прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Ideology

thousands of blatantly racist conversations taking place in the homes of citizens.

Discourse structures

Although context categories themselves may strongly influence the acceptance of social representations, the really influential factors should generally be searched in the discourse structures themselves. That is, are there discourse structures that prohibit, impair or favour ideological reproduction? The analysis of the structures and strategies of discourse in Chapter 21, suggests that ideologies may in principie map onto all levels and dimensions of discourse: graphics, intonation, syntax, local meanings and coherence, topics, style, rhetoric, speech acts and interactional features. Still, expression structures as such usually do not code for ideology — this mostly happens in relation to underlying meanings and functions. To persuasively convey ideological 'context', thus, the semantics of text and talk plays an especially important role.

To prove such an assumption, we need to find out how semantic variations have different consequences for the construction of models, and how friese models may in turn be used to confirm or construct social representations. For instance, topics or semantic macrostructures of discourse represent salient and important information, and will therefore generally be attended to, and be used to construct key (top) propositions in models. If such topics are repeated (e.g. 131ack West Indians rioted' in the popular press in the UK), then model construction may become routine and generalized to a negative attitude about black youth, or about blacks in general, if no alternative, counter-ideologies are present that may cause rejection of such models.

At the same time, readers with ambiguous attitudes about minorities, may find such prominent expressions of bias too crude to be credible, and may not construct the biased models as intended. They may, however, be unable to detect more subtle forms of semantic ethnic bias in news reporting, and following their interpretation construct models whose generalization also leads to a negative attitude about minorities. That is, besides contextual conditions of credibility, also the nature of the semantic (and other) structures may (for different participants) have different influences on model construction and acceptance, and on the subsequent generalization to social representations that are part of ideological reproduction.

Reproduction, however, is not limited to interpretation and the influences of discourse on mental representations. Also the production side of the communicative event needs to be taken into account. Part of this has been done in the analysis of context. This means, among other things, that access to specific social roles, and especially elite roles, provides group members with vastly more influential means to reproduce ideologies than ordinary citizens without much access to public discourse. These, then, are the now familiar social conditions that control the context of production.

But besides these contextual categories of position, roles and group membership, we also peed to establish which discourse structures can be more or less explicitly controlled in the first place. Some of this control, as is the case in TV programmes, may be the result of complex production processes. Ideological control in that case presupposes that most participants, and at least the more influential ones, are ideologically on the same liase. Another questions is whether speakers or writers who have control over discourse are always able to 'translate' their ideologies into the more or less subtle properties of text and talk.

Thus, again, the explicit choice of negative topics in order to derogate outgroups, is fairly easy and straightforward, and simply involves the projection of ideologically biased models of events onto topics of talk and text, as is the case for crime stories about minorities. However, many other discourse structures, such as the syntax of headlines, local semantic disclaimers, or the choice of metaphors, is only moderately or not at ah consciously controlled. Ideological influence of discourse in this case is barely intentional, but a more or less automatic expression of biased models.

Of course, this does not prevent ideological reproduction. On the contrary, since it is not consciously controlled, it cannot usually be 'self-censored' either because of prevailing norms or values (e.g. those of nondiscrimination), so that ideological reproduction takes place without the speakers' being aware of it. Indeed, when confronted with critical analyses of such subtle racist practices, they will generally deny that they are racists. Thus, besides explicit manipulation of models and social representations, ideological reproduction may more indirectly and unintentionally take place through the routine and taken-for-granted processes of discourse production. In the chapters that follow, I shall study a number of more specific instances of these various aspects of the discursive reproduction of ideologies.

24

From Cognition to Discourse

Introduction

After the more general outline of the role of discourse in the reproduction of ideologies in the previous chapter, I am now in a position to detall some of the componente of a relevant theory of discursive ideological reproduction. I shall begin where I left off in Part I, at the cognitive level of analysis, and then I shall move to the various structures and strategies of text and talk that are relevant for the expression of ideologies.

It should be recalled here that the cognitive basis of a theory of ideological reproduction is neither a luxury flor a reduction of the social to the personal. First, I have stressed that the mirad is social — socially acquired, sharecl, used and changed. Many aspects of social structure presuppose such shared knowledge and beliefs of members. A large part of our mirad consists of socially and culturally shared representations. These are also needed in the understanding of personal experiences and the accomplishment of individual actions, and hence also for discourse production and understanding.

Thus, second, if we want to describe and explain how group ideologies affect discourse, and vice versa, we need to spell out how to get from social representations to the individual ones that represent personal experiences or personal text and talk. The only way to do this is in terms of a cognitive theory of discourse processing.

There is at present no serious alternative theory that explains how social structures, including those of communicative contexts, are able to constrain the structures of text arad talk. We simply peed the theoretical construct of people' s 'minds' as ara interface between the social arad the personal. As is the case for all theories, however, these may change, so that the mental 'architecturé as it was adopted from current cognitive science is of course merply a hypothesis about the ways people produce and understand discourse and accomplish many other tasks.

The same is true for the'information processing' metaphor prevailing in cognitive science. This is at present the only viable theoretical framework to account for language use, communication and the ways knowledge and other (e.g. ideological) beliefs interact with discourse. However, it was also emphasized that such a framework is incomplete when it is not embedded in a broader theory of (verbal and other) social interaction and social structure. That is, beliefs and discourse have both cognitive and social dimensions, and

the crucial point of this book is precisely to connect these two major dimensions.

Discourse production

Discourse production involves a set of representations and complex operations that together may be thought of, theoretically, as a discourse production unit in the rnind. This unit has three main modules — a pragmatic, a semantic and a formulation module — which operate in Glose collaboration

The pragmatic module

As soon as people want to speak or write, they first construct a relevant context model. This model selects the relevant information from the speaker's beliefs about the social situation, as described in Chapter 22, for example the current communicative event (e.g. informal conversation with friend, writing a news report, giving a lesson, or visiting oné s doctor), current goals or intentions, a setting, and the speech participants. As suggested before, such a context model may simply be a relevant specification of the current experience model speakers have of the ongoing episode. 2

The context model thus specifies what relevant speech acts must be accomplished, and generally provides the information needed in the other (semantic, formulation) modules for the production of a discourse that is appropriate in the present context. In other words, a context model contains a'plañ that features all information needed to accomplish an appropriate speech act. For instance, beliefs about the nature of the social relation between speaker and hearer provide the relevant information for the accomplishment of deference or politeness, such as specific pronouns or the use or avoidance of specific lexical items. Ah possible variations of discourse structures that are not a function of the semantic module are controlled by the pragmatic module and its current context model. That ís, speech acts, interaction, as well as the stylistic and much of the rhetorical dimensions of text and taik, are controlled by this pragmatic module.

In other words, whereas the semantic module specifies what people want to say or write, the pragmatic module controls how they must do so in an interactionally and socially appropriate and effective way, how discourse 'fits' the current context, and what social acts are accomplished by the discourse.

Whereas in writing or monological communication, the context model may be relatively fixed during production, in conversational interaction such a model is of course continually updated, according to the feedback received from other participants. Models of each participant in a communicative event will partly be identical or similar, but also partly different — each participant interprets and representa the 'current context' in an at least slightly different way. These different constructions may be the basis of

corhmunicative misunderstandings and conflicts, although language users have effective strategies to solve such problems of misunderstanding.

The semantic module

The semantic module provides the information needed for the meaning construction of discourse. It may draw on virtually all representations in personal and social memory. This is not surprising, sine we may speak about virtually everything we know or believe, including what other people know or believe. In order to talk about past and current personal experiences, as well as about intentions for future actions, or what language users know from others or the media about any situation or event, they draw upon relevant experience and event models in personal memory. But they know and believe much more than the specific facts represented in their models about personal experiences. For instance they may also want to express social representations, namely, what we know and believe in our group or culture.

Obviously, people do not usually express all they know or believe, simply because all this would not be relevant in the present situation, because the recipients already may know or believe many of these things, or because for whatever reason they do not want the recipients to know what they know or believe. These constraints are contextual and therefore provided by the pragmatic module and the information in the context model (the representation of what the speaker believes about the beliefs of the recipient). Generally, then, only a small fragment of contextually relevant information of event models will be selected for the construction of discourse meaning. Other information may be left implicit, and may at most be signalled by appropriate discourse structures, so that the recipients will be able to infer it when they need or want to do that. Obviously, the more beliefs already shared by the participants, the more discourse may leave meaning (representing such beliefs) implicit.

The output of the combined (ongoing) operation of the pragmatic and semantic modules is a semantic representation. Whereas our knowledge, as represented in personal event models, may well be accessible and available, we usually do not know in advance what model information will be included in this semantic representation. That is, language users have recourse to effective strategies that allow them to continuously adapt the selection of what they know and believe to the constraints of the ongoingly constructed and updated context model (e.g. what they think is interesting for the recipients, what they need to say in order to remain coherent, and so on).

What language users normally do know in advance, however, is the overall topics or themes of the discourse (or discourse fragment) they are about to produce. In the semantic module, therefore, these overall topics or semantic macrostructures play a fundamental strategic role — they allow not only global planning (and global understanding) of discourse, but also the management of a large amount of information over a longer period of

speaking or writing (or reading). 3 Topics thus also allow language users to make their discourses coherent and to announce to recipients what they are going to speak about (which may be essential to get the floor or attention in the first place). It is also for this reason why many discourse types typically express their 'upcoming' topics up front, for instance in various forms of announcements, summaries or headlines. In comprehension this will allow the recipients to activate or build up the top structure of relevant mental models. They will know what the discourse will be 'about', and this knowledge facilitates further understanding.

Under the overall control of topics, the semantic production module finally produces the actual 'meanings' of discourse, in the form of a locally coherent sequence of propositions. This happens by selecting the more detailed, lower level propositions of the model a speaker has about an event. As suggested, the context model specifies which lower-level information will be relevant for actual expression, and which information may be left implicit. Besides the construction of minimal local coherence, the speaker may also shape its semantic representations following a number of strategies that allow the differentiation of importance, focus, foregrounding and other forms of information distribution and emphasis. Obviously, this linear production of the meaning(s) of a discourse is also a strategic, ongoing process, in which constraints from other modules may influence current meaning production: ongoing thought and inferences, current perceptions and experiences, interpretations of reactions of recipients (in oral discourse), as well as any change in the ongoing context model.

The formulation module

The formulation module takes the output of the pragmatic and semantic modules and produces actual utterances in a given natural language, using the various discourse rules, grammar and lexicon of that language. This production process is exceedingly complex. It takes place in working memory and also has a strategic nature, with continuous feedback from the pragmatic and semantic modules. Production is linear, and proceeds word by word, phrase by phrase, clause by clause, gradually translating units of semantic representations, such as concepts or propositions, into lexical expressions, in their appropriate grammatical order. Although mistakes can be corrected, the strategic nature of discourse production allows for a lot of 'imperfection', as long as the language user is being understood and speaks or writes appropriately in the present context.

Specific semantic structures of the meanings to be expressed may thus be mapped onto specific syntactic structures (word order, clause structure); agency may for instance be embodied in the expression of a lexical item in first ('topicaP) position and as the subject of the sentence; relations between propositions may be marked by conditional or functional connectives, and main topics may be placed up front in headlines.

From these examples we also see that the formulation module not only calls upon the grammar and the lexicon, but also on other discourse structure rules and strategies, such as the structures of stories or news reports. To write a news report, a journalist knows that the report should have a headline or will expect someone else to write one for the report) and a lead as initial discourse categories, and that these should express the most relevant information in the present context, namely, the topics being constructed for the present discourse.

Finally, when combined with lexical expressions, semantic 'content' íerived from the semantic module (and its event model) and controlled by the pragmatic module (and its context model) will be actually expressed in talk or writing, following the usual phonological rules, for example of intonation, or the graphical rules for the current genre.

Producing ideology

The details of these respective modules are not relevant here. 4 My brief summary is merely intended to give an idea of how mental representations 'get finto' actual text and talk. Conversely, they also explain how the understanding of text and talk may contribute to the construction of mental representations. The question now is how ideologies may interfere in these processes. Again, there are several ways in which this may happen.

Direct expression

Since under special conditions all accessible mental representations are available for direct expression, ideological propositions may sometimes be expressed directly. That is, if the contextual constraints of the pragmatic module allow this, the semantic module may directly select the relevant ideological propositions as input for the semantic representations (meanings) of discourse. This is for instance the case in explicitly ideological discourses, such as propaganda, theoretical analysis, and for discourses in which ideological explanation, justification or legitimation is at stake. People in that case primarily speak as group members, and express what believe in. In a dispute with the unions or the government, for instance, managers may directly state that 'the market does not want any government interferencé . Obviously such direct expressions may be combined with more particular ones, such as personal experiences. Moral conclusions of stories about minorities, for instance, may express the negative group evaluation that 'we are not used to that heré . Given the abstract and general nature of ideological beliefs, also the meanings (and their formulations) need to be general and abstract, and feature generic concepts and expressions.

Instantiated direct expression

Ideological beliefs may also be expressed through instantiation (or specification) in mental models in episodic (personal) memory of the general

240 Discourse

propositions in social memory. For instance, instead of talking about markets and governments in general, thus, specific managers may express that they do not like the interference of this government. Disclaimers often feature such instantiated direct expressions. As a strategy of positive selfpresentation, people may begin negative statements about minorities, by saying'I have nothing against minorities, but ...'. The first clause of this type of utterances, realizing an apparent denial, instantiates for the current speaker the general opinion, derived from a non-racist ideology, that one should not say negative things about minorities. That is, as soon as general moral mies, attitudes and ideologies are applied to the present context and its participants, we have an example of an instantiated direct expression of ideologies. In formal terms, this means that variables are replaced by the constants (for participants, time, place, etc.) of the present context.

Direct expressions of ideological attitudes

What has been said for the direct expression of ideologies also applies to the direct expression of the domain-specific attitudes controlled by ideologies. For instance, under the control of a racist ideology, group members may say that they are in favour of a restriction of immigration of non-European people. As with the expression of ideologies they may do so in general, abstract terms, and use the group-reflexive or they may do this in the instantiated form and use personal pronouns referring to specific participants or subgroups.

In all the cases mentioned aboye, the information of social representations is directly combined with the constraints of the pragmatic module and entered into the semantic module of the discourse production unit. Conversely, in interpretation and (critical) analysis, discourse produced in this way may be understood as explicitly expressing or indirectly signalling such ideological beliefs. We should not forget, however, the possible constraints of the context model. Both recipients and analysts should know that such expressions may be made for a number of special social reasons, such as social compliance, or the realization of specific goals (e.g. get a job). That is, the pragmatic module may require people to be polite, tactical, or otherwise forced to hide their'real opinions'.

Event model expression

Most discourse is about concrete experiences and events, and therefore derives its information from event models, as described aboye. Ideological and attitudinal group beliefs in this case may be instantiated and applied to concrete personal situations. Instead of general opinions about noninterference of the government in the market, we may for instance have a concrete news story in which specific managers resent a government policy to have them register the number of members of ethnic minorities groups in firms in order to get information about minority employment and discrimina-

tion. Similarly, beliefs about the criminal activities of a Turkish neighbour, which may or not be based on personal experiences of the storyteller, may similarly be an instantiation and application of the general ideological opinion that minorities are criminal. Once part of the event model (the personal construction or interpretation of the event), this personal opinion may be used as input to the semantic module. Under the constraints of the context model, people may or may not include such opinions in the semantic representation of a story or an argument.

Context model expression

Since all models may thus be ideologically influenced, this is also the case for the context model. People may represent co-participants in a negative way only because they are members of specific social groups. Their intentions, goals and actions may enact beliefs derived from ideologies and attitudes, for instance when they directly intend to derogate co-participants.

Thus, intentionally or unintentionally issuing a command instead of a polite request in a context where Chis would not be appropriate, may count as an act of discrimination. The same is true for the contextual constraints on deference and politeness, and other interactional conditions of appropriateness.

Negative representations of other participants in many ways influence the semantic and formulation modules. Beliefs of events models that normally would not be expressed because of contextual constraints of politeness or non-discrimination may now be admitted to the semantic representation of the discourse. Similarly, also various expression structures may directly be affected by such 'biased' context models, for instance in the use of impolite pronouns or intonation, and lexical items may be selected that signal negative opinions about people spoken to or spoken about.

The fundamental role of context models in shaping (and interpreting) discourse by the participants of communicative events, should again wam us that a 'dame ideological analysis of discourse is theoretically and practically impossible. We should always know the details of the context in order to know whether and what type of ideological control is at work. Indeed, the 'same' statement in one context may have an ideological source, which it may not have in another context — depending on the speaker, group membership, intentions and goals, circumstances and so on. People may for many reasons want to conceal their personal or group beliefs, or they may express beliefs they do not have. They may feign, fie, dissimulate, be ironic or metaphorical, and in many other ways say what they do not mean fiterally. Thus, contexts in many ways 'key' the meanings and expressions of discourse, and, without knowledge of that key, we are unable to understand, infer or criticize their discourse or communicative act. In the studies of specific ideological and discursive strategies in the following chapters, this important warning should be heeded.

Concluding remark

The discourse production processes briefly discussed in this chapter appear to overlap with the ways underlying ideologies control other social representations, such as attitudes, which in turn may influence the opinions of context and event models, which finally define the contents for the modules of discourse production. Discursive and ideological production and reproduction thus run parallel, but at the same time it has been shown that the expression of ideologies usually requires several stages. Few discourses are wholly ideological in the sense that they express 'puyé group ideology. However, general ideological opinions may of course be 'applied' in specific models and thus provide the ideological basis for actual discourse production.