Diversity: a journalistic (re)construction of a public issue in the Belgian francophone media

In the past few years, the concept of diversity became widespread in the Western world. Its polysemy and vague referent (i.e. the social phenomenon it refers to) has not prevented the word to become a keyword in rich countries, characterised by the acknowledgment of a postcolonial society and the coexistence of ethnic minorities. In the French field of discourse analysis, it has been noted that the word behaves like a fuzzy expression that condenses complex social issues that the word per se helps to shape. In a social context where different interests, power relations and strategies « have ma... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Derinöz, Sabri
Dokumenttyp: conferenceContribution
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Schlagwörter: Information et communication / Analyse du discours des médias / diversité / analyse du discours / médias
Sprache: Französisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26916669
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/345595

In the past few years, the concept of diversity became widespread in the Western world. Its polysemy and vague referent (i.e. the social phenomenon it refers to) has not prevented the word to become a keyword in rich countries, characterised by the acknowledgment of a postcolonial society and the coexistence of ethnic minorities. In the French field of discourse analysis, it has been noted that the word behaves like a fuzzy expression that condenses complex social issues that the word per se helps to shape. In a social context where different interests, power relations and strategies « have made its use necessary and at the same time problematic » (Maingueneau 2014: 98), the word diversity is manipulated « in political and social discourse without ever being explicitly defined » (Devriendt 2012).Belgium has embraced diversity, a concept that we can easily find in the media as in political discourse, even if it has no clear meaning (Senac 2012; Devriendt 2012). In the francophone Belgium, the idea of diversity emerged at the beginning of the century under the influence of American management, but also in a context where international organizations (mainly the UN and the EU) advocated for the promotion of cultural diversity and the end of ethnic discrimination (Mathien 2013; Sholomon-Kornblit 2018; Senac 2012). In the post-multiculturalism era, diversity seeks to engage with the cultural complexities of ethnic identities, while rejecting communitarian multiculturalism (Hall 1991, Titley 2014). In the Belgian political agenda, diversity appeared alongside the concept of equal opportunities in the last twenty years, as a follow-up to migrant integration and ethnic and racial discrimination (Adam 2006; Tandé 2013). According to some scholars, the reformulation of the public problem of discrimination into diversity led to a depoliticization of the issue (Tandé 2013). In this communication, we seek to explore how diversity arose as a public issue in the media, competing with and reconstructing other public issues ...