прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Prejudice in Discourse

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Dijk, Teun Adrianus van, 1943-

Prejudice in discourse.

(Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0166-6258; V:3) Bibliography. p. 159

1. Discourse analysis. 2. Prejudice and antipathies. 3. Conversation. 4. Minorities. 5.

ISBN 90-272-2536-2 (European)

ISBN 0-915027-43-7 (U.S.),

© Copyright 1984 - John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or i. any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

For Philomena

PREFACE

This book reports results from the interdisciplinary project `Prejudice in Conversations about Ethnic Minorities in the Netherlands', carried out at the University of Amsterdam. This project has two major aims. First, a cognitive model is being, designed to represent ethnic attitudes in general and prejudice in particular. Second, an analysis is being made of how people talk about ethnic minority groups and how such talk expresses their underlying prejudices. Empirical data have been gathered in some 120 nondirected interviews in various neighborhoods of Amsterdam. In the present study we will focus on the discourse characteristics of prejudiced talk. Only limited attention will be paid to the social-psychological theory about ethnic stereotypes and prejudice. In a later study we hope to report more in detail about this cognitive dimension of the project.

The appearance of this book in the series Pragmatics and Beyond needs some comment. Although we will also pay attention to pragmatic features of talk in the narrow sense, that is, to illocutionary functions of utterances as speech acts, much of our analysis lies 'beyond' this conception of pragmatics. First, also other levels of discourse analysis will be atended to. And second, we are primarily interested in the relationships between discourse, on the one hand, and the cognitive and social contexts of language use, on the other hand. Prejudice and prejudiced talk require an interdisciplinary account in tercos of cognitive models of social attitudes and intergroup conflicts as well as in terms of a sociology of communicative interaction and its context. This means that our study belongs to a broader, empirical approach to pragmatics, as it was advocated by Charles Morris several decades ago. Theoretically, however, this research should be located at the boundaries of discourse analysis, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and microsociology.

An important motivation for both our project and the present book is the realization that ethnic prejudice and racism are a rapidly spreading problem in our society, especially also in Western European countries. The immigration of large groups of black people from the former colonies and of 'guest

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Aims of this study

In multiethnic societies the different ethnic groups constitute a prominent topic of thought and talk for each other. Especially when new groups become salient, e.g. _by recent immigration, conflicts, or socioeconomic circumstances, members of the autochtonous majority group will regularly engage in conversation about such newcomers. Such talk is crucial for the informal distribution of beliefs and for the expression and social sharing of attitudes about minority groups. Typically, it is also an important occasion for the formulation and persuasive diffusion of ethnic prejudice in society. This study deals with some of the properties of such prejudiced talk among majority group members. Our examples will be taken from interviews held in Amsterdam about 'foreigners' in the Netherlands, in particular immigrant workers from Morocco and Turkey, and black citizens from the former Dutch colony of Surinam. Yet, our discussion has a wider scope, and hopes to reveal more general features of racist discourse. In that respect, it may contribute to our insight into talk and communication about minority groups, and hence into the forms of discrimination and racism in many other `Western' countries.

Our systematic description of prejudiced discourse is not just an exercise in applied discourse analysis. Rather, we will focus on those features of discourse that may be relevant for the expression of ethnic attitudes and for the diffusion of such attitudes in the community. That is, prejudiced talk is on the one hand taken and analyzed as a prominent form of social interaction and of verbal discrimination by majority group members. On the other hand, it is examined as an observable indication of assumed cognitive representations of ethnic attitudes and of the strategies for the mental and social uses of such 'delicate' beliefs. In other words, discourse is both our object and a method of investigation.

Due to space limitations, however, we will only pay limited attention to the cognitive and social dimensions of prejudiced discourse, and focus on the various structures of talk about minorities. Thus, we will investigate

PREJUDICE IN DISCOURSE

workers' from the Mediterranean countries has challenged the widespread myth of racial tolerance in our countries. Within a wider socioeconomic, cultural, and historical analysis of racism, it has therefore become imperative to thoroughly study the processes in which racist beliefs and attitudes are formed and diffused. Besides the mass media, school textbooks, or official (political, legal) discourse, it is especially informal everyday conversation among majority members that has contributed to the spreading and acceptance of prejudiced attitudes and to possible consequences of such beliefs in discriminatory interaction with minority members. In this sense, this study is also intended as a demonstration of the feasibility and necessity of an applied, critical approach to discourse analysis. To guarantee its readability for students or researchers from several disciplines as well as for a wider public of people interested in prejudice, we have tried to keep the theoretical framework and the terminology as simple as possible. Detailed theoretical studies will appear as independent articles elsewhere.

We are indebted to several groups of students who assisted us in collecting the interview data for this study, and to the members of the prejudice project at the University of Amsterdam for many discussions and comments on earlier versions of parts of this report. We are indebted to Livia Polanyi for her corrections in the English translations of the original Dutch interview fragments. The Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO) is gratefully acknowledged for its funding of this project.

Special thanks are due to Philomena Essed for her general support and advice, as well as for numerous discussions about the subtleties of racism as it is experienced by black minority members. With love and gratitude, therefore, this book is dedicated to her.