‘Immigrants’ as recipients of Easy-to-Read in Spain

authored by

Lidia Becker

Abstract

The paper provides an example of how immigration is constructed by receiving societies as a comprehension or language problem that requires special solutions. It focuses on the application of Easy-to-Read, a simplified register currently in expansion which addresses different groups of people with intellectual disabilities, to immigrants in Spain. Following a general introduction on the glottopolitical approach to migration processes and a historical overview of tendencies of discursive simplification in Europe and the Americas, the co-text of the term ‘immigrants’ in a corpus including drafting guides of Easy-to-Read, newspapers and websites of the supporters of this variety is analysed in the empirical part. Methods of semantic discourse analysis (semantic relations and prototype theory) allow to identify new meanings and categories that are constructed in the selected texts (‘immigrant’ as a co-hyponym of ‘person with a disability’).

Organisation(s)

Romance Studies Section

Type

Article

Journal

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Volume

41

Pages

59-71

No. of pages

13

ISSN

0143-4632

Publication date

09.06.2019

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cultural Studies, Education, Linguistics and Language

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2019.1621874 (Access: Closed)