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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 16:1 (2025) ► pp.89–112

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The language of threat

An analysis of Swedish online alternative newspaper reports on BLM protests

ORCiD logo with link | Uppsala Universitet
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Uppsala University.

Published online: 12 February 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.23013.and
Abstract
This paper examined news reports published by a Swedish alternative newspaper in connection with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in June 2020. The primary objective was to assess the role of strategic employment of distinctive linguistic features in shaping a portrayal of the protests through implications of threat, fear, and xenophobia. As the results indicate, the characteristics that contribute the most to such a depiction consistently involve an ominous vision of the spatial and ideological proximity of external entities and values to the in-group (‘us’). These findings are related to the particulars of the corpus, as the purpose of news reports is to create a sense of immediacy and reduce distance. However, since the goal of alternative news is to appeal to readers’ sensibilities in critical areas of their lives, despite masquerading as traditional media, these outlets tend to communicate threat and concern rather than a reliable picture of reality.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Alternative media and their role in dissemination of radical ideologies
    • 2.2The legitimization-proximization model and its applications
  • 3.Material and method
    • 3.1Method
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Spatial proximization
    • 4.2Temporal proximization
    • 4.3Axiological proximization
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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