прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Ideology

mon, precisely provides the crucial criterion for the transformation of personal knowledge into social knowledge.

The same is obviously true for opinions. If social members repeatedly represent many other group members as expressing a specific opinion, they may generalize and assume that this is a typical opinion of the group as a whole. This holds true both for the generalization of ingroup opinions as well as for outgroup opinions, although ingroup opinions may be encountered more often, be found more credible, and so on, and therefore more easily acceptable than those of outgroup members. Inter-group perception and differentiation thus also takes places at the level of opinion differentiation. Our facts or opinions may be sufficient reason to reject, a priori, those of others, disregarding an 'independene evaluation of their validity. In fact, group differentiation may be based only on the perception of different ;social opinions and not on other social membership criteria.

Finally, social opinion clusters (attitudes) may be further generalized and abstracted from as ideologies, as described earlier. In this case, further 'decontextualizatioñ regards specific social domains or circumstances. Por instance, women may acquire a number of relevant attitudes, for example >; 'about equal pay, glass ceilings, child cace or abortion, and then abstract from the various roles (and inequality or lack of autonomy) in situations at work, the family or in politics, and derive the general ideological propositions that represent what these different social situations have in common. Theoretical

and empirical details of these processes are , as yet unknown.

It was suggested earlier that the acquisition of ideologies need not be indirect and based on models, but may also be direct, that is, based on general statements about social representations and ideologies in discourse. Instead of personal experiences and opinions, thus, social members may be confronted with explicit attitudinal or ideological discourse and derive relevant opinion propositions directly from this discourse, without the intervention of models. Since no 'facts' sustain such social representations, contextual conditions are crucial — speakers/writers need to be very credible before people accept their general statements as valid. Again, decontextualdation may operate here — the same statements are being made by many other ingroup members, so that such consensus information alone will cnhance credibility. Yet, social members may still want to evaluate such general statements with respect to their other social representations, and may then accept them as valid when they are consistent with these other tepresentations, suspend judgement when there is no consistency, and reject them as biased when they are inconsistent with (many) other representations, or eventually re-evaluate their current social representations. It is only this latter process that one should call 'attitude changé .

We now have an approximate idea about the ways (opinion) discourse influences the mind, which representations are involved, and how social beliefs, including ideologies, may be confirmed or changed by discourse. We have found that context models play a crucial role in the construction of personal and social opinions, and the same is true for the event models and

social representations of social members. Both sources are used as the basis for the evaluation of discourse as valid or invalid. Ideologies may be acquired 'empirically' but indirectly through the decontextualization of particular and personal models to more general and more abstract representations, or they may more directly be formed by explicit expressions of social beliefs. Evaluation of social beliefs usually requires decontextualization, however, so that even for explicit ideological discourse, repetition may be needed by various and credible sources before an ideology is being accepted. Most crucially, however, for all social representations, and especially their ideological underpinnings, is that they should'work'. That is, they should be applicable in peoplé s everyday lives, in the adequate accomplishment of social practices, in understanding such practices and other people, and in the successful participation in discourse.

26 Legitirnation

What is legitimation?

Legitimation is one of the main social functions of ideologies. In classical approaches, thus, dominant ideologies were usually described in terms of their role in the legitimation of the ruling class, in particular, and the dominant order, in general. In this chapter, I examine sorne properties of legitimation and its relationships to ideology and discourse. 1 In philosophy, law, and the social and political sciences, legitímation is a notion that has been extensively studied. 2 However, in discourse analysis, it is much less studied than, say, politeness or persuasion, although legitimation is a prominent function of language use and discourse.

As may be expected in the framework of this book, legitimation will primarily be defined in a discourse analytical framework. 3 It is obviously a social (and political) act, and it is typically accomplished by text or talle Often, it also has an interactive dimension, as a discursive response to a challenge of oné s legitimacy. Pragmatically, legitimation is related to the speech act of defending oneself, in that one of its appropriateness conditions is often that the speaker is providing good reasons, grounds or acceptable motivations for past or present action that has been or could be criticized by others.

However, the communicative act of legitimation has several further constraints, and does not, like defences, presuppose actual attacks or challenges, but at most possible ones. Theoretically, legitimation is not an illocutionary act at all, but (like argumentation and storytelling) a more broadly defined communicative act that usually requires more than the utterance of one single proposition. Legitimation may be a com4plex, ongoing discursive practice involving a set of interrelated discourses.

Legitimating discourse is usually accomplished in institutional contexts. Although people may perhaps be said to legitimate' their everyday actions in informal conversations, such usage would probably count as being derived from a more formal lexical register. In everyday informal talk, we would rather speak of justifications, explanations or accounts. In all these cases, the crucial point is that speakers explain why they did or do something, and why such an action is reasonable or, in general, socially acceptable. In such acts, we may expect arguments, that is, references to reasons and to courses of action that had or have to be taken because of contextual constraints, causes or opinions. Moreover, this family of commu-

nicative acts is interactively engaged in especially, as we already saw, when these reasons or these actions referred to are not obviously acceptable. People justify or account for their actions mostly if they know or expect that others might be puzzled or, more strongly, if others disagree, condenen, challenge or attack them because of these actions.

Legitimation, then, is the institutional counterpart of such justifications. That is, speakers are usually described as engaging in legitimation as members of an institution, and especially as occupying a special role or position. Legitimation in that case is a discourse that justifies 'official' action in terms of the rights and duties, politically, socially or legally associated with that role or position. Indeed, the act of legitimation entails that an institutional actor believes or claims to respect official norms, and hence to remain within the prevalent moral order.

Legitimation presupposes institutional restrictions of social power, as defined by law, regulations, rights or duties that set the boundaries of institutional decision-making and action. All those who have no absolute power may routinely need to legitimate their action, although, for many (e.g. face-keeping) reasons, even dictators will regularly engage in various forms of legitimation. 6

Because of this institutional nature, legitimation may not be restricted to a justification of official action, but even of the position, role or institution itself. Accusations of illegitimacy often make normative inferences from actions to the actor, or about his or her very incumbency in the position.

Indeed, in a democracy, a president of a country, when found to have engaged, ex officio, in serious ilegal action, may expect to be impeached. And the security services of a dictatorship accused of breaches of human rights may be abolished by democratic governments because of their illegitimacy.

These examples also suggest that legitimation is not only engaged in by persons in some official position, but also by institutional actors, such as organizations, official bodies, parliaments, and so on. That is, legitimation may be a forro of collective action, and hence aims to justify the actions of the institution itsel£

Legitimating discourses presuppose norms and values. They implicitly or explicitly state that some course of action, decision or policy is luse within the given legal or political system, or more broadly within the prevalent moral order of society.

Given the relation between legitimation and institutional power, legitimation discourse is prototypically political. Those expected to legitimate themselves are those who occupy or are appointed to public office and who exercise power because of such office. In a state of law, Chis implies, obviously, that they not only respect widely shared social conventions, agreements and norms, but especially the law. 7

In the real world of politics, legitimation discourse may, however, be expected especially when officials are accused of breaking the law, or when they expect principled opposition against their decisions, policies or political

action. Indeed, legitimation may not be necessary in normal courses of events, in routines, and when no challenges to institutional power or authority are imminent. They become imperative, however, in moments of crisis, when the legitimacy of the state, an institution or an office is at stake. Legitimation, then, becomes part of the strategies of crisis management, in which ingroups and their institutions need self-legitimation, and outgroups must be delegitimated.

Note that the concept of legitimation used here has a top-down direction: elites or institutions legitimate themselves especially 'downwards', that is, with respect to clients, the citizens, or the population at large. There is also a complementary form of legitimation, which is bottom-up, and involves the legitimation of, for example, the state, elites or leaders by the 'masses'. For instance, it has often intrigued social scientists why many forros of oppression and inequality are so often accepted or condoned, or even normatively approved by people in subordinate positions. 8 One explanation for such approval is 'equity': people often think that their subordinate position or the dominance of the elites are deserved because of their respective actions or performance. The criteria for this kind of self-evaluation, however, are often established by the elites themselves, so that in fact this form of popular legitimation is rigged from the start.

Legitimation and ideology

Within these succinctly summarized general principies of legitimation, we now need to examine what the role is of ideology in such acts of legitimation. Indeed, how can ideologies be an Instrumene of legitimation?

We have seen that legitimation presupposes moral or legal grounds for the judgement of offlcial action, such as norms, values or formal laws. In our analysis of ideology, we have seen that ideologies, as the basis of the social representations of groups and their members, also presuppose norms and values. For specific groups, thus, ideologies provide the foundation of judgement and action, and hence also the basis for group-related legitimation. Thus, democratic ideologies provide the basis for judgements about the legitimacy of 'democratic action . 9

Similarly, xenophobic groups or parties may engage in racist actions, but usualll deny that such actions are racist, and hence outside of the moral order. Instead, they will claim that it is 'natural' to make a distinction or even to establish a hierarchy between Us and Them, to accord priority to Us, or to give preferential access to symbolic or material resources because of Our blood, soil or innate characteristics. Racist ideology, self-servingly appropriating general social norms and values about precedence and rights of the ingroup, thus embodies the basic principles of the shared opinions that control racist actions as well as their legitimation." As is the case for justiflcations and accounts in general, socially shared representations, and

especially the evaluative ones, provide the grounds for judgements about what is right and what is wrong, good or bad.

In sum, ideologies form the basic principies of group-internal legitimation. They do so by specifying the ideological categories of membership criteria, the activities, the goals, the social position, the resources (or power base) as well as the norms and values for each group. These norms and values not only regulate and organize the actions of group members, but also may be used to justify (or indeed to challenge) the social position of the group in relation to other groups.

It is at this point where ideology and legitimation interact most specifically, in the control of inter-group relations, such as those of power, dominance and resistance. Indeed, as we have seen, the classical approach to ideology was to define them in terms of their role in the legitimation of dominance.

Since, however, ideologies are by definition group based, and hence feature propositions that are in the interests of the own group, their consequences for group action may conflict with those of others. Indeed, membership criteria, actions, goals, values or access to resources of one group may be inconsistent with those of other groups. This means that to legitimate group action not only for group-internal purposes, but also for inter-group purposes, a group needs to show that its basic principies are just, and possibly that those of the other group are wrong. Or rather, it may claim that its basic principies are general, if not universal, and hence apply to everyone.

To legitimate actions in a social conflict and in a situation of inequality in which one group is or may be challenged by another, usually involves the claim that these actions are within the general moral order, and hence not justified only by partisan, self-serving grounds. Group ideologies may thus be declared to be 'common sense', or principies that should be followed by all social members, also those of other groups. As we have seen, persuasion and manipulation may thus be combined with legitimation as soon as one group tries to impose its ideology on another group or is able to have it adopted by more subtle means. 12

Delegitimation

At the same time, this obviously implies that opposing groups, as well as their basic principies (ideologies), will be delegitimated. Ideological and social conflict thus take the form of a struggle not only over ideas, or over scarce social resources, but also over legitimacy. Domination in this case will crucially involve those strategies that are geared towards the delegitimation of internal dissidence as well as outside competition or 'threat'. These strategies may themselves follow the categories of the ideological schema, and thus challenge the very existence or identity of the other group, for example as follows for the case of delegitimating minority groups, refugees or other immigrants."

1 Delegitimating membership: they do not belong here, in our group, in our country in our city, in our neighbourhood, in our organization.

2 Delegitimating actions, including discourse: they have no right to engage in what they do or say, for example work here, or accuse us of racism; criminalization of actions (e.g. 'ilegal entry').

3 Delegitimating goals: they only come here to take advantage of our welfare system.

4 Delegitimating norms and values: their values are not ours; They should adapt to our culture; We are not used to that here.

5 Delegitimating social position: for example, they are not real refugees, but merely economic ('fakeD ones.

6 Delegitimating access to social resources: they have no priority to get jobs, housing, work, welfare, education, knowledge, etc.

For each social group that is seen to challenge the dominant group(s) or the status quo, the main identifying categories defining the group may be delegitimated. Thus, for goal-defined groups such as social movements, the strategy will focus on the delegitimation of their goals, as is the case for the womeñ s movement or the peace movement. If for instance the goal is to end patriarchy or sexism, this goal may be delegitimated by denying that gender inequality is a major problem in society." For ideological opponents, the basic ideologies will be attacked as being inconsistent with the dominant values. And in the neo-liberal mover to abolish welfare, such access to a crucial resource will be delegitimated by reference to the need to push back the role of the state, and to emphasize the need for people to take their own initiative to find a job.

These examples also show that strategies of delegitimation generally presuppose norms, values and ideologies that are claimed to be universal or widely accepted in society. Dominant groups will in such a case not openly refer to their own interests, but on the contrary engage in arguments that claim that their actions or policies are for the common good or are good for the dominated groups themselves. This is for instance typically the case in the political delegitimation of immigration and hence of afi immigrants. It is not surprising that the most pervasive adjective in official discourse about immigrants is that they are 'filegar. By thus portraying immigrants as people who break the law, the strategy at the same time implies that they are criminals, and place themselves outside of the civil society, so that immigration restriction, expulsion and withholding social services to immigrants become legitimate.

Thus, in Europe, the elites will not refer to their own privileges when opposing immigration, but will focus on the consequences for poor (white) people in the inner cities, or may emphasize that it would be better for immigrants if they would help to build up their own country.

In the same way, the peace movement may be delegitimated br emphasizing its violente, and hence violating the value of non-violence. l Unions, or strikers may be delegitimated by focusing on the dire consequences for the

economy (the common good) when their demands are realized, if not on their illegal actions, their violence, their 'communise ideology, or the threat to freedom (of the market). 16

Legitimation, delegitimation and discourse

It has become clear aboye that legitimation is a complex social act that is typically exercised by talk and text. Strategies of legitimation and delegitimation are similarly discursive, and involve the usual moves of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation we shall farther examine in the next chapter.

But as is the case for all social action, discourse itself may also be (de)legitimated. This is a crucial strategy, because discourse was found to have a primary role in the formation and change of underlying attitudes and ideologies, that is, in persuasion. If the public discourse of any social group can be controlled or delegitimated, a dominant or competing group can establish hegemony over the symbolic domain, namely, the control of the meanings and minds of the recipients of such discourse. In war, civil war, revolution or social conflict, one of the main targets of attack will be radio or television stations, or the exercise of censorship. And where coercive force, prohibition or other legal measures are impossible or ineffective, strategies of delegitimating or otherwise marginalizing opponent discourse will be resorted to.

Strategies geared towards the delegitimation of discourse take several forms. First, they may focus on the context of production, on access and use of discourse, for example by challenging the legitimacy of communication participants (who has the right to speak, or to speak for others?), speaker roles, setting, goals, knowledge, expertise and so on. Newspapers may thus deny representatives of 'illegitimate' groups access to the newspaper, boycott press conferences, ignore press releases, or represen t leaders or speakers of movements as unreliable sources in newsgathering.' 7

One very effective form of ideological speaker control is when dominant groups are able to influence the minds of the speakers themselves, through the interiorization of dominant beliefs, attitudes or ideologies. There are many examples, for instance in the domains of class, gender or where dominated groups have been confronted so consistently with legitimate, official discourse, that they may accept that they are indeed inferior, deviant or otherwise illegitimate. We have seen in the previous chapter how subtle processes of persuasion and manipulation are able to create preferred mental models of events. These models may then be generalized to more fundamental, shared social self-representations of a group. These will in tum control the everyday judgements and social practices of the members of the dominated group, in such a way that they are consistent with the interests of the dominant group. Of course, this is the standard example of how dominant ideologies work in the formation of 'false consciousness', and we

have seen that in the real world, such ideological hegemony is seldom complete, given the many forms of mental and social resistance by dominated groups. Obviously, these forms of counter-power and resistance are themselve§ again in need of legitimation, which itself is based on a counterideology.

Yet, given the close relation between ideology and social identity, such ideological brainwashing may also affect the very self-confidence of whole groups. This has often been observed for women and blacks confronted with pervasive derogating discourse by men and whites, respectively. It is only through raising group self-consciousness and ideological de-programming that the effects of this form of ideological hegemony may be countered.

Second, once access to public discourse cannot be prohibited or denied, opponent discourse may itself be delegitimated by many moves. These may include, for example, citing out of context, focusing on negative or threatening elements in discourse, emphasizing the violation of common values, or by framing such discourse in a specific way, for example through negative speaker description - Marxise , 'radical', 'fundarnentalisf,, etc.). Thus, of the speeches of 'radical' Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan, the media will typically focus on his anti-semitic remarks, as they also did when African American leader Jessie Jackson spoke of New York as Ilymietowñ . In this case, it may be left to the readers to draw conclusions about the reliability and the legitimacy of the speakers of the others. Another framing strategy is to use authoritative, and hence legitimate' speakers, for example police officers or the mayor, in order to correct possible accusations by minority groups after a 'riot'. Indeed, as I have found in my work on racism and the press, minority representatives seldom are allowed to speak alone, and hence function as the only source about ethnic events. This is especially the case in crucial accusations, for example of racism. Not only will these be presented as fundamentally doubtful, and hence between quotes, but also they will never go unchallenged by the (white) authorities.

Finally, the delegitimation of opponent or dissident discourse by dominant (political, media, etc.) groups and organizations may focus on the possible effects of such discourse, and hence on the recipients. Of course, this may be done, indirectly, by presenting speakers and discourse themselves as illegitimate, for example while being unreliable, violent, radical or deviant. Event models and context models of recipients are thus persuasively oriented towards negative representations of the 'illegitimaté speakers or to a rejection of what they say as being true. But, even reception itself may be obstructed, for example by programming broadcasts at times when the audience is small, publishing items on inside pagel or inconspicuous places, by jamming the airwaves, imposing duties on distribution of radical media, preventing the public from listening to speeches, and so on.

Also in democratic systems that celebrate free speech, there are many ways to delegitimate dissident or opponent discourse in many overt or subtle ways. This essentially happens by preventing or impairing access — to the media of public discourse, to fair representation, and especially to the minds

of the audience at large. At the same time, of course, own group discourses will be favoured in the opposite direction, and will have optimal access to context, text and reception.

For the discussion in this book, this analysis of the (de)legitimation of discourse is important in understanding ideological conflict and reproduction. If dissident or opponent discourse is delegitimated, and hence the 'normal' processes of communication and persuasion are impaired, also the construction of altemative ideologies is made more difficult. In social, political and ideological conflict and crisis, it is vital that members of the ingroup, or members of allied or neutral groups do not become 'infected' by the ideological virus of the opponents. Once such an ideology is allowed to spread, it will increasingly control the social representations, models and hence discourse and other actions of the population at large. In thát case, not only may the ideological struggle be lost, but the social and political struggle as well, if the persuaded others act in accordance with their new ideology. The strategies of the virulent anti-communist witch-hunt by Joe McCarthy in the USA are a prominent example of the forms of ideological delegitimation described here.

As we have seen, strategies of delegitimation presuppose power and imply dominance, that is, power abuse. In the domain of discourse and communication, such power need not merely be political or socio-economic. It may also be symbolic. That is, dominant discourse may be presented as legitimate because it has authority and prestige, and hence is associated with truth. 19 Thus, politics and especially the media and science exercise ideological control because their discourses are legitimated by the control over truth criteria, such as information, evidence and expertise. If no counter-evidence, counter-expertise or altemative information is (made) available by their opponents, thus, such elite discourse is self-legitimating because of its exclusive access to such symbolic resources as authoritative knowledge and opinion.

Moreover, powerful elites also control the institutions that organize such special access to knowledge, truth and opinion, such as universities, laboratories, think tanks, intelligence agencies, secret services, bureaucracies and so on. That is, their authority defined in terms of truth claims may be effective not merely by preferential access to public discourse or media control, but albo by the 'incontrovertible' (reliable, scientific, etc.) evidence that will back up such claims Thus, the strategies of legitimation are most effective when they are able to establish the very norms, values and ideologies by which both dominant and dominated groups and their actions are judged. In the next chapter, we will examine some of the discursive properties that may be brought to bear in such ideological legitimation and control.