A Comprehensive Pragma-Discoursal Analytic Structure of Racism

Abstract

The current paper attempts to exhaustively investigate and analyse 'Racism' from a pragma-discoursal perspective. Racism is defined as a statement on 'Race' and 'Racial Prejudice' as,'' arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics that are immutable and innate.'' (U.N OHCHR: 2005:4).

Racism is based on colour, social, religious, cultural or linguistic reasons within society. However, this issue has not fully considered in linguistic studies in general and a pragma-discoursal investigational analysis .To bridge this gap, the present work tries to scrutinize the racist discourse pragmatically, concentrating on the pragma-discoursal notions and their relevant strategies that construct the pragma-discoursal structure of racism. Thus, this paper tries to answer major questions including: 1- why racist discourse devices are employed in mass media? Are there any discoursal a pragmatic devices that are used to actualize an d show racism? To answer such questions, the present study hypothesizes that