Die Flüchtlingskrise als Sprachtabu: Tödliche und ökonomische Aspekte der Migration in der deutschen und italienischen Presse

This paper aims at investigating the migrant crisis as a taboo topic, an uncomfortable issue Europe has to deal with. This subject can be regarded as a taboo topic because of at least two of its features: the death of numerous migrants and the economic effects of immigration. Through a corpus-based, qualitative and contrastive analysis of selected examples taken from the German and the Italian press, the article explores how the press deals with these particular aspects of the migrant crisis. Do Italian and German journalists make use of specific linguistic strategies to hide these taboos, or do they deliberately break them, showing the worst sides of immigration