Us vs. Them: Ideology and Discourse

The us/them polarization in public discourse is not really a contemporary phenomenon: just think of Aristotle and oi barbaroi. But today it is at its closest to the racist ideology, as van Dijk says. In this paper, Mirella Pasini uses the same tool, i.e. the ideological discourse analysis, to clarify the connection between polarization and racism, through a particular case-study, that is, the construction of prejudice and stereotype about the Southern Italian “race” in the Reports of the Immigration Commission (Washington 1911). This past case is a model to analyse the political and the ordinary language of our time, in order to define a not discriminatory approach to the differencies.