Cover not available

In:Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism: In between antiracist and racist discourse
Edited by Argiris Archakis and Villy Tsakona
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 341] 2024
► pp. 71–92

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 3
Normalizing assimilation in antiracist (con)texts and (re)producing liquid racism

Argumentative inferences in Greek right- and left‑wing political discourses

 | University of Groningen
Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.341.03ser
Abstract
This chapter aims to show how liquid racism (Weaver 2016) emerges when assimilationist viewpoints are argumentatively normalized in mainstream (right- and left-wing) political-parliamentary discourses in Greece. I analyze two seminal speeches given by two Greek political leaders, namely PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis (New Democracy; European Peoples’ Party) and Opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras (SYRIZA; European Left), on October 31, 2019, in the Greek parliament; that is, the very day of the vote in favor of the bill proposed by the Ministry of Citizen’s Protection, which outlined the terms according to which international protection would be awarded by the Greek authorities to ‘foreign’ populations. I draw on the framework of Critical Discourse Studies (Wodak and Meyer 2016), employing tools from Social Semiotics (van Leeuwen 2008) and the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti and Greco 2019) to critically examine standpoint-argument couplings inferred in the discursive representations of social actors and realized in the relevant speeches. I conclude that the two Greek politicians under study converge to claims in favor of the assimilation of migrant populations to the Greek context and therefore (re)produce liquid racism, despite their seemingly antiracist attitude and their different ideological and political stance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical premises: In between racism and antiracism
  • 3.Methodological considerations: Critical discourse and argumentation studies
    • 3.1Studying representational meaning(s)
    • 3.2Zooming in on argumentative inference(s)
  • 4.Data analysis: Mitsotakis versus (?) Tsipras on migration
    • 4.1Kyriakos Mitsotakis on migration
    • 4.2Alexis Tsipras on migration
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion: Address the problem – Assimilate the Other
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (64)
References
Aakhus, Mark, and Marcin Lewiński. 2017. “Advancing Polylogical Analysis of Large Scale Argumentation.” Argumentation 31 (1): 179–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amossy, Ruth. 2002. “How to Do Things with Doxa: Toward an Analysis of Argumentation in Discourse.” Poetics Today 23 (3): 465–487. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “The Argumentative Dimension of Discourse.” In Argumentation in Practice, edited by Frans. H. van Eemeren, and Peter Houtlosser, 87–98. Controversies 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009a. “The New Rhetoric’s Inheritance. Argumentation and Discourse Analysis.” Argumentation 23: 313–324. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009b. “Argumentation in Discourse: A Socio-discursive Approach to Arguments.” Informal Logic 29 (3): 252–267. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Archakis, Argiris. 2016. “National and Post-national Discourses and the Construction of Linguistic Identities by Students of Albanian Origin in Greece.” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 35 (1): 57–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Από τον εθνικό στον μετα-εθνικό λόγο: Μεταναστευτικές ταυτότητες και κριτική εκπαίδευση [From national to post-national discourse: Immigrant identities and critical education]. Athens: Patakis. [in Greek]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Tracing Racism in Antiracist Narrative Texts Online.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45 (7): 1261–1282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Archakis, Argiris, Sofia Lampropoulou, and Villy Tsakona. 2018. “‘I’m Not Racist but I Expect Linguistic Assimilation’: The Concealing Power of Humor in an Anti-racist Campaign.” Discourse, Context and Media 23: 53–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aslanidis, Paris, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasserb. 2016. “Dealing with Populists in Government: The SYRIZA-ANEL Coalition in Greece.” Democratization 23 (6): 1077–1091. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boukala, Salomi. 2020. «Κριτική ανάλυση λόγου και επιχειρηματολογία: Η πολιτική του φόβου και της ασφάλειας στον λόγο της Νέας Δημοκρατίας [Critical discourse analysis and argumentation: Politics of fear and security in New Democracy’s discourse].» In Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου: (Απο)δομώντας την Ελληνική πραγματικότητα [Critical Discourse Analysis: (De)constructing the Greek reality], edited by Salomi Boukala, and Anastasia Stamou, 289–322. Athens: Nissos. [in Greek]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021b. “Far-Right Discourse as Legitimacy? Analyzing Political Rhetoric on the ‘Migration Issue’ in Greece.” Studies in Communication Sciences 21 (2): 329–341.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boukala, Salomi, and Dimitris Serafis. 2023. “Towards an Ethnographic Approach of Social Media Discourses: Exploring Ethnic Nationalism and the Greek ‘Right’ to the Name ‘Macedonia’.” In Digital Discourse and Society: Integrating the Digital with the Social in Digital Discourse, edited by Majid KhosraviNik, 83–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
European Parliament. 2019. Migration and Asylum. Available at: [URL] (accessed 12/5/2022).
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman, and Ruth Wodak. 1997. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Introduction to Discourse Studies, edited by Teun Adrianus van Dijk, 258–284. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flowerdew, John, and John. E. Richardson (eds.). 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greek Parliament. 2019. «Πρακτικά Βουλής, ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΑΣΗ Μ’, Πέµπτη 31 Οκτωβρίου 2019 [Greek Parliament Proceedings, Session M’, Thursday October 31st, 2019].» Available at: [URL] (accessed 4/2/2022).
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1973. Explorations in the Functions of Language. Explorations in Language Study. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood, and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1985. Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective. Geelong: Deakin University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood, and Christian Matthias Ingemar Martin Matthiessen. 1999. Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition. Open Language Series. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katsambekis, Giorgos. 2014. “Left-wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA.” Journal of Political Ideologies 19 (2): 119–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katsourides, Yiannos. 2016. Radical Left Parties in Government: The Cases of SYRIZA and AKEL. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2020. “Discursive Shifts and the Normalization of Racism: Imaginaries of Immigration, Moral Panics and the Discourse of Contemporary Right-Wing Populism.” Social Semiotics 30 (4): 503–527. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał, Anna Triandafyllidou, and Ruth Wodak (eds.). 2018. “The Mediatization and Politicization of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe [Special issue].” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies 16 (1–2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Law No 927/1979 (Greek Government Gazette 139/A/28-6-1979). «Περί κολασμού πράξεων ή ενεργειών αποσκοπουσών εις φυλετικάς διακρίσεις [About the sanctioning of acts or operations intended to racial discrimination].» [in Greek]
Law No 4285/2014 (Greek Government Gazette 191/A/10-9-2014). «Τροποποίηση του ν. 927/1979 (Α΄ 139) και προσαρμογή του στην απόφαση πλαίσιο 2008/913/ΔΕΥ της 28ης Νοεμβρίου 2008, για την καταπολέμηση ορισμένων μορφών και εκδηλώσεων ρατσισμού και ξενοφοβίας μέσω του ποινικού δικαίου (L 328) και άλλες διατάξεις [Amendment of the law No 927/1979 (Α΄ 139) and adjustment to the framework decision 2008/913/JHA of November 28, 2008, for combating certain forms and manifestations of racism and xenophobia through criminal law (L 328) and other provisions].» [in Greek]
Maeso, Silvia Rodríguez. 2015. “‘Civilizing’ the Roma? The Depoliticization of (Anti-)Racism within the Politics of Integration.” Identities 22 (1): 53–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondon, Aurelien, and Aaron Winter. 2018. “Liberal and Illiberal Islamophobias.” In More than Words: Approaching a Definition of Islamophobia, edited by Isobel Ingham-Barrow (pp. 36–38). Available at: [URL] (accessed 8/9/2022).
Pinto, Robert C. 2001. Argument, Inference and Dialectic: Collected Papers on Informal Logic. Argumentation Library 4. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetoric of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rigotti, Eddo, and Sara Greco Morasso. 2010. “Comparing the Argumentum Model of Topics to Other Contemporary Approaches to Argument Schemes: The Procedural and Material Components.” Argumentation 24 (4): 489–512. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rigotti, Eddo, and Sara Greco. 2019. Inference in Argumentation: A Topics-Based Approach to Argument Schemes. Argumentation Library 34. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serafis, Dimitris. 2017. “The Construction of the Greek Crisis in the Public Sphere: Discourses and Emotions (Pathos) under Critical Perceptions.” PhD Dissertation. Athens and Neuchatel: Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and University of Neuchatel.
. 2022. “Unveiling the Rationale of Soft Hate Speech in Multimodal Artifacts: A Critical Framework.” Journal of Language and Discrimination 6 (2): 261–288.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serafis, Dimitris, Jolanta Drzewiecka, and Sara Greco (eds.). 2021. “Critical Perspectives on Migration in Discourse and Communication [Thematic Section].” Studies in Communication Sciences 21 (2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serafis, Dimitris, Sara Greco, Chiara Pollaroli, and Chiara Jermini-Martinez Soria. 2020a. “Towards an Integrated Argumentative Approach to Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis: Evidence from the Portrayal of Refugees and Immigrants in Greek Newspapers.” Critical Discourse Studies 17 (5): 545–565. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020b. “Multimodal Arguments in the Mainstream Press: Illustrating Portrayals of Migration.” In Proceedings of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference, Vol. 12, edited by Julie Cook, 1–14. Ontario: University of Windsor.
Serafis, Dimitris, E. Dimitris Kitis, and Stavros Assimakopoulos. 2022. “Sailing to Ithaka: The Transmutation of Greek Left-populism in Discourses about the European Union.” Journal of Language and Politics 21 (2): 344–369. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serafis, Dimitris, Carlo Raimondo, Stavros Assimakopoulos, Sara Greco, and Andrea Rocci. 2021. “Argumentative Dynamics in Representations of Migrants and Refugees: Evidence from the Italian Press during the ‘Refugee Crisis’.” Discourse and Communication 15 (5): 559–581. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stamatinis, Nikos, Argiris Archakis, and Villy Tsakona. 2021. “From the Illegal Migrant-criminal to the Illegal Migrant-invader: Critical Analysis of the Semantic Change of the Greek Term λαθρομετανάστης ‘Illegal Migrant’.” Studies in Communication Sciences 21 (2): 343–360. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
SYRIZA. 2021. «Το σχέδιο των προγραμματικών θέσεων του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-Προοδευτική Συμμαχία [Draft of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance’s program].» Available at: [URL] (accessed 8/9/2022).
Tsakona, Villy. 2009. “Linguistic Creativity, Secondary Orality, and Political Discourse: The Modern Greek Myth of the ‘Eloquent Orator’.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27 (1): 81–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy, Rania Karachaliou, and Argiris Archakis. 2020. “Liquid Racism in the Greek Anti-Racist Campaign #StopMindBorders.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8 (2): 232–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun Andrianus. 1995. “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Japanese Discourse 1 (1): 17–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by Deborah Tannen, Deborah Schiffrin, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 352–371. Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Discourse and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Antiracist Discourse in Brazil: From Abolition to Affirmative Action. New York: Lexington Books. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Eemeren, Frans Hendrik, and Rob Grootendorst. 2003. “A Pragma-Dialectical Procedure for a Critical Discussion.” Argumentation 17 (4): 365–386. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. “The Representation of Social Actors.” In Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by Carmen Caldas-Coulthard, and Malcolm Coulthard, 32–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo, and Ruth Wodak. 1999. “Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Discourse-Historical Analysis.” Discourse Studies 1 (1): 83–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vernardakis, Christophoros. 2005. «Πολιτικά κόμματα και ‘μεσαίος χώρος’: Οι ιδεολογικές, πολιτικές και πολιτισμικές συντεταγμένες των σημερινών πολιτικών δυνάμεων [Political parties and the ‘middle space’: The ideological, political and cultural orientations of the current political forces].» In Η κοινή γνώμη στην Ελλάδα 2004 [Public opinion in Greece 2004], edited by Christoforos Vernardakis, 57–85. Athens: Savvalas. [in Greek]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weaver, Simon. 2010. “Liquid Racism and the Danish Prophet Muhammad Cartoons.” Current Sociology 58 (5): 675–692. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Liquid Racism and the Ambiguity of Ali G.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (3): 249–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The Rhetoric of Racist Humor: US, UK and Global Race Joking. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer (eds.). 2016. Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.). London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue