Ultras as a Youth Social Movement: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Moroccan Football Ultras

Volume 11|Issue 42| Autumn 2022 |Articles

Abstract

This paper contributes to the critical discourse analysis of Moroccan football ultras movements, whose presence has increased inside and outside the sports stadiums. These groups combine support for their teams with positive interaction with social and political issues. This combination is reflected in the nature of the chants, slogans, and tifos in the context of encouraging and expressing absolute loyalty to their teams and in mobilising and politicising stadiums. Since many of these chants, slogans, and tifos denounce socioeconomic as well as sports conditions, the paper analyses the interrelationship between discourse structures and ideological structures of Moroccan football ultras chants and slogans based on the critical methodology developed by Norman Fairclough based on textual description, discourse interpretation and socio-cultural explanation. Furthermore, it has become clear that, in addition to expressing team loyalty, the Moroccan ultras strategically use language as a symbolic tool to express feelings of outrage, hope and yearning for freedom, dignity and social justice, similar to the social movements that emerged in the context of the Arab revolutions.

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PhD Researcher in the Faculty of Languages, Letters, and Arts at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra, Morocco.

Researcher who received his PhD in Sociology from the Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, Morocco

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