Von „Parasiten“ und anderen „Schädlingen“. Feinddiskreditierung rechtspopulistischer und rechtsextremer Bewegungen in Deutschland

Abstract

The essay focusses on metaphors as linguistic representations of symbolic violence and their argumentative function in respect of group specific social practice. By the means of a corpuslinguistic study on two text corpora containing texts by right-wing extremist authors on one hand and by members of a populist movement on the other hand it will be shown, how the speakers of these groups conceptualize outgroups as non-human entities and as such refer on them linguistically. Furthermore, it will be highlighted how this kind of language use contributes to the speakers’ communities’ argumentation “against the enemy” and what kind of potential consequences on social practice this might have.