ABSTRACT
This chapter studies some of the ideological properties of political discourse on immigration and minorities in contemporary Europe. The issue to be theoretically dealt with is the relations between ideology, racism and discourse. The analyses ideologies in terms of the social cognitions of social groups, other social representations are also involved in the cognitive domain of analysis, such as knowledge, opinions or attitudes. The multidisciplinary theory of ideology that inform the analysis of parliamentary debates, is markedly different from prevailing, largely sociological, political–economic and philosophical approaches. The underlying racist ideologies and ideologically controlled ethnic/racial prejudices may finally be expresses in text and talk. Parliamentary debates are also partly defines by the complex, institutional context. The semantic macro–structures that organise such debates are selects from event models providing a speaker’s definition of the situation. Anti-racist speakers make extensive use of humanitarian, human rights ideologies, operate with positive attitudes about asylum seekers, and negative ones about conservatives, as may be expects.
