Open AccessREPRESENTATIONS OF REFUGEES AND LOCAL PEOPLE IN GREEK POETRY DURING THE EUROPEAN MIGRANT CRISIS
Author(s) -
Christina Linardaki
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of literature, language and linguistics studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2559-7914
DOI - 10.46827/ejlll.v5i1.263
Subject(s) - poetry , refugee , intertextuality , humanity , refugee crisis , exaggeration , literature , sociology , history , art , media studies , political science , law , psychoanalysis , psychology
This paper looks into Greek poetry written, in its bulk, during the years of the European migrant crisis (2014-2018) for ways in which refugees and locals are presented. The poems are analyzed in the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) in terms of the social language, situated meanings, intertextuality, figured worlds and discourses they contain (Gee, 2011). Greek poets see in refugees a heroic part of humanity and a manifestation of the human struggle and will to live; thus, they are sanctifying them, presenting them as martyrs. Moreover, Greek poets see locals and Westerners as insensitive villains who are after their eradication. This is obviously a distorted and hyperbolic point of view, which however may hide true aspects of reality in its exaggeration.
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