Between antigypsyism and human rights education
A critical discourse analysis of the representations of the Roma Holocaust in European textbooks
Publication date
2022-10-25
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Publisher
CEEOL
Series or journal
Critical Romani Studies
ISSN
Periodical volume
4
Periodical issue
2
First page
100
Last page
120
Part of the university bibliography
Nein
Language
English
Keyword
Antigypsyism
Critical discourse analysis
Education
Roma
Roma Holocaust
Textbooks
Abstract
This paper investigates representations of the Roma Holocaust in European textbooks on history, civics, and geography for pupils in upper primary to the end of secondary education. By applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) to a dataset of 472 passages and images referring to the Roma Holocaust from 869 textbooks, this paper reveals educational discourses of in/exclusion by focusing on narratives and linguistic tools, such as speech acts, level of detail and specificity, perspectives in semantic and grammatical forms, vocabulary and syntax. Most knowledge disseminated on the Roma Holocaust concerns numbers and technicalities of murder while Roma-specific details, survivor stories, and individual voices, as well as Romani terminology for the Holocaust (Porrajmos) are rare. Generally, the textbooks show little commitment to circulating knowledge about the Roma Holocaust, or specifically focusing on civic or human rights education. Portrayals of the Roma Holocaust are permeated by both explicitly and implicitly racist discourses, coupled with a distinct lack of critical tools withwhich to deconstruct these narratives. Overall, current textbook representations of the Roma Holocaust mirror social discourse and possibly serve to reproduce Romani exclusion and risk reinforcing antigypsyism attitudes.
Description
The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in the journal "Critical Romani Studies".
Version
Published version
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