"Kosovars slit (the) Swiss" "Kosovars slit (the) Swiss": A qualitative analysis of the discursive construction of ‘us’ versus ‘the other’ in SVP populist right-wing immigration discourses

Abstract

Campaign slogans such as “Kosovaren schlitzen Schweizer auf” (Kosovars slit the Swiss) can be found on many European walls with a party logo of a right-wing (populist) party. In times of the emergence of right-wing populist parties in Europe, this study thus set out to investigate the discursive construction of ‘the other’ in opposition to ‘us’ in the Swiss context of the right-wing populist party SVP. By focusing on two popular right-wing initiatives dealing with immigration issues, the purpose lay in extracting the other-image of ‘the foreigner’ as opposed to the self-image of Switzerland and analyzing the implications of the identified ideological viewpoints. The framework of this research relies on Critical Discourse Analysis and mainly the Historical Discourse Approach of Wodak (2015b), whose discursive strategies served as the main inspiration for the construction of the main question as well as the connected sub-questions. Although extensive research has been done in the domain of right-wing populism, this study shines new light on the discursive strategies in a Swiss context.