“Kosovars slit (the) Swiss”: A qualitative analysis of the discursive construction of ‘us’ versus ‘the other’ in SVP populist right-wing immigration discourses

Author(s) : Selin Leuch

Source : https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/368515

Abstract:

Campaign slogans such as “Kosovaren schlitzen Schweizer auf” (Kosovars slit the Swiss) can be found on many European walls with a party logo of a right-wing (populist) party. In times of the emergence of right-wing populist parties in Europe, this study thus set out to investigate the discursive construction of ‘the other’ in opposition to ‘us’ in the Swiss context of the right-wing populist party SVP. By focusing on two popular right-wing initiatives dealing with immigration issues, the purpose lay in extracting the other-image of ‘the foreigner’ as opposed to the self-image of Switzerland and analyzing the implications of the identified ideological viewpoints. The framework of this research relies on Critical Discourse Analysis and mainly the Historical Discourse Approach of Wodak (2015b), whose discursive
strategies served as the main inspiration for the construction of the main question as well as the connected sub-questions. Although extensive research has been done in the domain of right-wing populism, this study shines new light on the discursive strategies in a Swiss context.
The contextual background provides information on the notion of populism, which is approached in line with Mudde & Kaltwasser’s (2017) as a thin-centered ideology which view society to be of dualistic nature. Furthermore, the stage for the Swiss context is set by elaborating on the political system, the SVP (Skenderovic, 2007) and a historical background of immigration discourses (Riaño & Wastl-Walter, 2006). Apart from Critical Discourse Analysis, the theoretical framework also expands on Imagology (Beller & Leerssen, 2007) and ‘Othering’ (Praxmarer, 2017, Cannadine, 2013) – the intercultural phenomenon at the basis of this research. The corpus has been constructed with the help of Jäger & Maier’s (2009) discourse fragments and discourse strands which have been retrieved by an automated search for the selected keywords Schweiz and Ausländer within the collected SVP textual
material.
The analysis of discourse strands in light of nomination/predication strategies revealed a selfimage of ‘Switzerland’ which was marked by the opposition of a positive self-image (the ideal) based on positive auto-stereotypes versus a negative self-image (threat), which is imposed by ‘the other’. Conversely, the discourse strands of ‘the foreigner’ unearthed a negative other-image consisting of
stereotypical representations of ‘the foreigner’. The consequent in- and out-groups which were analyzed as referential strategies mainly benefit the power position of the SVP. It was hence found that the instrumentalization of the immigration discourse by the SVP aims at keeping current inequalities in place. The argumentative strategies employed to justify the SVP ideological standpoints rely on ‘the other’ as the cause for all current negative developments the nation is facing. In this simplified onesided world-view the answer for the national challenges seem clear: limit the amount of foreigners to come and deport ‘criminal foreigners’. The strategies employed lead to ‘a politics of fear’ which relies on the constant inferring of threats connected to ‘the other’.
It has to be pointed out, however, that this study relied on a comparatively small corpus and is thus subject to many limitations. It is thus suggested that further research should take more diverse data especially visual material into account, adopt a more comparative perspective and test other methodological approaches.

Author keywords: Populism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Wodak, Switzerland, SVP