Media Representation of the Discrimination against the Roma in Eastern Europe: The Case of Slovenia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how the thematic and form structures of the news report work to legitimate and naturalize discrimination against the Roma. The syntactic structure of discriminatory discourse offered the readers categories which differed very little: the headline and the lead constructed a closed interpretation of the situation and the rest of the news report strengthened, legitimated and naturalized this interpretation especially with its use of evaluation. In order to create a coherent meaning of the news text, journalists first reduced the definition of the situation to only one event, which presented the majority population in a positive light. To construct only one, natural dominant interpretation of the ethnic discrimination they selectively (mis)used information, used discourse of difference with colonization of common-sense language, and the strategies of denial of discriminatory discourse. The majority population was the dominant group, responsible for the process of doing and saying as actors and sayers. The study of the Slovenia media adheres to the analytic paradigm of critical discourse analysis (CDA).