that after the collapse of communist Eastern Europe, the Austrian indigenous population shows an increased fear to be ‘overrun by foreigners’ (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 230). However, the native population’s perception of being invaded is not justified by demographic trends, which report comparable

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percentages of foreigners living in Austria in 1991 and in the 1970s (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 230). From the results of this study, Wodak and Matouschek (1993) conclude that talk about and opinions on ethnic groups ‘are condensed to form a schema of basic attitudes. Individuals utilize this or similar schemata to filter and store information about any given out-group’ (p. 233).

At the heart of these attitudes is the construction of a ‘we’ and a ‘them’ discourse. Argumentation strategies that are typical of this discourse are strategies of justification. The speakers present themselves as being without prejudices: their claims are presented as legitimate concerns based on the fundamental cultural difference that divides themselves from the foreigners, who, by mindset, would be inclined to be criminals, or at least to be lazy. The speakers legitimize their prejudices on the basis that they are protecting the in-group culture, and claim to be victims of ‘‘reverse’ prejudice’ (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 239). The ‘victim-victimizer reversal’ (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 239) consists in the accusation by the victimizers of being themselves the first to be the victim of prejudices, since they would be attacked and labeled as racists when they legitimately advocate for the in-group. In practice, ‘the person who accuses the other as racist is in turn accused of inverted racism against whites, as oversensitive and exaggerating’ (Van Dijk, 1992, p. 90).

This discourse is only possible because of strategies of group definition. These strategies shift individual responsibility onto the group as a whole. The construction of a ‘we’ discourse allows the single individual not to feel directly responsible for commonly shared social practices and attitudes, because of the consensual belief that ‘what many people believe cannot be wrong’ (Wodak & Matouschek, 1993, p. 239). The definition of a ‘we’ discourse is only possible in opposition to a ‘them’ discourse. Gramsci (Ives, 2004) claims that ‘‘othering’ people – that is making generalizations that serve to emphasize differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’’ (p. 7) – helps building commonality or

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camaraderie between the in-group, therefore strengthening its cohesion (p. 7). Moreover, strategies of denial of racism and reversal rely on the old definition of racism (before 1945). Through these strategies, the speakers disassociate themselves from the old racism; they object to the accusations of racism on the basis that they are not accusing anyone of being biologically inferior, like an ‘old racist’ would have done (Van Dijk, 1992). Instead, modern or new racism relies on the assumption that ethnic groups are culturally different, and therefore racist practices can be passed off as ‘legitimate cultural defense’ (Van Dijk, 1992, p. 93).

The positive self-representation of the in-group is reinforced by rhetorical means that mitigate racist claims. In practice, they are realized through disclaimers, e.g. ‘I have nothing against immigrants, but..’, euphemisms, reversal (see above Wodak & Matouschek, 1993), blaming the victim, etc. (Van Dijk, 1992, p. 87). These strategies are found both at the individual and at the social level, or, in other words, they are used both by the single person in everyday conversations in order to reject accusations of racism, and in public discourse promoted by media, politicians, academics (Van Dijk, 1992, p. 89).

According to Van Dijk (1992), racial stereotypes are constructed and re-constructed within the dominant white community in western societies through everyday talk and institutional texts in order to legitimate or conceal prejudiced attitudes (p. 87). The key feature of this racism is that it is mainly

discursive (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 34). The overt segregation of the old racism has been replaced by what

seems to be ‘mere talk’ (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 34). As a result, its dangers and its consequences are obfuscated. But, even though they act on the cognitive, ideological level, they are nonetheless very concrete.

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Van Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic Categorisation of Social Actors

Van Leeuwen (2013) develops a semantic categorization of social actors, i.e. ‘a socio-semantic inventory of the ways social actors can be represented’ (p. 32). In practice, the application of his inventory allows for the analysis of social actors in order to individuate recurrent patterns in their discursive representation, e.g. whether they are represented as individuals or homogeneous groups, or whether they are referred to as persons or as objects (e.g. by methonimical reference), etc.

To begin with, the reference to them can be generic, i.e. not addressed to any individual or group in particular, but to all of the people that fall within a given class/category (e.g. RASIM). This is called Genericisation by Van Leeuwen. Specification is the exact opposite, i.e. the specific reference to an individual or a group of individuals. Thus, genericisation and specification strategies are discursive means to construct participants through the specific or generic reference to them, i.e. as recognizable individuals or as classes (Van Leeuwen, 2013). As an example, in the following title of an article about

RASIM: ‘Court Backlog May Prove Bigger

Barrier for Migrants Than Any Wall’, the term ‘migrants’ is generalized, in that it refers to all of the people who fall under the category of migrants. Instead, in the title: ‘More Than 2,000 Migrants Were Targeted in Raids. 35 Were Arrested’, the ‘2,000 migrants’ and the ‘35’ are specified because there is a specific reference to those individuals who are targeted in raids and arrested. Among specification strategies, however, there is a fundamental distinction between individualisation and assimilation, which represent social actors as either individuals or groups (Van Leeuwen, 2013). Assimilation can be realized as collectivization, i.e. through the use of collective names (e.g. the refugees), or aggregation, i.e. through the use of definite or indefinite quantifiers and statistics (e.g. 49 people) (Van Leeuwen, 2013). On the other hand, individualisation is the reference to an individual, who can be called by name

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(nominalisation), or not, but who is still referred to as a single person (e.g. a woman, a Libian man, the interviewer).

Likely, personalisation is the reference to a social actor as a human being, while impersonalisation is its reference in terms of an object, place, or abstract concept, e.g. Lybia to refer to Libyan people, the ‘problem’ to refer to migrants. Thus, personalisation and impersonalisation strategies contribute to the creation of a biased version of reality, when a choice is made between the representation of participants either as human beings or not (Van Leeuwen, 2013). Within the larger definition of impersonalisation, there are the categories of abstraction and objectivation (Van Leeuwen, 2013). Abstraction occurs when social actors are referred to through the use of an abstract term, by means of which a quality is attached to them, e.g. being problematic. Some examples are ‘the human cargo, the burden, the problem, the issue’. Through objectivation, instead, social actors are represented through metonymical reference, e.g. to the place they typically occupy (e.g. Malta to refer to the Maltese people) or the instrument used (e.g. the gun shot a bullet) (Van Leeuwen, 2013). An interesting type of objectivation is utterance autonomisation, through which the producer of the utterance is backgrounded, and the utterance itself is given agency, e.g. the report says (Van Leeuwen, 2013, p. 60). Objectivisation in general is employed to background responsibility and agency, or to mitigate the effect of a sentence. For example, in the sentence ‘the ship cries for help’ where ship means the migrants on the ship, objectivation mitigates the emotional burden of the sentence. However, when it comes to utterance autonomisation, it also attaches ‘impersonal authority to the utterances’ (Van Leeuwen, 2013, p. 60), and therefore rebutting becomes hard.

In the narrative of an event, most frequently one or the other participant is excluded, or at least backgrounded. Inclusion, exclusion and backgrounding are also socio-semantic categories included in

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Van Leeuwen’s (2013) inventory. Exclusion can be realized through suppression, i.e. the social actor(s) is/are not referred to anywhere in the text, or backgrounding, i.e. the social actor(s) is/are not referred to in relation to the relevant activity, but they are mentioned elsewhere in the text. Moreover, the analyst needs to look at what role participants are assigned, whether that of agent or of patient of an action (role allocation) (Van Leeuwen, 2013). A significant outcome of these processes of suppression and backgrounding is the backgrounding of agency, and therefore the concealment of responsibility (Van Leeuwen, 2013). Agent deletion is the clearest example; in the passive sentence ‘the lion was killed’, the social actor who is responsible for the killing is deleted. They can be inferred by the context, if the responsible social actor is named somewhere else in the text (backgrounding), or they can be impossible to identify, if they are not referred to anywhere in the narrative. In the latter circumstance, it is not given to the reader to allocate responsibilities (Van Leeuwen, 2013).

Finally, categorization is another major category that is recurrent in the representation of groups. It consists in representing an individual through some characteristics they share with a social group (Van Leeuwen, 2013). A very concrete example can be found in the study by Teo (2000). The author focuses on the representation of a Vietnamese gang, the 5T, in two Australian, Sidney-based newspapers in order to engage with the broader issue of how this representation by the media contributes to the construction of the Vietnamese population as a criminally inclined out-group. Cultural difference and deviant behavior that implies involvement in criminal activities are two of the justifications upon which the new racist discourse relies, as individuated by Wodak and Matouschek (1993, p. 233, see above). Teo (2000) examines generalization strategies that associate ‘Vietnamese’ and ‘Asian’ with criminal events. Typical of stereotyping is the tendency to generalize by organizing experience into categories, which simplify and alter reality, e.g. by categorizing all Vietnamese as drug-dealers. The frequency with which this juxtaposition occurs shapes the perception of these ethnic minorities by the readership.

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Consequently, ‘Vietnamese’, ‘Asian’ and ‘drug-dealers’ become interchangeable terms. Therefore, in the collective perception construed by the media, the Vietnamese lose individuality (in terms of different backgrounds, levels of education, jobs, skills, immigration status, etc.) in order to fit into categories (Teo, 2000, p. 16). Thus, Categorization works by singling out a trait that the social actors share with a social group (ethnic identity) and by making it their main identifier.

Furthermore, Teo (2000) notices how ‘categorizing someone into a particular social schema also tends to colour the perception of the meaning of what the person does’. (p. 17) In other words, the same action can be interpreted differently, for example as either aggressive or assertive, according to the individual who performs it and the existing stereotypes on them. If a female boss is straightforward with her employees, she is more likely to be called aggressive than a male boss, who is more easily called assertive. Mental representations unconsciously shape the interpretation of the facts. As an additional example, if a woman is talked to in a sexual or inappropriate way, it is called sexual harassment. But if it is a man who is harassed, there is often a tendency to understate the fact, or to call it differently.

A major difference in how we categorize a social group is whether we present categorizations as objective or as evaluative. In the circumstance in which a categorization is presented as simply factual, the construction of the social group comes across as ‘less questionable and more naturalized’ (Teo, 2000, p. 17). The results of this study show how a neo-racist discourse is carried on in the reports about the gang 5T because a dychotomization is constructed that represents on the one side the police as ‘white’ and on the other side, the criminal as ‘ethnic’ (Teo, 2000, p. 40). Therefore, ‘Asiatic’, ‘Vietnamese’, or simply ‘migrants’ are covertly constructed as being the same as criminal, ‘reinforcing the social schemata in which we have categorized’ them (Teo, 2000, p. 17).

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Therefore, in Teo’s (2000) analysis categorization, and more specifically a subcategory of it, i.e. classification (Van Leeuwen, 2013), constructs the social actors as ‘Asiatic’, or ‘Vietnamese’. Simultaneously, differentiation (Van Leeuwen, 2013) explicitly creates a categorization of ‘self’, ‘us’ vs. some ‘other’, ‘them’, based on ethnicity. Finally, another subcategory of categorization, i.e. functionalization (Van Leeuwen, 2013), represents the social actors by naming them according to the activity they do or function they have in society, as opposed to identification, which occurs when social actors are identified by what they are, and not for what they do. Some examples of functionalization are ‘the showman’, ‘the asylum seeker’.

Teo (2000) investigates the causes which are the engine of these processes of categorization. First, he identifies a cognitive cause, which is the disposition of the human mind to organize experience into categories (stereotyping) in order to make sense of it. Second, an inclination to blame the ‘Other’ for being responsible for their own social disadvantages because of cultural differences, e.g. ‘ethnic minorities don’t want to work’. They are blamed because they do not (supposedly) want to adapt to ‘our’, white culture, and any culturally different behavior is perceived as a direct threat to the in-group culture (p.40) (see also Van Dijk, 1992). Third, he pinpoints that media owners and journalists in Australia are predominantly white, which entails the regular exclusion of non-white people from newspapers. Therefore, non-white people rarely get a voice, and when they do, it is usually because they are the story, and not because their opinion is considered worthy and authoritative enough to be heard (Teo, 2000).

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Halliday’s Transitivity System

In order to carry out an exhaustive analysis of social actors and the functions they are assigned, it is crucial to look also at the actions in which the participants are involved. As an example, important questions concern to which actions this or that group of social actors is assigned agency. It is therefore relevant to examine which social actors are allowed to express emotions, thoughts, opinions. This examination is accomplished adopting the transitivity system developed by Halliday (Halliday et al., 2014).

The transitivity system proposes that reality is constituted by processes, or goings-on (happening, being, feeling, doing, etc) (Halliday, 2014). Halliday (2014) calls transitivity the grammatical system that realizes all these goings-on and constructs experience in an ordered set of process types. Three basic process types are identified, i.e. mental, material and relational, and three minor process types, behavioral, verbal and existential. He claims that a process consists of the process itself, the participants who take part in it and the circumstances related to it. Each kind of process (and therefore, each kind of clause) attaches to the participants different functions. A material clause concerns an action which takes place in the physical world, e.g. building, running, flying. The main participants involved in this type of clause are constructed as an Actor, i.e. the one doing the deeds, and as a Goal, i.e. the one at which the process is addressed (Halliday et al., 2014, p. 109). Secondly, a mental process is about feeling, perceiving or thinking, and it takes place in the inner world of the individual, e.g. ‘seeing’, ‘wanting’, ‘reckoning’. It involves a Senser, the participant who feels, perceives or thinks, etc., and who is therefore conscious, and a Phenomenon, which is what is sensed, i.e. felt, perceived, thought (Halliday et al., 2014, p. 117). The third major type of process is relational. It organizes experience by putting in relation two entities. Depending on the type of relation established, the participants can be constructed as Carrier and Attribute, e.g. in ‘Giulia is young’, or as Identified and

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Identifier, where the identifier assigns an identity to the other participant (Halliday et al., 2014, p. 122), e.g. in ‘dogs are man’s best friends’.

Obviously, the potential number of participants involved is larger. But the major aspect of this system that must be stressed here is that processes always establish a certain kind of relationship between the participants. Consequently, some participants will be represented as doing actions, while some others as having actions done to them (Goal in a material clause, Phenomenon in a mental clause), addressed to them (Recipient in material clauses, Receiver in verbal clauses) or performed for them (Client in a material clause) (Halliday et al., 2014).

As a consequence, depending on the role a clause attributes to a participant, that participant will be given or not given certain qualities. A Senser is by definition a conscious being. Therefore, whatever participant is assigned this role by the grammar is also assigned consciousness. Halliday (Halliday et al., 2014) explains this concept through the following example: ‘The empty house was longing for the children to return’ (p.114). Here the house is constructed as a conscious being by the grammatical environment in which it is situated (Halliday et al., 2014, p. 114). However, the same combination, i.e. a mental process which assigns the role of Senser to an object, can have radically different effects. As an example, the following sentence: ‘the ship needs help’ mitigates the action of needing by backgrounding the humanity of the participants (the occupants of the ship) through objectivisation (Van Leeuwen, 2013). Thus, how we use the processes to link the participants together can generate very different versions of reality. Specifically, in the representation of RASIM, migrants might be frequently associated to an Identifier or an Attribute and consequently, that association might be constructed as natural or obvious in the public representation. Also, they might be assigned the role of Phenomenon in clauses in which another participant, potentially a constructed in-group (‘us’) perceives, thinks, evaluates them, e.g. ‘the local population distrusts the immigrants’.

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Media Discourses

This prompts the question as to who produces the text that nurtures public discourses around RASIM. Van Dijk (2000) highlights that media discourse (in the western world) is predominantly controlled by a white elite. Moreover, the sources of authority or expertise are usually white academics or politicians. The majority of the white readership have no or little direct experience with ethnic minorities, and as a result, their knowledge about other ethnic groups is entirely shaped by the discourses around minorities which we find in the media (Van Dijk, 2000). Few alternative sources of information are at the disposal of the readership. That is a consequence of the lack of influence that minority groups normally have in the public discourses. Access to the media is selective, and, therefore, they are rarely able to promote alternative reports of the events (Van Dijk, 2000).

Van Dijk (2000) also notices that the discourses around ethnic minorities directly engage with the white readerships in the construction of a positive self-representation, which typically goes together with a negative other-representation. A major strategy of manipulation, which reinforces the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ dichotomization, consists in the emphasis of the group’s good deeds, while omitting the in-group’s bad deeds. At the same time, the out-in-group’s bad deeds are foregrounded, while their good deeds are minimized, if not completely suppressed (Van Dijk, 2006). Also quotation patterns, layout, place on the page, letter form, etc. influence the processes of positive self-representation and negative other-representation (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 39). As an example, the frequent association of topics through their positioning on the page is significant. Also, and most importantly, quotations cooperate with the process of negative other-representation. ‘Even in ethnic news, minorities are quoted less, and less prominently than (white) elites’ (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 39). Thus, authority in the news is a prerogative of the dominant group: ‘Minority representatives will seldom be allowed to speak alone: a white person is

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necessary to confirm and convey his or her opinion, possibly against that of the minority spokesperson’ (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 39).

The RASIM Project

An earlier work on racism by Van Dijk (1987) is one of the influences of the RASIM project, ‘Discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996-2006’, carried out at the department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University. The project focused on the discursive representation of RASIM during a ten-year period, from 1996 to 2006, both synchronically and diachronically. The aim was broad, so that research was carried out comparing newspapers of disparate distribution rates (national vs. regional) and various contents (tabloids vs. broadsheets), or newspapers with different political bias. Moreover, the different groups of researchers adopted distinct methodologies: some employed traditional qualitative CDA methods, while others made use of corpus linguistics, carrying out a quantitative analysis.

KhosraviNik (2009) is part of this project. Focusing his research on two periods, namely the Balkan conflict (1999) and the British general election (2005), the study (KhosraviNik, 2009) comes to two major conclusions. First, newspapers with different political bias use distinct strategies in the representation of RASIM. However, altogether the newspapers contribute to an essentially similar construction of them in many significant ways (KhosraviNik, 2009, p. 477). Second, as already mentioned above in the context of other studies, the present-day racist discourse relies on arguments of alleged cultural differences, instead of racial/biological ones (KhosraviNik, 2009, p. 477).

Moreover, KhosraviNik (2009) explores the correlations between macro structures, i.e. ideologies, stereotypes, etc., and micro structures, i.e. at the level of language, such as metaphors of quantity and

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natural disasters. The latter are often employed to convey dramaticity and urgency using numbers and statistics. However, KhosraviNik (2009) detects that the same micro structures can be employed to convey negative as well as positive representations, or, in other words, the link between macro structures – conveying negativity or positivity – and their linguistic realization (micro structures) ‘does not constitute a one-to-one correlation’ (p. 494). For example, the metaphor of a natural catastrophe is often used to negatively construct RASIM as a threat for the in-group. However, the same metaphor of natural disaster can also convey the urgency of the refugees’ situation and a supportive involvement in their drama.

Finally, KhosraviNik (2009) pinpoints some factors that determine a tendency towards either positive or negative representation. These are (a) the closeness of the out-groups to the UK, and (b) the out-group’s centrality in political debates about immigration (KhosraviNik, 2009, p. 493). In the latter case, the out-group is frequently backgrounded as an issue of political debate.

KhosraviNik (2010) reports on another study on three UK newspapers with their Sunday editions. Overall, the results reconfirm the findings of the previous work. Significantly, they show that all of the newspapers, regardless of their political standpoint, contribute to the reproduction of one, similar construction of RASIM. KhosraviNik (2010) chooses to adopt Van Leeuwen’s (2013) socio-semantic categorization (see above), and shows that aggregation, collectivisation and functionalisation are the most frequent categories employed in the examined UK newspapers in 2009. Therefore, RASIM are depicted as a group, as numbers or statistics and according to the role they play in society, i.e. most often as migrants. KhosraviNik’s (2010) also borrows Wodak’s (2001) argumentative strategies, i.e. the selection of topoi that associate RASIM with some recurrent themes in racist discourse (Numbers, Threat, Danger, Burden). The study shows that RASIM are mostly depicted as a homogeneous group

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associated with the topoi of Numbers and Threat. Foregrounding and personalization strategies (Van Leeuwen, 2013) are also found, but patterns are different in conservative and liberal newspapers. Thus, in conservative newspapers, RASIM are personalized only when they can be associated with a negative topos such as violence. Instead, in liberal newspapers, personalization strategies often occur together with victimisation. This latter occurs in association with topoi of Justice and Humanitarianism (Wodak, 2001), and it foregrounds the plight of the people through the use of individualisation and personalization strategies (Van Leeuwen, 2013). However, victimisation also constructs RASIM as an out-group, therefore reinforcing the categorization of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. Moreover, when RASIM are the focus of political debates and rivalry, also the liberal newspapers reduce them to an issue, through the same discursive strategies employed by the conservative newspapers. Thus, liberal as well as conservative newspapers ignore ethical considerations about the treatment of the issue and focus on how they can use it in order to win the political debate.

Significance and Research Question

Critical Discourse Analysis sets itself the goal of addressing pressing social issues. Discourses around immigration both in Italy and in the USA are at the heart of national and international political debates. In Italy, in the period between 1 June 2018 and 5 September 2019, during which the leader of the League Matteo Salvini served as deputy Prime minister, the immigration policies have become increasingly rigid. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, claimed that from the beginning of 2018, at least 1,500 migrants died in the Mediterranean Route, while trying to reach Europe. In the summer 2018, the death toll rose to 850 dead people in the period of June and July alone (Masto, 2018). In the USA,

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Donald Trump has hardened the policies to enter the country, and the migrants’ conditions on both sides of the border are cause for debate. As a matter of fact, thousands of people are living in temporary shelters and politicians are not able to give a prompt answer to the problems that arise, and detention camps are accused of severe mistreatment.

These recent events prompt a comparison of the Italian and the US contexts, which might contribute to the already solid literature on the public representation of RASIM. The aim of this paper is (a) to analyze the two national contexts separately, while comparing same-nationality newspapers, and (b) to compare the use of discursive strategies in Italy and in the USA.

To sum up, this research tries to answer the following question:

How have RASIM been represented in the US newspapers The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Il

Corriere della Sera in the light of the latest events that have concerned RASIM in

these national contexts, more specifically between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019?

To my knowledge, a recent comparison of these national contexts has not been carried out as yet. Moreover, the tone of the debate has changed in the past years, and even in the latest months the urgency and fragility of certain political situations have heightened the dialogue. Therefore, a contemporary investigation might lead to new outcomes.

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Methodology

Criteria for the Selection of Newspapers

The analysis is carried out on articles from four newspapers, two Italian ones - La Repubblica and

Il Corriere della Sera – and two from the U.S.A. - The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The first criterion for the selection of the newspapers is the newspaper’s distribution rate. First of all, newspapers with a large readership were selected. In Italy, two newspapers with comparable sales figures were chosen – La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera. In November 2018, the average weekday circulation rates of La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera were respectively 187,000 and 232,000 thousand copies (Coppola, 2019). In the USA, the circulation rate of The New York Times was 487 thousand copies in 2018 (Watson, 2019), while that of The Wall Street Journal was 2.64 million copies (Watson, 2018). However, only one year before these data collection, The New York Times was second in the list of the most popular newspapers in the USA, even outdoing The Wall Street Journal’s sales figures (Misachi, 2017). The drop in sales of The New York Times has been sharp. Still, it remains one of the most respected US newspapers, ranked fourth in the list of the most important US newspapers by circulation in 2019 (Top 15 U.S. Newspapers by Circulation, 2019). As a matter of fact, the estimation of its average weekday circulation from 2008 to 2018 is 1.06 million copies (Watson, 2019).

The second criterion for the selection of the newspapers was the political stance. The aim was to select comparable newspapers from the two national contexts. Therefore, although the newspapers have recognizable political leanings, also research on the placement on the political spectrum was considered. All of the four newspapers fall within the category of ‘the least biased’3, i.e. strongly biased

3 According to the Interactive Media Bias Chart 5.0 by Otero (n.d.) for the US context and Albertazzi et al. (2009) and Fillieule & Jiménez (2003) for the Italian context

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newspapers were not considered. Within this spectrum, one liberal and one conservative newspaper per country were chosen.

In the US context, The New York Times was chosen as the representative of more liberal views, while The Wall Street Journal as the more conservative one. The New York Times has often been accused of having a liberal bent and indeed, from the analysis of different sources it is possible to place it as a liberal newspaper. Thus, according to the Interactive Media Bias Chart 5.0 (Otero, n.d.), it falls at the center of the political spectrum, in the category of ‘neutral or balanced bias’ (Otero, n.d.), but still very close to the neighboring category, i.e. ‘Skews Left’ (Otero, n.d.). Matsa et al. (2014) analyze the political bent of the readerships of newspapers in order to rate them. Using a scale from -10 (i.e. consistently liberal) to +10 (i.e. consistently conservative), The New York Times is given a value between -4 and -5. Its audience is therefore mostly liberal. Finally, according to the research by Groseclose and Milyo (2005), it is decidedly liberal.

The Wall Street Journal also falls in the category of ‘neutral or balanced bias’ (Otero, n.d.),

according to the Interactive Media Bias Chart 5.0 (Otero, n.d.), but with a slight bent towards the category ‘Skews Right’ (Otero, n.d.). However, this bent towards the right is less significant than the bent towards the left of the NY Times. Moreover, in the report by Matsa et. Al (2014) on the political bent of newspapers’ readership, The Wall Street Journal is given a value between 0 and -1. Thus, the results show that its audience has a slightly liberal bent. Groseclose and Milyo (2005) also put the

Journal on the liberal side of the political spectrum. However, they specify that their research ‘refers

only to the news of the Wall Street Journal; [they] omitted all data that came from its editorial page. If [they] included data from the editorial page, surely it would appear more conservative’ (Groseclose & Milyo, 2005, p. 1212). These data reflect the fact that The Wall Street Journal runs the editorial pages

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and columns separately from the news pages. Therefore, while editorials and columns have a clear political bias towards conservatism, the news reporters claim to work with impartiality (Wikipedia contributors, ‘The Wall Street Journal’, 2019). However, the editorials and columns have a strong influence in the conservative circles, by providing conservative commentaries on the news (Wikipedia contributors, ‘The Wall Street Journal’, 2019).

In Italy, La Repubblica has a bent toward the left while Il Corriere della Sera is moderately conservative. La Repubblica was born as an openly leftist newspaper, at the moment of its foundation in 1976 (Marotta, 2017). However, nowadays it has a more moderate orientation towards the centre-left of the political spectrum (Fillieule & Jiménez, 2003). Il Corriere della Sera has a past of conservatism instead. In the 50s, it was explicitly conservative, pro-NATO and anti-communist (Wikipedia contributors, ‘Il Corriere della Sera’, 2019). Nowadays, it is regarded as a moderate broadsheet oriented towards the center of the political spectrum, with a slight conservative bent (Albertazzi et al., 2009, p. 163).

To sum up, the analysis will include one ‘liberal’ and one ‘conservative’ newspaper per country, all of them moderately biased. The two Italian broadsheets have also the higher distribution rates in Italy:

Il Corriere della Sera is ranked first and La Repubblica is ranked second. The US newspapers are

among the top four newspapers per importance in the U.S.A. (Top 15 U.S. Newspapers by Circulation, 2019).

Criteria for the Selection of Articles

The following step was the selection of articles. The initial period of time to be taken into account is January 2017 (beginning of the presidential term of Donald Trump) to June 2019 (Italian security

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decree bis). The selection was then carried out following the methodology employed by KhosraviNik (2010). He chooses to link the analysis to the socio-political context, as Critical Discourse Analysis intends to do. Thus, KhosraviNik (2010) opts for a non-random data selection and takes under analysis five periods or spikes in which RASIM have been outstandingly central in the public debate. Likewise, this paper relates the analysis to two socio-political events. First, the episodes connected to the public debate around the NGO rescue ships in the Mediterranean Sea – Sea Watch and Sea Eye. These ships rescue migrants who are trying to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, and they are at the heart of a political debate, which has resulted in impeding the landing of migrants for weeks. Second, the events related to the Central American migrant caravans, also known as Viacrucis Migrante. Thousands of migrants from Central America walk through Mexico to reach the border with the USA and are left waiting in temporary shelters, while the political debate worsens.

Furthermore, the investigation was limited to only one type of articles – news stories – in order to make the comparison feasible. A 10-day sample per event was selected and finally, 3 news stories per newspaper were analyzed, for a total of 12. The choice to examine a limited number of articles is due to the fact that this work aspires to be a contribution to the qualitative strand of studies on RASIM. Therefore, a close reading of a circumscribed sample was more appropriate.

Categories Employed for the Analysis: Van Leeuwen and Halliday

The focus is on the representation of social actors. As a method of analysis, this paper employed the same socio-semantic inventory which KhosraviNik (2010) chose to adopt, i.e. Van Leeuwen’s (2013) socio-semantic categorization (see above). Moreover, data were further analyzed with the support of Halliday’s (1994, 2014) transitivity system.

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In practice, the analysis was carried out starting with the exploration of the data concerning the representational choices made in the depiction of RASIM through the application of Van Leeuwen’s (2013) categories. Role allocation (i.e. allocation of agency) was given more space as compared to the other socio-semantic categories. Indeed, it was examined separately. Then, the data on the participant roles (i.e. Actor, Senser, Sayer, Goal, etc.) assumed by the relevant social actors were scrutinized. Eventually, the data were intersected – combining the methods by Van Leeuwen (2013) and Halliday (2014) – in order to show in which processes the social actors are involved when they are given agency, in which kind of clause and consequently, which function they assume. As an example, when a participant is given agency in a verbal clause, this entails that they are allowed to express an opinion. When they are given agency in a mental clause, they are endowed with consciousness. In the case of RASIM, this means that their humanity is foregrounded. As a matter of fact,

‘mental process clauses have this property, that only something that is being credited with consciousness can function in them as the one who feels, thinks or perceives, one only has to put something into that role in order to turn it into a conscious being [...] There is no trace of this pattern in material process clauses. In a material process no participant is required to be human, and the distinction between conscious and non-conscious beings simply plays no part’ (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1994, p.114).

However, it is not straightforward that in the grammatical environment of a mental clause (i.e. in the role of Senser), RASIM’s humanity is foregrounded. It also depends on the terms used to refer to

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them. If RASIM are objectivized (Van Leeuwen, 2013; see above), even when in the role of Senser their humanity is backgrounded.

Discussion of the Results

La Repubblica

The data collected from La Repubblica, through the analysis of three news stories, have been organized so as to examine on the one hand, the choices made in the representation of RASIM following Van Leeuwen’s (2013) sociosemantic inventory, and on the other hand, the participant roles that RASIM are given according to Halliday’s (2014) functional grammar.

First of all, the three articles under analysis were the following:

- Article 1: Migranti, il grido d'aiuto dalle due navi umanitarie tedesche: "Abbiamo bisogno di un

porto subito" (2018, December 30)

- Article 2: Migranti, la Ue: "Sette stati pronti ad accogliere, c'è anche l'Italia". Ma Salvini continua a

dire di no (2019, January 7)

- Article 3: Migranti, l'Unhcr: "Dare subito un porto sicuro ai 49 salvati da ong" (2018, December 31)

Secondly, the data were organized in two tables and four figures. Table 1, Fig. 1, Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 depict the data collected following Van Leeuwen’s methodology:

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- Fig. 2 groups the categories from Fig.1 into larger ones that construct RASIM in a similar way (Categorization: Functionalisation, Classification, Relational and Physical Identification;

Genericisation and Assimilation (i.e. Aggregation and Collectivisation);

Individualisation and Nomination;

Impersonalisation (i.e. Abstraction and Objectivation) and Backgrounding)

- Fig. 3 shows data concerning role allocation, i.e. the allocation of agency

Table 2 and Fig.4 show the participant roles of RASIM according to Halliday’s functional grammar.

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 TOT newspaper

Activation 4 2 2 8 Passivation tot 22 15 12 49 Pass.- Subjection 17 10 10 37 Pass.- Beneficialisation 5 5 2 12 Functionalisation 5 13 7 25 Classification 6 2 0 8 Relational Identification 0 3 0 3 Physical Identification 0 0 0 0 Nomination 0 0 0 0 Genericisation 2 1 4 7 Individualisation 0 0 0 0 Collectivisation 10 10 7 27 Aggregation 14 8 4 26 Objectivation 7 0 0 7 Abstraction 3 5 1 9 Backgrounding 4 2 0 6

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Func t. Clas s. Rel. Id. Ph. I d. Nom . Gen eric. Indiv id. Colle ct. Aggr . Obje ct. Abst r. Back gr. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 33,78 10,8 4 0 0 9,46 0 36,47 35 9,46 12,16 8,1

Fig.1 - The representation of RASIM according to Van Leeuwen's sociosemantic categories: La Repubblica

TOT references to RASIM: 74

Categ. Gen./Assim. Indiv./Nomin. Impers./Backgr.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 48,58 80,93 0 29,72

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To start with, it is maybe useful to specify that at every reference to RASIM, the analysis links more than one sociosemantic category. Therefore, while some categories are mutually exclusive, e.g. Collectivisation and Aggregation, some others can coexist, e.g. Functionalisation and Aggregation.

First, RASIM are mainly constructed as a homogeneous group and they are identified by the collective activity of migrating. As a matter of fact, Table 1 and the chart in Fig.1 show a preponderance of Aggregation and Collectivisation. Aggregation occurs in 35 per cent of the time that RASIM appear in the articles. Together with Collectivisation, which is at 36.47%, they account for 71.5%. As a result, RASIM are preponderantly represented as a group, and often treated as numbers or statistics. Moreover, the terms employed to refer to them are most frequently related to the activity of migration (Functionalisation), e.g. migrants, immigrants, asylum seekers, etc.

Second, Impersonalisation, by which RASIM are referred to as objects (Objectivisation) or abstract concepts (Abstraction), occurs 21.62 per cent of the time. Thus, with 9 occurrences out of a total of 74 references to migrants, Abstraction is the fourth most employed sociosemantic category. More specifically, RASIM are abstracted by being called: “due situazioni critiche” (i.e. two critical situations), “carico umano” (human cargo), “i più vulnerabili” (the most vulnerable people), “tutti e 298 i trasferimenti complessivi richiesti” (all of the 298 required transfers), “la questione” (the issue), etc. Overall, Abstraction associates RASIM to two main themes: first, that of being an issue or a crisis to solve, second, that of being transferable goods. Also when RASIM are backgrounded, the recurrent theme that represents them as a crisis to solve is reconfirmed, e.g. in the sentence “serve una soluzione quest’anno” (a resolution is needed this year): here, not only they are backgrounded, but they are also implicitly represented as a problem.

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On the other hand, there are very few references to RASIM as single individuals. There are some occurrences of Identification, namely Classification (for gender and age) and Relational Identification, for a total of 11. When it comes to Individualisation or Nomination, the occurrences are zero.

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 TOT newspaper

Actor 2 1 2 4 Goal 11 5 8 24 Senser 2 2 0 4 Phenomenon 3 0 0 3 Sayer 0 0 0 0 Verbiage 1 1 0 2 Beneficiary 1 2 0 3 Carrier 2 3 4 9 Attribute 0 4 0 4 Identified 1 1 0 2 Identifier 0 0 0 0 Existent 3 0 2 5 Circumstantial element 9 8 4 21

Table 2: Participant roles of RASIM according to Halliday’s functional grammar: La Repubblica 14,03

64,9

21,05

Fig.3 - Role allocation of RASIM: La Repubblica

Activation 14.03% Passiv.-subjection 64.9% Passiv.-beneficialisation 21.05%

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Moving on to the analysis of the participants’ roles, the data show that RASIM are predominantly given the role of Goal (29.27 per cent of the time), therefore occupying a passive position in a material clause. The actions which they are subjected to are mainly the following ones, with little variation: “to be rescued”, “to be debarked”, “to be redistributed”, “to be welcomed”, “to be put in danger”, “to be transported”, “to be protected”. RASIM are also passive actors in the role of Phenomenon in mental clauses, e.g. ‘i locali non vogliono queste persone (migranti)’, ‘local people do not want these (migrant) people’ (3 occurrences), Verbiage in verbal clauses, e.g. ‘hanno discusso la questione (migranti)’, ‘they debated the (migrant) issue’ (2 occurrences) and Beneficiary in material and verbal clauses, e.g. ‘autorizzare lo sbarco dei migranti’, ‘to allow the migrants to debark’ (3 occurrences). They are circumstantialized (i.e. they are not participants, but circumstantial elements in the clause) 25.61 per cent of time. Most frequently, these are circumstantial elements of Cause: Behalf (e.g. ‘for the migrants’), Accompaniment (e.g. ‘with their human cargo’) or Matter (e.g. ‘about the immigration

6,1 29,27 4,88 11 4,88 6,1 25,61

Fig.4 - Participant roles of RASIM according to Halliday's functional grammar: La Repubblica

Actor 6.1% Goal 29.27% Senser 4.88% Phenomenon 3.66% Sayer 0% Verbiage 2.44% Beneficiary 3.66% Carrier 11% Attribute 4.88% Identified 2.44% Identifier 0% Existent 6.1% Circumstantial element 25.61%

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policy’, ‘with regard to women, children and families’). Moreover, RASIM are given the role of Carrier in attributive intensive clauses or circumstantial attributive clauses. However, 99 per cent of the occurrences in the role of Carrier concern the location which RASIM are assigned to, i.e. being on board Ngo rescue ships.

The roles of Senser, Sayer and Actor, respectively in mental, verbal and material clauses, must be analyzed in relation to role allocation, i.e. activation and passivation patterns. To begin with, activation is realized in many different ways, as it has already been discussed above within the framework of Van Leeuwen’s (2013) sociosemantic inventory. As a matter of fact, Van Leeuwen (2013) explains that activation is not only realized by participation, i.e. by grammatical participant roles such as those of Actor, Senser and Sayer. It can also be realized (a) by prepositionals circumstantials, e.g. by and from (‘migrants are not allowed to be debarked by authorities’), (b) by pre-modification and post-modification (‘the arrival of migrants’), (c) by possessivation (‘their arrival’) (Van Leeuwen, 2013, p. 44).

Thus, in La Repubblica, RASIM are seldom found in active roles (14.03 per cent of the time), and when they are given agency, it is mainly as Actors in material clauses concerning the activity of migration, or indirectly, by post-modification (e.g. self-harming of the migrants) and by possessive pronouns (e.g. their goal). Rarely, their emotions or thoughts are reported (as Senser) and they are never allowed to speak (as Sayer).

Attention is paid to the type of clause and process in relation to which RASIM are activated. Four times in La Repubblica, they are Actors in material clauses; the actions in which they are involved are the following: to leave Libia, to die, to disappear, to be shipwrecked (in the Italian language, it is an intransitive verb: “naufragare”). All of the actions in relation to which RASIM are Actors are about the

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act of migration. Moreover, it is worth noting that two out of four times, RASIM are objectivized while in the role of Actor, as “un’imbarcazione”, i.e. a ship. Therefore, agency is backgrounded.

Four times RASIM are also given the role of Senser in mental clauses. In two of them, they are involved in the processes of “making a decision” and “being aware”, without being objectivized or abstracted. Once, RASIM are objectivized through their representation by means of reference to a ship; thus, it is a ship that is given the role of Senser in relation to the process of needing help (‘due navi hanno bisogno di un porto sicuro’, i.e. ‘two ships need a safe harbor’). Finally, in the sentence “due situazioni critiche che non trovano soluzione” (two critical situations that can’t find a solution), RASIM are the Senser but they are also abstracted. Thus, the abstraction represents them by attaching to them the quality of being critical. Moreover, it allows for a denial of responsibility: thus organized, the clause conveys a version of reality in which no participant is responsible for not finding a solution.

Overall, the data show a predominance of passivation of RASIM (85.08 per cent) over activation. Furthermore, agency is often given in relation to processes of migration, and rarely in mental or verbal clauses which grammatically attach to the relevant participant the feature of having a consciousness, i.e. of being human (through the expression of needs, desires, thoughts or opinions). Moreover, the occurrences of RASIM in the role of Senser or Sayer are particularly significant, as some examples showed: thus, we encounter participants which, even though in the role of Senser (therefore humanized by the function endowed to them by the grammar), are dehumanized through Objectivation or Abstraction (e.g. ‘human cargo’, ‘critical situations’).

Finally, Aggregation, Collectivisation and Functionalisation are the most employed sociosemantic categories, thus constructing RASIM as a group involved in the collective activity of migrating. Individualisation, Nomination and Physical identification do not appear once, i.e. they are never given a name or an identity as single individuals.

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Il Corriere della Sera

The three articles from Il Corriere della Sera, which were under study, are the following ones:

- Article 1: ‘Migranti, 69 alla deriva soccorsi a Malta e altri 49 in attesa di un porto’ (31st December

2018)

- Article 2: ‘Sea Watch con 32 migranti in mare senza risposta. Altri 114 salvati’ (31st December 2018)

- Article 3: ‘Salvini: «Porti chiusi, sui migranti decido io». Di Maio: «La decisione è del governo

intero»’ (6 January 2019)

The data collected from them have been organized in two tables and three figures. Table 3 and the graphs in Fig.5, Fig.6 and Fig.7 provide information about the representational choices employed to refer to RASIM in Il Corriere della Sera, which are investigated following Van Leeuwen’s (2013) socio-semantic categorization:

- Fig. 5 shows the percentages of all the categories employed for the analysis

- Fig. 6 groups the sub-categories into larger categories that have similar outcomes concerning the construction of RASIM

- Fig. 7 depicts role allocation patterns

Table 4 and Fig. 8 illustrate the data about the participant roles covered by RASIM, following Halliday’s functional grammar.

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Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 TOT newspaper Activation 4 5 0 9 Passivation tot 15 16 10 41 Pass.- Subjection 12 15 9 36 Pass.- Beneficialisation 3 1 1 5 Functionalisation 11 7 5 23 Classification 5 1 3 9 Relational Identification 1 0 0 1 Physical Identification 0 0 0 0 Nomination 0 0 0 0 Genericisation 2 0 6 8 Individualisation 2 0 0 2 Collectivisation 6 6 5 17 Aggregation 13 15 1 29 Objectivation 0 3 2 5 Abstraction 1 0 1 2 Backgrounding 0 6 2 8

Table 3: The representation of RASIM according to Van Leeuwen's sociosemantic categories: Il Corriere della Sera

Func t. Clas s. Rel. Id. Ph. I d. Nom . Gen eric. Indiv id. Colle ct. Aggr . Obje ct. Abst r. Back gr. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 35,93 14 1,5 0 0 12,5 3 26,56 45,3 7,8 3 12,5

Fig.5 - The representation of RASIM according to Van Leeuwen's sociosemantic categories: Il Corriere della Sera

(41)

The bar graph in Fig. 5 makes clear that Aggregation and Collectivisation are predominant, accounting for 71.87 per cent of the total. As a result, RASIM are constructed as a homogeneous group or as numbers. Reconfirming this, the bar graph shows that Individualisation occurs only two times in the articles from Il Corriere. Moreover, Nominalisation does not occur at all in the analyzed articles. Consequently, individuality is backgrounded. Moreover, Genericisation accounts for 12.5 per cent of the occurrences. It does not refer to the social actors as specific individuals (e.g. the 69 migrants rescued last week), but as a generic category, e.g. migrants in general. Therefore, it also radically backgrounds individuality. By considering the percentages of Genericisation, Aggregation and Collectivisation together, they account for 84.36% of the occurrences. As a result, only 15.6 per cent of the time RASIM are not represented as a generic category or homogeneous group.

Categ. Gen./Assim. Indiv./Nomin. Impers./Backgr.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 51,43 84,36 3 23,3

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