Migrant crisis in European multilingual media: Identity construction across languages

Abstract

International news articles published in various languages are usually tailored by the editors for their target readers in the corresponding language. On the one hand, the transformations made to the textual structure of news are intended to offer better accessibility to the information and make it more relevant to the readers in the target culture. On the other hand, the domestication of news provides compatibility with social attitudes, cultural background and shared knowledge of language users. Many such adjustments are made to the structures related to national and cultural identities and their construction. This paper will consider rhetorical and linguistic devices of discursive identity construction in the media coverage of events related to the EU migration crisis in four European languages (English, French, German and Spanish), as well as analyze their potential role in framing public opinion towards the migrant crisis.