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Date of Award
Spring 2020
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Historical & Political Studies; College of Arts & Sciences
First Advisor
Jennifer Riggan
Abstract
Over the last two decades, the prominence of far-right speech in mainstream British news sources has grown exponentially. Due to the efforts of far-right groups like the British National Party and the UK Independence Party, a distinctly racialized discourse has emerged surrounding British nationality and migration, obfuscating immigration debates with questions of “British identity”--who is British, what are British values, and, above all, who should be allowed to live in Britain. I argue that the British far-right employs a discourse to racialize both migrants and Muslims as unwanted “Others.” They do so by characterizing migrants and Muslims as aliens who threaten the notions of British indigeneity, national purity, and security. This discourse hinges British citizenship on ideas of race, and places immigration and immigrants--particularly Muslim migrants--as diametrically opposed to the concepts of Britain and Britishness. Using an ethnographic discourse analysis technique from Wortham and Reyes (2015) along with key anthropological theories on the construction of difference and enmity, I analyze notable racialized speech events from top far-right figures in the UK’s most-used television and print news sources within the last ten years.
Recommended Citation
Aldridge, Caitlin, "Rising British Ethno-Nationalism and the Salience of Racialized Discourse in British Mainstream News Media" (2020). Capstone Showcase. 8.
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/showcase/2020/is/8
Additional Files
Rising British Ethno-Nationalism and the Salience of Racialized Discourse in British Mainstream News Media_Caitlin Aldridge.pdf (463 kB)Rising British Ethno-Nationalism and the Salience of Racialized Discourse in British Mainstream News Media
Over the last two decades, the prominence of far-right speech in mainstream British news sources has grown exponentially. Due to the efforts of far-right groups like the British National Party and the UK Independence Party, a distinctly racialized discourse has emerged surrounding British nationality and migration, obfuscating immigration debates with questions of “British identity”--who is British, what are British values, and, above all, who should be allowed to live in Britain. I argue that the British far-right employs a discourse to racialize both migrants and Muslims as unwanted “Others.” They do so by characterizing migrants and Muslims as aliens who threaten the notions of British indigeneity, national purity, and security. This discourse hinges British citizenship on ideas of race, and places immigration and immigrants--particularly Muslim migrants--as diametrically opposed to the concepts of Britain and Britishness. Using an ethnographic discourse analysis technique from Wortham and Reyes (2015) along with key anthropological theories on the construction of difference and enmity, I analyze notable racialized speech events from top far-right figures in the UK’s most-used television and print news sources within the last ten years.
Comments
International Studies