прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Communicating Racism

102 Communicating Racism

The terms (ethnic) minority or cultural minority are seldom used in everyday conversation outside of formal, political, or academic contexts. People are, however, aware of it through the media and sometimes use it in rather formal passages or, ironically, when they refer to perceived favorable treatment (and hence also to the "favorable naming") of ethnic groups:

(30)(II-PD-5)

There were not yet so many minorities as they call it, because of course you may not say foreigners.

(31)(II-PD-5)

(In a story about a mugging of an old couple):

Man: I saw two of them, on their back. I saw that they were dark uh things

Woman: Yes, MINORITIES you should call them.

In general, though, the notion of "foreigners" now has acquired the specific meaning of ethnic minority in informal talk, and because of prevailing negative prejudices, it sometimes has a slight negative association by itself. To make ourselves understood, we also had to use it in informal talk with people in popular neighborhoods, as is also the case for ethnic minority groups themselves, who sometimes use the term in a more neutral sense of denoting all nonautochthonous groups in the Netherlands.

In California, stylistic variation in denoting ethnic minority groups also shows constraints from positive self-presentation and terminological confusion. Thus, in San Diego, people who are from Mexico, whether they have become American citizens or not, tend to be called Mexicans, whereas Mexican Americans is a more academic term or a term used by Mexican Americans themselves, besides Chicanos, and Latinos for people from Latin America in general. White officials also use Hispanics, which, however, is less used, or even criticized by Latin American immigrants. And whereas the current usage to denote immigrants from Asian countries is Asians, some of our interviewees also use Orientals. More than in the Netherlands, where the equivalent of Negro is still widely used by White people, also in the press and by intellectuals, Afro-Americans generally are described as Black. Only once, by a Californian who carne from Louisiana and appeared to be very racist, was the term nigger used, which we didn't find in our Dutch interviews. We have reason to believe that generally more negative terms may sometimes be used by racist speakers, but only in familiar contexts, that is, when they speak to family members or close friends of whom they know the ethnic opinions. This suggests that interviews, indeed, are not exam-

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pies of such casual talk but should rather be seen as exemplary of conversations with acquaintances, colleagues, or unknown others.

The Taboo of "Racism"

In the Netherlands, words such as race or racial groupdo not occur very often, neither in academic nor in everyday talk in which they are mostly replaced by the more general term ethnic. One reason for this discrepancy with British and American usage may be the culturally shared resentment against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the frequent mention of races in fascist ideologies.

However, this antifascist tradition may also be one of the reasons that many Dutch people strongly resent the use of the words racism and racist, which they reserve for extremist right-wing parties that are against the presence of ethnic minority groups (immigrants) in the Netherlands. Similarly, many people emphasized that, even when they did not like many characteristics of the foreigners in their town or neighborhood, they explicitly reject "racism," or "racial discrimination," "and those things." In other words, they not only say this as moves in selfpresentation strategies, but also because they do have a different conceptual representation associated with words such as racism.

The same is true for most journalists and many minority researchers in the Netherlands. We surmise that it is through these restricted, elite definitions of racism that the term still has its narrow (taboo) sense in everyday usage. Actions in the 1980s by ethnic groups are slowly changing the acceptable range of meanings of the term racism, especially when used in combinations such as everyday racism, the new racism, subtle racism (Essed, 1984). There is no general understanding of the fact that negative feelings, opinions, talk, and action (even when subtle or indirect) against ethnically and racially different people in the Netherlands are notjust "xenophobia" or "resentment" that can simply be attributed to economic recession or frustration, but phenomena that are functional components in a complex racist society.

Against this background of subtle elite racism, it is, of course, hardly surprising that people in everyday talk do not adopt a terminology that may express an overall threat to the face of the in-group. And it should come as no surprise either that the term racism is seldom used to describe the elite itself, that is, the intellectuals, politicians, journalists, educators, researchers, professionals, the police, and the courts. Instead racism, or rather xenophobia, is attributed to poor people, popular neighborhoods, and all those who have to suffer from the economic recession. This attri-

104 Communicating Racism

bution is simply given the "scientific" explanation of "scapegoating" and it is easy to quote talk that would confirm such an analysis: "They take away our houses, jobs, etc." In this way, the elite are able to transfer their own racism, which they have helped to reproduce and sustain through the various institutions (state, education, media) in the first place, to the working class, the unemployed, or the poor. We discuss this social dimension of prejudice, racism, and their formulation in talk in Chapter 6.

We have made this brief excursion into the sociopolitical context of the uses of words such as foreigner, ethnic minority, and racism in the Netherlands because these uses and their contexts also heavily determine the style and descriptions in our conversations. It explains why people may use the term ethnic minority or so-called ethnic minorities in an ironic sense. They see it as part of the terminology of all those others (government, authorities, intellectuals, media, and, of course, all those who are not poor and not living "here") who do not have to "live among them." The nice and academic term, thus, is considered as part of the language variant used by those who are seen as "friends of foreigners."

The Pronouns of Ethnic Distante

and Prejudice

More than one-quarter of a century ago, Brown and Gilman (1960) wrote their famous article about the pronouns of "power and solidarity." They were able to show how the use of pronouns such as tu and vous in French, and similar second person pronouns in other languages, are associated with power and group relationships among speech participants. Deictic terms, in general, may be used to indicate spatial, temporal, and especially social distance from the speaker. In that sense, V-forms signal more social distance (at the same level, or from low to high level) than T-forms (Brown & Fraser, 1979).

In conversations about ethnic groups, there are uses of pronouns and demonstratives that recall this use of deictics as forms of social distance marking. Typically, ethnic groups such as Turks, Moroccans, or Surinamese are often not called by their name, or by the term foreigners, but denoted by pronouns such as they and them. Indeed, the pronominal contrast between us and them has even become stereotypical in its own right.

Similarly, we find the equally "distanced" expression, those people. Naming taboos are well known: We avoid naming (at least by given name) people we do not like. We say "that man" or "that woman" or simply use "she" or "he?' Also, we may preface the family name with a distancing demonstrative, as in "that Johnson is a creep "

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The same happens with ethnic groups. In our interviews, we find long passages where people only make use of sometimes vague and confusing pronouns simply to avoid naming the relevant ethnic group. Part of this may be due to the rules ofconversational style and contextual disambiguation, which allow less explicit designations (see Marslen-Wilson, Levy, & Tyler, 1982). And some of it may be related to social class and education (according to the traditional "restricted code" characteristics as described by Bernstein, 1971). Yet, we interpret these uses of pronouns and demonstratives here as expressions of attitudinal distance and, hence, as signals of prejudice. We thus have a scale of designations running from "Surinamese people (man/men, woman/women)," and "those Surinamese people," to "those Surinamese," "those foreigners," "those people," "those Blacks," to specific (not coreferential) "them." Degrees of what may be called attitudinal depersonalization apparently also show in pronominal expression, just like power and (lack of) solidarity. Here is a typical example in which ethnic groups or foreigners are not actually mentioned, yet referred to:

(32) (II-PD-5)

BUT, you also have those here who have never worked. And when you see of what they live .. .

Thus, if the overall topic contains the concept of "foreigners," many speakers tend to use simple pronouns to avoid using more specific names. One other reason is that Turks and Moroccans, together denoted as guest workers (gastarbeiders), are sometimes difficult for Dutch people to distinguish. In that case a "vague" or "sloppy" pronoun or demonstrative is easier to use. Slightly less negative, but with paternalistic undertone, is the use of "those people." Generally, however, ethnic groups are referred to by expressions that imply that they form another group and, as such, they are systematically differentiated from "us" (autochthonous, White) Dutch people. At this point, language use may be interpreted as a rather direct signal of the structure of underlying ethnic attitudes.

9. Rhetorical operations

The expression of ethnic opinions in everyday talk is part of persuasive communicative interaction. At several levels, speakers try to verbalize these opinions not only in an acceptable but also in a convincing way. Topic construction, storytelling, argumentation, semantic moves, and appropriate style are all attempts to con-

106 Communicating Racism

vey the truth of assertions and the reasonableness of ethnic opinions. Special effects, however, may be obtained by the use of various rhetorical operations. Thus, traditional "figures of style," as described in classical rhetoric, may focus the attention of the recipient on the opinion or the arguments given for it (Corbett, 1971; Lausberg, 1960; Plett, 1975, 1977). They may make expressions more memorable, such as through enhancing their degree of cognitive organization (Kintsch & Yarbrough, 1982).

The operations can most economically be described in terms of a few basic transformations, namely, deletion, addition (repetition), substitution, and permutation, applied to morphonological, syntactic, and semantic structures. Surface structure operations, such as sound repetition (rhyme, assonance) and intended syntactic transformations, are rare in our conversations. At that level, nonarbitrary repetition or parallelism of syntactic structure is most obvious:

(33)(II-MdV-3)

I:Uhh, do you have contacts with foreigners who live here?

W: Oh no, I always mind my own business. Oh no, not at all, with nobody. (...) Well, I'11 tell you honestly, 1 tell you ...[renting a room to Surinamese](...) No, that uhh I wouldn't do that again. I have done it then, but I wouldn't do it again.

(34) (II-RA-2)

(They make a lot of children) Well, YOU pay for that, and 1 pay for that.

Semantic Operations

More conspicuous are the rhetorical operations at the semantic level, such as comparison, metaphor, irony, contrast, hyperbole, litotes, or understatement. Some of these have already been described as specific semantic moves that link propositions, for instance, the use of subsequent mitigations or contrast for different goals or favors of the in-group and out-group. Sometimes these moves have a clearly rhetorical function, such as when such oppositions are construed within one sentence, when they are formulated with specific contrastive stress, and when the lexical formulation also shows opposition (use of antonyms).

Comparisons are mostly used with the obvious goal of comparing properties or actions of us and them. Pervasive, for instance, is the argumentative comparison between what foreigners do (not do) here, and what Dutch people abroad would do. The following fragment is taken from a very long (several transcript pages) comparison made by a 62-

Structures 107

year-old man between his position in a provincial village and the position of ethnic groups in the Netherlands:

(35)(II-AC-3)

These people [foreigners] have another attitude, another mentality than we have. And yes, we have to get used to that andina certain sense we have to adapt to it. Look, I don't mean that, look 1 think these people should integrate here, more than we should, that is logical, isn't ¡t. Because when 1 am in Drenthe [a Dutch province in the Northeast] in uh on my little farm ehh which I have in Drenthe, you know, then 1 adapt to those people there. 1 can hardly expect that that whole village community will adapt itself to someone from Amsterdam ... [They have to adapt to us] You know, we also had to do that when we emtgrated to uhh, to uhh to uhh Australia, then I know that you do not have Dutch communities who together, who speak Dutch, and uhh maintain all kinds of traditions from Holland, but have to integrate to the Australian or wherever they are, also South Africa.

We found earlier that in California very similar comparisons are used as part of argumentations that conclude that immigrants should learn English, the "same as if I went to Italy, and ...: '

Metaphors may be used to highlight, implicitly, such comparisons between in-group and out-group, but are mostly used to describe prop erties and actions of minority group members, for instance, when direct, literal description would threaten face-saving, or conversely, when descriptions of everyday affairs must be made livelier:

(36)(New Moroccan family upstairs; children go to bed late) And then they had a lot of visitors of uhh just hke a pilgrimage of all those families who live here, and those of course wanted to know something, what happened in Morocco.

Yet, creative, new metaphors are used relatively little in the interviews we have recorded, and racist descriptive metaphors (such as stovepipe for Blacks) occur only occasionally.

Other Rhetorical Operations

Here are a few other examples of rather

typical rhetorical operations:

Rhetorical question.

(37)(II-MdU-3)

These are large apartments, you can see that. But they are also occupied by foreigners. Don't we have enough Dutch people who need housing? Am I right or not? Why should the foreigners have all those beautiful big apartments?

108 Communicating Racism

In one of the California interviews, a story is told by a cabdriver about an immigrant who is said to have caused an accident. The point of the story, however, is that the other driver doesn't speak English. This point is underscored by repeated rhetorical questions such as "What's he doing driving a car?" (A-LG4). Because rhetorical questions need not be answered, they presuppose obvious or preferred answers without having to spell out such statements explicitly, for instance, people who do not know the language should not drive a car (because they cannot read road signs).

Contrast. Contrast is one of the most pervasive rhetorical operations in our data, and may be used to signal the conflicting values, goals, and interests of the in-group and out-group:

(38)(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.

(39)(II-RA-2)

It is a big scandal, when you see those young Turkish women, 18 years old, with an old man of 50.

(40)-(II-SM-4)

Listen, they always say that foreigners are being discriminated against here. No, WE are being discriminated. It is exactly the reverse.

(Hyperbole (?): )

(41)(II-SM-2b)

They have stolen a complete bicycle store from me, here in front of the house. [A story about a bicycle being stolen on the market.] (...) In ahl that time about 30 bicycles have been pínched from me. And then I do not exaggerate, you know, I honestly do not exaggerate.

Conclusion

From these examples we may conelude that most rhetorical operations have both an interactional and a cognítive function. The use of special figures draws attention to formulations and may contribute to better organization in memory. Thus, contrast may be used to express and convey special organization in situation models of participating in-group and out-group members. In the next chapters, we shall find examples of people who explicitly refer to the persuasiveness of "well-told" ethnic stories.

In interaction, not only persuasion, but also strategies of self-presen- tation, may be made more effective by rhetorical operations. Thus, contrast both expresses and emphasizes the differences and conflicts

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between in-group and out-group, and so does comparison. Hyperbole and other forms of exaggeration also focus on the seriousness of the predicament or the truth of a story, although various forms of mitigation, such as litotes or understatement, are used more often, mostly with the goal of keeping control over possibly negative inferences of the recipient.

Together with the semantic and pragmatic moves analyzed earlier, and with an adequate stylistic formulation of underlying opinions, thus, rhetorical operations may further enhance the effectiveness of conversational interaction. This is particularly important, because for a delicate topic such as "foreigners," effective persuasion, as well as avoiding misunderstanding or negative social evaluation, are crucial. A delicate balance must be chosen between the rhetorical operations: A story may be told with the usual forms of exaggeration, but the ethnically relevant evaluations and conclusions may need downtoning and mitigation. In other words, this ambivalent choice of rhetorical operations is also a function of the overall strategic goals of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation.

10. Prejudiced talk as conversation

The main focus of this book is on the diffusion of ethnic attitudes through everyday conversation. Although our data are informal interviews, we still hope to get insight into the ways people express prejudices in their everyday talk. Because we are, of course, primarily interested in what people say, and how they say it, we have somewhat neglected the proper interactional constraints on their contributions to conversations. Thus, we ignored the, rather brief, questions, replies, encouragements, or other contributions of the interviewer. Also, we hardiy paid attention to the unplanned, spontaneous dimensions of talk as spoken discourse, such as the organization of turns, pauses, hesitations, repairs, repetitions, and intonation. Yet, we may assume that these also may signal important cognitive, interactional, and social functions. After the seminal work of Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), conversational analysis in the past decade has studied in detail many of these properties of dialogue (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Schenkein, 1978; Sudnow, 1972; van Dijk, 1985a, vol. 3). Little work, however, has as yet been done on the role of conversation in the reproduction of social beliefs and attitudes (see, however, Pomerantz, 1984, who analyzes how people indicate their knowledge sources in talk).

110 Communicating Racism

Unfortunate for our Dutch interviews, many of these properties of talk are so much tied to the colloquial style of the Dutch language (or the Amsterdam urban dialect) that we can only make a few observations on features that allow approximate translation into English.

An Example

To get an idea of a more realistic conversation, we give fragments of an example in which three women talk with the (female) interviewer. W 1 is a hairdresser, W2 a client and W3 is W 1's assistant. The conversation was recorded in a high-contact area in East Amsterdam. The women knew that an interview would be recorded, but during this passage they thought the recorder had not yet been turned on. Because of the overlap, several turns are incomprehensible. As usual, the pronoun they refers to ethnic minority groups. Transcript conventions are minimal and follow the usual spelling and notation.

(42) (I-D-1)

W 1: They have been brought in like that, a beautiful house and they have it so good here, and really they are going to profit from it, I have an acquaintance, a foreigner ... you don't put that thing on, do you [laughing]

5 I: N000

W 1: I have a friend myself, a foreigner, but he is a crook, really, he exploits the lot and h ... it is really a darling, but he is a foreigner, honestly because he uhh he is really Hice but OK he shouts and he does, he really wants, when he leaves he wants to have it

10made, that is the way it is .. .

I:But why, do you think, because of what?

W l : uhh ehh ... just as I said, they cometo the Netherlands, because they say about the Netherlands in the Netherlands you can get rich, that is the clue, but yes it it is no longer the case that one can

15get rich here, seems to me. II already work 10 years on my own and 1 am still not rich [laughs]

1: ...Yes...

W2: Well, like that Surinamese lady uhm well then she carne to live in that apartment, well uh she presented herself very decently, it is a 20 nice little lady and so on, and uh well she had gotten money from welfare to buy things and uh a carpet well that was not enough, she had to have more money because she had to buy a bed as well, so she easily went back to welfare to ask, and yes somewhat later a beautiful bed, OK via W* and uh N* or so [cheap direct order

25 chains], and those they also cheated because they had uhh a hifi and 1 don't know what, but (???)

W3: They come to the Netherlands to uhh spoil the lot .. .

W 1: Well not to uhh but simply to rofit of "Dutch people have it made, we also want to have it made'

Structures I11

30 W3: They can do what they like here, I think they can do more than us because they get a new house under their ass just like that, and uhh when you want a house then you get nothing

W2: Yes, and when you intimidate a bit, I believe you can get what you want, and well we aren't like that

35 W 1: ... well ... no we aren't like that W2: That's it

I: Hmm, but

W3: (????) they get it from, God knows, because they all do not work, each of them, that's what I think

40 I: ... Oh yes?

W 1: ... Well (??) or there are women from Yugosla ... no not Yugoslavia, Portugal, and you know

W3: Turks are again rather different from Surinamese .. .

W 1: Well those are real nice, really, because we hardly get uhh Suri-

45namese or uuh client and no uhh Moroccans, they hardly come they do a lot themselves, but Portuguese women and that kind of (???) they work very hard, really, I can't say otherwise (?????)

W1/2: ... Yes

W3: And they say that they are being dismi discri discriminated 55 W2: yes but by ... discriminated, yes but

W3: That is not true (???)

W2: It only attracts more attention because of their skin color, look we

W 1: Well, I keep saying it that they really come here come to the Netherlands to become rich on the expense of everybody and everything

65 W2: Yes, OK but social services are good here, aren't they, yes, it is much too easy for them here

W3: ... They get everything here

W 1: (???) and soon we'll have war here, between the brown foreigners and the Dutch

70 I: ... you think so?

W 1: They SAY so, Ido not THINK so, because I am still young to uh to that all uhh I don't understand those things but I get people of 50 years old and who really uhh ... know life

W2: They really see a lot of disadvantages

75 W3: Because since they are here there is uhh nothing but fights well according to me that is true, because since those guys are here there is nothing but fights always, that's what 1 think, OK 1 am

I: Yes?

W3: only 16 but uh