прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Communicating Racism
.pdf92Communicating Racism
(14)(III-RL-2)
I:Is that also one of the reasons why you live in this neighborhood?
W:No, oh no, not at all, no by the way that is that carnes us too far you know what we are talking about now ... No ... of course not, that is not why I live here, that would be ridiculous .. .
The directness of the interviewer is met with repeated and insistent denial, even when the woman has said earlier that she is glad to live in this neighborhood so that she does not have foreign neighbors. Yet, when made explicit, the inference of the interviewer would clearly be inconsistent with a nonprejudiced attitude, so that the woman is obliged to deny that inference for the sake of positive self-presentation. Interestingly, the woman also makes an avoidance move when she says that such a conclusion and, in fact, the very topic, would carry the discussion "too far," which could be read as a polite attempt to say "that is none of your damn business." It is at this point of the talk that the delicacy of the topic and especially the somewhat provocative strategy of the interviewer have become too "close" to the real attitudes of the speaker.
That such moves are very general may be concluded also from the frequent examples in our California interviews, as in the following:
(15)(A-LG-3)
I would put up one HECK of a battle if my daughter decided to marry Black ( ... ) and it doesn't have to do with superiority or anything else, it's just too vast a difference for me to be able to cross over.
(16)(A-LA-1)
And then this one Black family moved in a few years ago [and it unsettled the other people], not that they were prejudiced, but just from whatever subconscious attit .. .
(17)(A-TD-4)
I don't think they [in the office] have any aversion to them [Blacks].
So, denial is a move typically used to dispel a possible interpretation that prejudice or racism is involved.
Explanatioh. Statements about delicate topics or controversial opinions usually need various forms of explanation. Aboye, we gave the example about noise ethnic groups in the neighborhood are said to cause, and giving an explanation of such a negative characteristic may somewhat mitigate the straighforward negative statement. This is exactly what the woman does, as follows:
(18)(III-RL-2)
W:Noise, mainly noise
I:... onty noise?
Structures 93
W:Yes, it is the the 1 uhm ... people have a different Llfe-style than we have ... Look, we are just Dutch people, we live indoors, we
are used to the climate, and well, those people come from a warm country, they have always used have always been used to living OUTdoors to ... YES uhh a certain kind of noisiness in their behavior is NORmal, you see, you only have to go and walk in the streets in Turkey or Morocco, that is a bustling of people, that is very NICE, that is very pleasant, but they also will they ALSO do that here and we are not used to that ( ... )
This fragment shows a move to explain (and partly excuse) why immigrants are so noisy. In fact, the explanation takes the form of a complex argumentation. It is not simply asserted that the immigrants have a different life-style, but also the reason for such a difference is further explained by a quasi-ethnographic description of daily life in their home countries. The assertion that their behavior there is "normal" is again a move that is intended to eliminate the possible inference that the woman thinks being noisy is deviant in general.
Explanations, also in California, tend to be framed in terms of cultural differences. Consider, for instance, the explanation given for the lack of knowledge of English of Mexican women in San Diego:
(19)(A-TD-4)
The husband is the only one who speaks English. And they have a
little boy who speaks English, cause he goes to school now. But the mother.... the Mexican gentlemen always seem to keep their wives incommunicado. I suppose they have good reason.
Apparent Concession. In the next move of example 18, the woman goes one step further by making a positive statement about the pleasantness of this bustling life in southern streets. We may call such moves Apparent Concessions: The speaker apparently conceeds that there is also something neutral (normal) or even positive. The stereotypical form of such Apparent Concessions is "I like them a lot, but (NEGATIVE PROPOSITION)." Another form of the same move is "Dutch people also do that, but ...," as we find in the following fragment of a 40-year-old woman living in a poor high-contact neighborhood. This passage also features an explanatory move: The woman rather exceptionally mentions a possible cause of the deviant behavior of foreigners:— discrimination. She tells about an old lady who had been mugged:
94Communicating Racism
(20)(II-MA 1)
And that was also, well I am sorry, but they were foreigners, they were apparently Moroccans who did that. But God, all young people are aggressive, whether it is Turkish youth, or Dutch youth, or Surinamese youth, are aggressive. Particularly because of discrimination uhh that we have here .. .
Somewhat later in the interview, the woman musician counters the interviewer's suggestion that sometimes people are also intolerant when they have no direct experiences with ethnic minority groups at all. The woman then begins to explain (which is a move) that there are several kinds of tolerance, such as tolerance of foreigners "as such":
(21)(III-RL-2)
uhh ... how they are and that is mostly'ust fine, people have their own re!igion have their own way of life, and I have absoLUTELY nothing against that, BUT, it IS a fact that if their way of life begins to differ from mine to an EXTENT that ..
Invariably, Apparent Denials and Apparent Concessions are combined with statements of negative opinions about ethnic groups. They are the standard moves to prevent negative inferences about the speaker by accomplishing the semantic act of meaning "Even when 1 say something negative, this does not mean 1 am prejudiced," or "Although 1 say something negative about them, they also have positive characteristics (or, Dutch people also have negative characteristics)." Apparent Concessions and Denials typically introduce negative statements and thus "prepare" the recipient by establishing a correct interpretation scheme or inference base for the next statements. A clear example is the following fragment of an interview with a 77-year-old retired construction worker living in a somewhat run-down middle-class neighborhood. He resents the changing character of Amsterdam (things getting "dirtier") and says that some of his acquaintances no longer dare go out at night. The interviewer then asks what they might be afraid of and the man answers as follows:
(22)(III-AB-4X)
Yeah, ... what could they be afraid 017 They are of course afraid, uhh you can of course not point to somebody in particular, there are of course VERY sweet Surinamese, those I also know, you know, and I am sure there are also very sweet Turks and Moroccans, but the whole package of what is now going on, like that uhh that economic collapse .. .
Clearly, the association of lack of safety with the presence of ethnic minority groups comes to mirad with the speaker, but instead of directly
Structures 95
saying that he thinks people are afraid of foreigners, he starts with a stereotypical "positive" move of concession: There are also very nice ones among them. And then he does not continue to say something negative about foreigners, but rather explains in vague terms the conditions (economic recession, protest of the people, people are "kind of forced into something") that might be interpreted as causing fear of and resentment against foreigners. Thus, in this case, the apparent concession is combined with what could be called a move of Vagueness, which is one among a series of indirectness moves, which also include Association, Implication, Presupposition, Avoidance, and similar moves that are aimed at suggesting things without expressing them explicitly.
Sometimes liberal people provide a quasi-admission of their own prejudice, especially when the following statement can hardly be interpreted in that way, thus, implicitly provoking a reaction such as "but that is not prejudiced," which also implies a denial of their prejudice. The following example occurs nearly literally twice in the same California interview:
(23)(A-LG-1)
It sounds prejudiced, but I think if students only use English .. .
Mitigation. A more direct way of impression management is avoiding altogether saying (very) negative things. Interviews, therefore, abound with various types of semantic mitigations, which, however, may also be analyzed in rhetorical tercos, namely, as understatements or litotes (which stress exactly the opposite of what is said). The musician in example 21 continued:
(24)(III-RL-2)
And if you happen to want to sit down quietly for a moment, and there are stamping children and a a and a a kind of kasbah on the street at the same time, then that is a matter to which WE happen to have to adapt ourselves, and that situation is a LITTLE bit strange, isn't it .. .
From the way she tells the story, the obvious conclusion is that she finds it very "strange" (unacceptable) that we should adapt to their way of life, but the use of "a little bit" mitigates this very negative opinion. Apart from rhetorical understatement, there is often also a trace of irony or cynicism in these frequent mitigations. Similarly, when one interviewer concludes from a story by a California woman "that Blacks don't want to learn;' the interviewee mitigates her implied statement by reducing the scope of quantification: "some of it, some of it" (A-LG-3); similarly, in moves such as "You can't say that of all Blacks, but ...
(A-MS-2). Sometimes, mitigations may also take the form of correc-
96 Communicating Racism
tions, which are interview features that are typical for the spontaneous nature of "delicate" talk, as in "maybe 'civilized' isn't the right word" (A-LG-2) .
Contrast. If social conflict is perceived and expressed in talk, we may expect moves that emphasize contrast between the two groups involved. In our interviews, there is a standard move that points to the assumed favorable treatment by the authorities of ethnic groups and the neglect of "our own" people. Thus the 77-year- old man we have quoted before resents that 50 million guilders are spent to restore a housing project in a new suburb in which many Surinamese live, while at the same time there are not 7 million to pay for a machine for people who have a kidney condition:
(25)(I11- AB-4X)
You read that? That goddam G. [housing project in suburb], and that is how it starts, you know, (???), hate, 50 million, you know, and there is no 7 million for that uhh machine for kidney functions or other things .. .
Similarly, when making comparisons, people tend to focus on the perceived differences in treatment. The following elderly couple (who have an Indonesian son-in-law), alter a few very positive remarks about a Surinamese couple who lived downstairs and who left, regrettably "because you never know who will come next," also make a comparison between "us" and "them":
(26)(II-TK-4)
[Woman: ] Like at this moment. I know, in those years we needed peo-
ple, but these last years no, and they still come in by the dozen, no I think that is .. .
[Man:] |
and then I think that our children must give in so much for |
|
all those who do not want to work. If they work here, OK, |
|
but if they do not work here, they should rather go back. |
|
Abroad they do not take our children eíther when they do |
|
not work, and THAT is OUR opinion.... When our eld- |
|
est son went to Australia, well you had to know so many |
|
trades and show your diplomas because otherwise they |
|
wouldn't let you in, while here they can come in like that, |
|
and the first thing they are able to say is GAK [abbreviation |
|
for the city administration bureau which registers unem- |
|
ployment benefits]. |
This passage is a rather characteristic example of poor people who, on the one hand, have friendly contacts with their foreign neighbors, and who help them when they can, but who, on the other hand, resent what they perceive as favorable treatment. This resentment is based on
Structures 97
a number of stereotypes such as "It is easy to come into our country," "They live on unemployment money;' "We have to work hard for it," and "They take away ourjobs." Note that several of these stereotypes are of a general nature, based on media reports and hearsay, and not on direct observation in the neighborhood. In this way, the speaker's model of the situation need not conflict with their more general negative attitude schemata. Semantic contrast moves, thus, may be based on perceived competition (contrastive goals) as represented in actual experiences as well as those stored in general prejudices.
Again, the same principies underlie sometimes virtually identical examples in our California data, as in the interview with the couple who had immigrated from Canada and resented the undocumented immigration of Mexicans:
(27) (A-TD-1)
It took us one year [to get our papers], as I said we had to have so much money per head, we had to have a job guaranteed, someone to vouch for us here, and yeah these people can run across the border, on the south of us here, and uhh nothing is really done about it.
Generally, contrastive comparisons are used to emphasize the differences between in-group and out-group, where the in-group is seen to have a victim role or a more negative position. Typical examples may be found in passages that express resentment against the assumed "richness" of (supposedly poor) minority groups: "They are driving new cars, and my father didn't" (A-MS-2). One American interviewee made a long contrastive comparison between the position of immigrants in Europe and the United States, arguing that in the United States the officials should be just as strict as in Europe in keeping immigrants out.
Other Moves
The moves we have discussed are rather typical in prejudiced discourse. Yet, there are also other moves and further semantic properties of such talk. We already mentioned the set of indirect or implicit statements, in which the intended proposition is not expressed but left to the inferences of the recipient. The same holds for various forms of vagueness, in which very general terms (such as all those things, that stu, fj, or pronouns such as they) are used for more specific terms. One type of vagueness move is related to more general forms of semantic, pragmatic, or conversational "avoidance," in which people emphasize that they have no experiences or contacts with minorities. We might call this the ignorante move that precedes or follows
98 Communicating Racism
statements that apparently contradict that ignorance, as in "I don't understand the way the Mexican people think, but ... maybe it's education or uhh I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what it is" (A-TD- 1). Thus, ignorance is often expressed when people provide possibly prejudiced explanations.
Aside from the usual form of mitigation and understatement, we also find exaggerations in which a minor event or action of foreigners is described in very dramatic or negative terms (terrible is a word often used in such a case). Then, it is often the case that negative opinions are not so much formulated as personal opinions, but attributed to others, as in the stereotypical expression: "I do not mind very much, but the other people here hate them/that. " Similarly, the reason for bad contacts may be attributed to the foreign group, instead of to one's own lack of initiative. Because talk about minorities is a delicate topic, many people at least at first react with avoidance moves, such as "I don't know," "I have no contact with them," "I keep on my own," "I mind my own business," even when the rest of the conversation turras out to show many experiences and opinions related to foreigners.
Negative presuppositions are, of course, common in interviews about minorities, and it is fairly standard that when minorities or a minority neighborhood is brought up in talk, people will spontaneously say that they "have no problems" or that they are "surprised how friendly and nonthreatening" (A-LG-1) the people are.
There is a class of moves that seem to have metastatus: They are about previous or following propositions or speech acts in the conversation. Thus, a specific form of Example is the emphasis placed on personal experiences, as in "I have seen that with my own eyes," or on specific truth claims: "And that is a fact," "It is true, really." There are various forms of showing empathy, either with ethnic groups, or with members of the in-group: "I can understand that very well," mostly referring to negative attitudes as a result of perceived negative experiences with the other group.
Then, within the strategy of positive self-presentation, speakers will tend to emphasize their own positive behavior and usually focus on their own helping behavior (which then may be frustrated by negative actions of the foreigners): "And we used to bring them soup now and then." Along the same line, speakers repeatedly recall that whatever the negative circumstances, they are "reasonable" people. And within a strategy of saying negative things about the other group, concessive differentiation between subgroups, that is, exceptions, are made, such as "One cannot generalize of course, but ... ," "You have of course various kinds of them," or "A Turk is different from a Surinamese in that respect .... "
Structures 99
Pragmatic Moves
Some of the semantic moves also have a pragmatic dimension. Avoidance, for instance, is not merely a negation of having information but also a refusal to make specific assertions. Denial usually involves a negation, but it also has the pragmatic property of asserting the opposite of an expected or presupposed statement. Similarly, Contradiction is also pragmatically relevant because it involves an assertion that attacks a previous assertion. And finally, speakers often make Appeals to the recipient, especially when they check the opinions of the hearer or rhetorically emphasize the shared nature of norms and rules: "They can't do that, don't you think?" or "Tell me, what I should have done."
Cognitive and Social Functions
The moves and operations we have discussed in this section have severa] cognitive and social functions and we have emphasized those of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. Cognitively, the various moves may show how peopie maintain coherence among often contradictory ethnic opinions. In interaction, the major goal of prejudiced people may well be the negative portrayal of ethnic groups or emphasis on their own predicament. For many speakers, however, the moves mentioned aboye serve to present these negative opinions and experiences in the most acceptable way. Thus, they manage the possibly negative inferences the recipient might make about the social characteristics of the speaker. We have the impression that high socioeconomic status (including education, class, and occupation) is positively correlated with the amount of such presentation moves. We examine these social embeddings of self-presentation moves later.
8. Style
The same underlying opinions can be expressed in different ways. One speaker may say "I hate foreigners," whereas another might say "Well, I am not particularly fond of them:' Thus, propositions have variable lexical and syntactic expression, which we identify as style. Stylistic variation in discourse is usually a function of contextual properties such as (in)formality of the social situation, social dimensions (power, status, position, gender) of the speech partici-
100 Communicating Racism
pants, and also personal features, such as emotions (anger, fear) (Norton, 1983; Sandell, 1977; Scherer & Giles, 1979; Sebeok, 1960). A full stylistic analysis of some 180 interviews is, of course, impossible, so we focus on a few characteristics of prejudiced talk only.
The Style of Moderation
In our interviews, we may expect that interactional constraints, such as politeness and—again—self-presentation, also play a role in stylistic variation. We have found, for instance, that the direct forms of negative affect are seldom used—however strong the emotions against ethnic groups, we seldom find forms such as "I hate them " Neither do we find explicit racial slurs to denote or describe such groups, their presence, or properties. On the contrary, the general tendency is to express negative feelings in rather "soft" language, as we have also observed in the use of semantic moves such as mitigation and vagueness.
Aside from the obvious goal of positive self-presentation, there is also the fact that the interviewer, even when he or she is a younger student, is seen as a (relative) stranger, maybe even as a representative of the "institutions" (government, media, education, research). That is, in rather informal interviews, people may very well tell what they feel but the presentation style will probably be rather different from the one employed among close friends. Degree of familiarity is a potent style factor, and when delicate topics are discussed, differences between language use among trusted friends or family, and language use in talk with vague acquaintances, or with strangers on the street or in public, may be considerable. Because of strong official norms in the Netherlands against fascism and racism, the very notion of "racism" itself seems to have become taboo, which also influences talk that might be interpreted as racist. Hence, in many conversational situations, people will try to formulate their "honest" opinion in various stylistic forms of downtoning, mitigation, or understatement, as in the following fragment of the beginning of an interview with a 62-year-old woman (W):
(28)(II-MA-6)
1: Well, how do you like living here?
W:Well, unfortunately the neighborhood has changed very much. I: In those 26 years
W:Yes, unfortunately, it used to be a VERY nice neighborhood, but it has become terrible.
I: In what sense terrible? W: L1hh, many strangers.
Structures 101
I: Is it, yes yes, I saw that on the street.
W: Many many strangers, and uuh well that is not so nice.
Consider how this woman tries to find a lexical balance between the negative "terrible" on the one hand, the clearly distanced, neutral, and semiformal uses of "unfortunately," and the understatement (litotes) "that is not so nice," which we have found many times in talk about foreigners.
The stylistic effect of semantic moves in interview contexts is often such that indirectness and vagueness are preferred over direct value expressions, designations, and even proper names. After the standard opening questions about the neighborhood, a 66-year-o1d man (M) chooses his words as follows, after having stressed that he wouldn't want to move from this neighborhood:
(29)I: But a lot has changed in all these years.
M:Yes, people (pause)
1:How, people.
M:Well, it uhh there are a lot of yes outsiders, you know, strangers.
Rather characteristically, he uses the word outsiders (buitenstaanders), although he might have meant foreigners (buitenlanders), which is phonetically rather close, and then corrects hirnself and uses the word strangers (vreemdelingen, which might also be translated as aliens). So, the change in the neighborhood is first of all attributed to the different "people" who have come "from outside," or even from other countries, that is, strangers.
"Foreigners," "Strangers," or Other "Ethnic Minorities1°?
This latter passage is interesting also because it is one of the few in which ethnic minority groups are not directly calledforeigners (buitenlanders), which has become the standard colloquial expression in Dutch, even when it literally denotes anybody from abroad. Technically, many Turks and Moroccans still have their own nationality and, therefore, could be described as "foreigners." Yet, whether or not minority group members already have Dutch citízenship, as is the case for Surinamese and Antillians, many autochthonous White people still cal¡ them foreigners (buitenlanders), and sometimes strangers or aliens (vreemdelingen). The latter term also appears in the name of the immigration police (vreemdelingenpolitie) from which immigrants get their residence permits, but in that case it denotes again anybody from abroad.