Are We Still at War with the Other: Media Language Now and Then on Roma, Gypsies and Travellers
Are We Still at War with the Other: Media Language Now and Then on Roma, Gypsies and Travellers

Summary/Abstract: The focus of the paper is upon a comparison of the language media in Bulgaria and the UK when talking about ethnic minorities, and more specifically on Roma in Bulgaria and Gypsies and Travellers in the UK. Applying the sociocognitivist approach within the Critical discourse studies (van Dijk 2016), I revisit one of the most frequent metaphors, i.e. the one related to WAR, used by the media at the beginning of the century (2001-2005) and in 2020-2022. The reason to select that particular device is the fact that metaphors reflect thinking patterns and emotions that people share and are conducive to the establishment of a generalized image of various phenomena, and, in this particular case, of an ethnic group. At the same time, I hypothesize that the pandemic would probably take media attention away from ethnic minorities and thus coverage of the groups would be scantier and the language, in case there are articles on Roma and Gypsies and Travellers, more neutral and void of metaphors. The corpus for the analysis at hand comprises some of the most popular dailies circulated online in Bulgaria and the UK. The analysis has shown that despite the time difference and the pandemic, the attitude and the language the Bulgarian and the British media use in their presentations of this ethnic group in particular has not changed significantly and has not been affected significantly by Covid-19.

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