Sguardi sull’altro tra passione e narrazione: la figura del migrante

Abstract

In the essay Inventing the enemy (2011), Umberto Eco, through a historical excursus, stated that having an enemy has always been important for an individual or a group both to define their own identity and to measure and affirm their system of values. Consequently, when there is not a real enemy, it is necessary to invent it and, in the current communication landscape, the construction of the other is shaped by the different media discourses, which more and more focus their communication on passions and sensations. Indeed, we are immersed in a continuum of passions such as anger, intolerance, homophobia, that arise from media discourses. These passions find different ways of expression but belong to the same flow, in circuits, paths and schemes from which it difficult to move away. Starting from such a premise, this contribution proposes a semiotic reflection on the connection between language and emotions, with particular reference to the phenomenon of migration in Italy, considering the recent conditions that have placed it at the center of socio-cultural circumstances and crisis processes, between collective fears and terminological confusions. In fact, conflicting feelings of people converge to the figure of the migrant, and the role of the language is central in this process. This study aims at describing this issue in details, through the analysis of a corpus of journalistic articles, with specific attention to the role of passions in the argumentation.