In September 2015, the Federal Republic of Germany had to deal with an unexpected number
of refugees crossing the German border. Global conflicts inter alia the civil war in Syria
caused a global movement of refugees, leading to 13,000 people crossing the German border
every day. This development presented an enormous challenge for German society and in
particular for politics and media. Journalists faced, among other things, the question, of how
to describe this mass of people, using phrases ...
In September 2015, the Federal Republic of Germany had to deal with an unexpected number
of refugees crossing the German border. Global conflicts inter alia the civil war in Syria
caused a global movement of refugees, leading to 13,000 people crossing the German border
every day. This development presented an enormous challenge for German society and in
particular for politics and media. Journalists faced, among other things, the question, of how
to describe this mass of people, using phrases like “flood of refugees” or “wave of refugees”,
that compared people to a natural disaster rather than humans. This research proposal asks in
which way the German print media discursively constructed refugees and asylum seekers
during the refugee crisis in Germany between 2015 and 2017. By proposing the approach of
Critical Discourse Analysis the impact of linguistic patterns and the use of language in
general on the portrayal of refugees shall be demonstrated.
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