Semiotics and framing of Ukrainian refugees in Spanish political discourse: a linguistic and cognitive analysis

This study analyzes how four major Spanish political parties use semiotic resources on Twitter to portray Ukrainian refugees, employing corpus linguistics and cognitive framing. Drawing on Saussure's semiology, Van Dijk's discourse theory, Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, and Lakoff's framing theory, we examine how words function as signs that frame ideological positions. Partido Popular (PP) emphasizes individual liberty and national identity, PSOE highlights diplomacy and humanitarianism, Unidas Podemos (UP) assigns blame to specific countries while showing solidarity with Ukraine, and VOX advocates strict refugee policies with an anti-communist stance. This detailed linguistic and semiotic analysis reveals how the parties' language choices, informed by cognitive and semiotic frames, reflect underlying power structures and ideological biases, offering important insights into the dynamics of political discourse around refugees, and how language shapes public perception.