Strategies of Apparent Empathy and Polarization in Kemalistic Discourse

Abstract

The paper analyzes the discursive strategies of apparent empathy and ideological polarization that were used to legitimize discrimination against covered female students in the Republic of Turkey. We approached this complex social problem from the point of view of critical discourse analysis, which represents an interdisciplinary research area centered on the interest in researching the manipulative use of language. The ban on wearing headscarves in universities in Turkey was the fruit of the Kemalist conception of modernism and hegemony established by the Kemalist elites. An important role in preserving that hegemony was also played by the media, whose primary goal was to legitimize social injustice and protect the social order based on an asymmetric distribution of power. They performed this role of the media through the manipulative use of language within clearly recognizable discursive strategies, which was shown by the analysis of the newspaper text that is the subject of this paper.