From Fighting To Belonging: the role of violence informed language in construction of affinity to own group in the Bogside and the Fountain, Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to explore the signification processes of young people’s inter-group hostile attitudes and violent behaviour related to and used for building their sense of belonging to a particular place and group. The research was focused on young people with a Catholic background from the Bogside quarter and young people with a Protestant background from the Fountain quarter, both situated in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Discursive approach was used for an in-depth analysis of the youngsters’ language practices, which were placed into a broader context of the post-conflict environment they lived in. The research showed that the signification processes of the young people’s violence and hostile attitudes indeed serve them to create a sense of belonging although it happens rather in not prepared and unanimous way. Young people signify their mutual violence and hostility in various ways, whilst often using name-calling and or derogative metaphorical comparisons to assure themselves they belong to the better group and by stressing the importance of protection or retaliation, the sense of belonging was built, since the violence would be signified for the sake of their own group. Both sides often drew on previous instances of violence and distinguished between different types of violence which they felt would or would not be supported by their community. A difference was found between the use of intertextual networks related to history. For Catholic interviewees it served as an excuse for their present violence and as a bond to their community, whilst the Protestant interviewees re-interpreted the history of the other side in order to derogate it and prove loyalty to their own community.