Ideological Discourse in the Czech and British Press. Treatment of Roma Minority in Comparative Perspective

This thesis offers an insight into a discursive construction of Roma minority in the Czech and British press coverage in 2013. The current problematization of the “Roma issue” in Europe, ranging from a fear of Roma immigration into Western countries to the open demonstrations of hatred in their countries of origin, begs the question whether media play a role in this escalated situation. The aim of this thesis has been to uncover and compare discursive practises, which can contribute to the reproduction of racist ideology against Roma in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The critical discourse analysis employed to the newspaper articles from six different titles has indeed uncovered subtle manifestations of racist ideology, gained an insight into the ideological effects of the language use on the portrayal of Roma, and juxtaposed these two discourses in view of the countries’ different political and media contexts. In both datasets, Roma are portrayed as an essentialized group with innate characteristics and constructed as a threat to the majority on the basis of economical abuse, criminality and social deviation, while these negative attributes nourish and legitimize the larger narratives of individualistic neoliberalism and of exclusive idea of a society consisting of people with identical values, which are considered the norm. Roma, even though in different environments, discursively become strangers both abroad and at home, being left with no option but to change into non-Roma or explain themselves in a defensive mode when given the occasion for expression. The acknowledgement of the dominant social system’s responsibility for their marginalized position within society is often concealed, mitigated, transferred or reversed. The similar lexical and semantic strategies in the studied press further testify the standardized approach to portraying Roma as the Other in the European press landscape.