Abstract:

In today's society, racial and ethnic biases / concerns can be shown in a variety of ways. Members of the majority group primarily shape public discourse by expressing their ethnic perspectives in various ways. They may show, hide, and/or deny negative feelings against minorities, immigrants, refugees, and/or the others. In this regard, the present study attempts to examine and explore denial of unfavorable ethnic attitudes, biases, and worries voiced in public discourse regarding Turkey's Armenian minority. Within the framework of the study, I will investigate what kind of denial strategies may be found in the posts (comments) under the headings "Ermenilerden özür diliyorum" [I apologize to Armenians] and "Hepimiz Ermeniyiz" [We are all Armenians] posted on Ekşi Sözlük "Sour Dictionary" (one of the largest collaborative online communities in Turkey) between 2007-2008 years, shortly after the assassination of Hrant Dink (a journalist and member of the Armenian minority group living in Turkey) in 2007. Accordingly, I will discuss the sample entries within the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis and Teun van Dijk's denial strategies, which aim to show how ideology and ideological processes reveal themselves as linguistic systems. Then I will present my analysis of the most frequently used denial strategies observed in these entries. I will examine the denial methods used in the text and determine how racial or ethnic biases and concerns (at the macro level) are expressed in the text through word choice, sentence structure, hierarchy, and context (micro level). In this way, we will be able to see macro-level goals in the text through micro-level structures.

Keywords: