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

192 Communicating Racism

zontal ordering principies, for instance, those that represent conditional links between facts about which we have opinions. The opinion that "nuclear plants are unsafe" may be linked with the opinion that "nuclear plants are a threat to the environment," which may again be linked to the opinion that "nuclear plants are dangerous to our health" because these respective opinions are about facts that are conditionally (causally) related. Such conditional "chaining" may be used in argumentation. Note that the conditional link itself may also be evaluative: It may depend on our beliefs about causality, probability, and their relations to norms and values (e. g., of safety and safety precautions and their effects).

Linear and hierarchical ordering are very general organizational principles in memory and are essential for any forro of effective search, activation (e.g., spreading activation), or other major operations in information processing. More specific, but often more effective, is categorial organization. That is, each opinion or cluster of opinions may be organized by a category from a limited repertoire. Such categories may again be ordered, both linearly and hierarchically, and define what we call an attitude schema. We have discussed the important role of various types of schema aboye, and this also holds for the schematic organization of opinions in attitudes. The use of categories allows fast and precise operation of search and application strategies, such as partial and context-dependent activation of opinions. The very notion of "cause," for instance, may act as an organizing category in event schemata. Finally, these various organizational properties may also define other well-known structures in attitudes and beliefs, such as those that reflect the "central" or "peripheral" nature of opinions (Rokeach, 1973). Similarly, different applications of organizational principies as well as different strategies of search and activation may also explain why specific opinions may be more relevant for individuals or groups or for specific contexts.

People develop attitude schemata that are crucial for information processing about social life, that is, about interaction, about specific situation and communication types, about other people, about groups, and so on. This social relevance of attitude schemata should also be reflected in their organization and in the prototypical categories that define them. Thus, we develop attitudes about people along dimensions that are recurrently and practically functional in the ways we perceive, categorize, evaluate, and interact with others. Such person schemata feature categories that we can effectively apply when "analyzing" people and storing information about them in memory (Hastie et al., 1980). Relevant, for instance, might be categories such as "appearance," "gender," "age," "occupation," "role," or "class," as well as the (inter)actions associated with these categories, which also underlie our prototypical

beliefs about other people. And within the category of "character" (or personality), we may again make further subdivisions that may lead to overall evaluative typifications ("shy," "introvert," and so on), which may have a socially shared, commonsense nature of "implicit theories" (Schneider, 1973). Although person schemata as such are part of our general social knowledge, and not specific for the structure of attitudes, categories that organize our knowledge about people may probably also be used to structure our opinions about them.

We have intuitive belief schemata about persons but also about groups. Such attitudes are even more effective from a social point of view, because they allow relatively context-free evaluation of possibly large sets of people, even when we do not know their individual members. Stereotypes and ethnic prejudice will be taken below as specific group schemata in social memory.

Finally, we may also develop attitude schema categories for socially relevant object or episode types, such as cars, nuclear plants, or vacations abroad. Such attitude categories may be partly related to our general beliefs (frames, scripts) about such objects or episodes. Whether we find certain cars "beautiful" is a judgment categorizable under an "appearance" node. On the other hand, categories may develop for such attitude objects along the dimensions of goal, value, or interest realization, which they may favor or block. If operating cars and nuclear plants are known to pollute the environment, and if a clean environment is a value we want to maintain or restore, pollution may be seen as "blocking" such a goal (Wegman, 1981). In other words, attitude categories are developed on the basis of our experiences (i.e., models) with the ways persons, groups, objects, or episodes, and their properties "fit" our goals, interests, values, norms, and the perceptions and interactions based on these general criteria. Hence, the structure of attitudes is a cognitive reflection of our social relations to (other) social objects and events. Once acquired, by experiences, cognitive operations (e.g., inferences), or communication, such attitude schemata may become relatively autonomous and, in turn, influence our social perception and interaction. Our major assumption, however, is that the organization of attitudes is a function of the organization of our social life.

Ideological Embedding

Attitudes are seldom isolated. They are related to other socially relevant attitudes and may form organized clusters of attitudes, which we call ideologies. Ideologies define coherence relations among attitudes, so that attitude systems are not discretely and arbitrarily organized but feature many relationships that

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allow fast search and application and effective formation and transformation. Ideologies are generators of specific actitudes: Within an ideological structure, we may develop attitudes about X in analogy with existing attitudes about Y. That is, we may evaluate new social issues by default. The very categorial organization of attitudes allows such coherence relationships. If both cars and nuclear plants are found to be polluting, attitudes about such social objects may be linked through identical evaluations on a specific value, such as that of a clean environment. Attitudes that are thus organized within such a cluster may function as one higher-level unit, for instance, an "ecological" ideology.

Ideologies organize large portions of our social life and are based on fundamental goals, interests, and values. Thus, we also develop ideologies about work, education, the relationships between men and women, or social structure. Hence, ideologies are the cognitive reflections of our social, political, economic, and cultural "position" within the social structure. Typically, ideologies are developed and used in Glose relation to our fundamental "interests" (Brown, 1973; CCCS, 1978; Kinloch, 1981; Seliger, 1976). This means that ideologies, even less than their component attitudes, are not individual, but group based. Socialization and later social interaction contribute to group-specific ideologies of and about men or women, loweror middle-class people, Whites or Blacks, labor or capital, and so on. Even sets of ideologies may again be further organized at higher levels and thus may be characterized in general terms, such as "liberal," "conservative," or "radical," depending on the goals and values of social structure shared by attitude clusters. Ideological coherence also allows us to predict, at least to a certain extent, what the overall attitudes of other people might be about X, given their attitudes about Y.

Conclusions

From these informal suggestions about the nature of opinions, attitudes, and their organization, we conclude, first, that such cognitions are inherently social, both in their acquisition and use and in their categorial structures. Second, it appears that the organization of attitudes follows very general principles of cognitive structuring and process, such as hierarchical, linear, and categorial organization. Third, attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs are intimately interrelated: Knowledge categories may also be used to organize doxastic information. Fourth, attitudes are complex structures of general opinions but may themselves also be units in higher-level, or more general, attitude clusters or ideologies. Hence, social cognition, from particular context-bound opinions of individuals to ideological orientations, is highly structured, which allows fast, effective search, retrieval, and appli-

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is partly inspired by current research on ethnic stereotypes as social cognition (e. g., Hamilton, 1981), with some of the components in traditional definitions of prejudice (Allport, 1954; Bagley et al., 1979; Bagley & Verma, 1979; Brigham, 1971; Ehrlich, 1973; Estel, 1978; Jones, 1972). Yet, it is often insufficiently understood that "definitions" cannot replace serious theory formation. This means that definitions are always and necessarily incomplete or wrong. A good definition is, at most, a good summary of the main theses of an explicit theory. Starting theory formation about a phenomenon by trying to define that phenomenon is, therefore, an illusory undertaking and only betrays quasiexplicitness. Definitions are only relevant for the component tercos of a theory that are not further analyzed within that theory (e.g., the notion of "strategy" in a theory of prejudice, which, however, requires further analysis in a more embracing cognitive theory). Initial definitions of the things we want to theorize about, then, are either a summary of the main points we want to attend to in the theory, or they are a form of (semi-)intuitive marking of the empirical or conceptual "boundaries" of the phenomenon we want to study (the original Latin meaning of definition). Thus, our initial description of some main properties of ethnic prejudice is meant only to distinguish it from (a) personal opinions,

(b) other (non-prejudiced) group altitudes, (c) stereotypes, and (d) prejudices against other social groups. Each component in such a provisional description needs further theoretical analysis. We first briefly discuss some of these components of prejudiced attitudes, also against the background of traditional approaches, and then attend to the major contribution of this section, namely, the structural organization of prejudice. Then, in the next section, we advance from the structural to the dynarnic dimension of prejudice and deal with the strategies of prejudiced social information processing and the actual contents and uses of ethnic attitudes.

Social Categorization

Attitudes and, hence, also prejudice, may develop about practically any socially distinctive group. This presupposes that group members perceive real or imagined differences, along one or more social dimensions, between their own group and the out-group. The "others," thus, may be assumed to differ in nationality, origin, "race," ethnicity, class, language, gender, occupation, status, education, class, role, personality, or appearance (differentiation). Thus, in prejudiced thought, perception, or interaction, out-group individuals are primarily categorized as members of the group defined by any of these perceived differences (Deschamps, 1977, 1983; Howard & Roth-

bart, 1980; Tajfel, 1978, 1981a, 1981b, 1982; Tajfel & Forgas, 1981; Taylor, 1981; Turner & Giles, 1981; Wilder, 1981). Prejudiced categorization implies that properties attributed to such groups are assumed to hold for all or at least for most of its individual members (instantiation). And, conversely, negative evaluations of individual members may be assumed to hold for the group as a whole (generalízation) . In both cases, prejudiced categorization involves a perceived reduction of differences between out-group members (Tajfel, 1981a, 1981b; Tajfel, Sheikh & Gardner, 1964).

Negative Evaluation

These evaluations, however, are not arbitrary. Peoplejudge groups relative to what may be called the "social principies," that is, the basic goals, norms, and values of their own in-group. If a particular out-group is assumed to have properties that are (thought to be) incompatible with these principies, these properties are evaluated negatively. In other words, prejudiced attitudes imply fundamental ("principled") negativization of differentiation and categorization.

Negative generalization is neither limited to individuals nor to single social properties. It is also pervasive in structural terms. A negative evaluation on one dimension or category may "spread" to other categories and to the higher levels of the group schema. This is the reason that prejudice is a group attitude that features high-level (macro) negative opinions, dominating more specific negative opinions. At the same time, such a structural expansion of negativity also allows for the possibility that on less relevant or isolated points, opinions may be neutral or positive (typically, "Blacks are musical").

Negative evaluation is usually associated with affect: Much like other attitudes, prejudice is taken not only as a cognitive schema but also as a particular set of feelings about out-groups (Adorno etal., 1950; Allport, 1954; Berkowitz, 1972; Bettelheim & Janovitz, 1964; Fiske, 1981). Although it is undoubtedly true that people's prejudgments are often accompanied by various forms of affect (feelings, emotions), we argued earlier that this is not always and, hence, not inherently, the case. Dutch in-group members may think that foreigners are favored in housing, but such an opinion need not always be accompanied by a negative feeling or particular emotions, such as frustration, anger, or indignation. Such forms of affect may be personally variable, and are typically context-bound. If people tell a story in our interviews, retrieval of a concrete model or this general opinion may trigger anger, and the same may be true when they have tried in vain to get an apartment, then witness a Turkish family

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moving into an apartment across the street. In other words, the prejudiced opinion may or may not trigger emotions in particular circumstances. For instance, people from wealthier neighborhoods may share the prejudice that foreigners take houses but, at the same time, they may very well have this opinion without associated affect, which would accompany the threat of losing one's house. The more permanent and general (negative) opinion merely represents evaluation of an assumed fact with respect to general norms and values (e. g., "No group should be favored in social resources," or "Dutch people have priority in taking advantage of `our' social resources"). Of course, emotionally based personal experiences may be potent factors in the acquisition and maintenance of prejudiced opinions.

Empirical "Bias"

There is a third form of generalization that characterizes the formation and uses of ethnic prejudice. In-group members not only generalize from individual out-group members, or single properties, but also from single situations. In our theoretical terms, this means that they may generalize directly from particular situation models, that is, from single experiences, to generalized models and attitude schemata. However, this generalization only applies for negative instances: The (negative) generalization must fit into a generally negative attitude schema.

But even such a single situation model need not be present. That is, overgeneralization is just one possibility of prejudice formation. People may also directly derive a (new) ethnic schema by analogy with previous ethnic schemata. If they have prejudices against Turks, they may simply specify a new prejudice schema against Moroccans without any direct experiences, encounters, or perceptions, often on the basis of fragmentary models derived from (mass media) communication. Such a fragmentary model would, for instance, feature a few similarities with the existing attitudes about the group already known: Mediterranean origin, darker appearance, immigrant workers, and Islamic religion.

And third, these forms of what may be called the empirical bias of ethnic prejudice, also and perhaps most importantly, affects the very processes of model formation through perception, interpretation, and evaluation. That is, even a single particular model constructed under the influence of a monitoring prejudiced attitude may in many ways be biased itself. This intuitive notion of bias needs explication in terms of prejudiced social information processing. Such processes may involve selective, incomplete, one-sided, unbalanced, or, again, negative interpretations, attributions, or other forms of normatively inadequate men-

tal representation of out-groups and their actions. We return to these processes and strategies in the next section.

Self-Norm Violation

Traditional definitions of prejudice were sometimes criticized because they were assumed to contain normative evaluations: Prejudice and its characteristic properties are found to be "wrong" (see, e.g., Apostle et al., 1983). In everyday life, prejudices are usually attributed only to others. In our examples, we found that people will usually deny that they are prejudiced themselves. Hence, in this analysis of prejudice, overgeneralization, empirical bias, and the well-known property of psychological "rigidity" attributed to prejudiced individuals, are all instances of "wrong" social or cognitive behavior. They are "errors."

Our approach to this problem is somewhat different. First, we do not agree with the general assumption that social analysis should not feature evaluative or normative statements. As soon as the respective values or norms on which they are based are made explicit, they can be inferred from prior statements just like any other statements of a theory. In this sense, the critical analysis of prejudice and racism is no less "scientific" than medical pathology.

Second, the notion of "wrongness" is not just a question of "morals. " In the case of prejudice, discrimination, and racism, it can easily be operationalized in terms of social pathologies of the in-group (Bowser & Hunt, 1984) and even more important, in terms of the many negative social effects for the out-group. Indeed, without such negative effects summarized under the concepts of dominance or power, prejudice would have no social function, and this social function is also part of the definition of prejudice. It all depends on (group) perspective: Only for White social scientists did the "normative" nature of the concept of prejudice constitute a problem, mainly because it would unacceptably blame the dominant (White) in-group of which they are a part.

Third, even without such considerations there is no problem. Prejudice can also be described (partly) in normative terms with respect to the norms of the in-group. That is, the various biases signaled aboye violate the principles of social information processing about in-group members. To put it very simply: Prejudices are "wrong" because people find that they should not have similar opinions or judgments about people of their own group or would resent it if other groups would have such prejudices about them. Our interviews repeatedly show that people are very much aware of such norms. In other words, even from a purely descriptive point of view, prejudice is a form of social self-norm viola-

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tion. This violation also extends into the forms of ethnic group interaction as the kind of differential treatment we call discrimination. Hence, concepts like prejudice and discrimination are no less scholarly defensible than many other notions in the social sciences.

Cognitive Errors?

Finally, another point must be made. Many of the features of ethnic prejudice mentioned aboye are similar to social information processing in general. People often make overgeneralizations, have biasing perception and representation, or have special attentíon for negative information. Effective information processing requires differentiation, categorization, and fast heuristics (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). According to such an approach, prejudiced thinking and judgment would simply be one set of cognitive "errors" among many others. We return to these cognitive strategies in the next sections.

However, in our view, this approach would be too limited, to say the least. It is undoubtedly true that in ethnic information processing, inciuding the formation and uses of prejudices, people rely on basic cognitive strategies that enable effective processing of new, complex, difficult, or incomplete information, as is often the case in intergroup perception and interaction. However, this is not the whole story. First, the strategies predominantly lead to negative "outcomes" for out-group members in model or schema (trans)formation, which is not inherent in effective cognitive processing. Second, similar situations, events, actions, or persons of the in-group are not processed in the same (strategic) way. Thus, the application of the prejudiced cognitive program essentially depends on the perceived out-group status of the ethnic minority group or íts members. Third, the resulting negative attitudes are socially functional. They may be used to plan, execute, or justify equally negative actions against minority groups.

This suggests that, in addition to the usual cognitive strategies, there is a higher-level monitoring device that controls ethnic information processing in such a way that the actual or general beliefs about ethnic minorities consistently contribute to an overall attitude that is most appropriate as a program for such acts of discrimination. Overall ingroup goals, interests, or societal structures of inequality, thus, may be represented so that in-group members generally follow a self-serving strategy, both in action and in attitude formation and use. In other words, "biased" processing of information about ethnic groups is not just an "error." On the contrary, they are often unconscious, unplanned, yet strategic ways of attuning social attitudes to the basic principies of the in-group. In that sense, they may be very effective in providing a

cognitive program for the multiple (inter)actions of dominance and discrimination in situations and social structure.

Irrationality and Rigidity?

For similar reasons, we do not share the traditional point of view that prejudices are irrationalor rigid beliefs about out-groups. To be sure, personality differences may probably affect the structures and the strategies of prejudiced information processing. Also, in our interviews, we have found that under very similar social circumstances, individual people may nevertheless have different types or degrees of ethnic prejudice. Yet, such individual differences, as they were traditionally attributed to childhood experiences and education (Adorno et al. 1950), cannot explain the general, and socially shared, ethnocentrism and prejudice in whole groups (featuring individuals with very different personalities) (Pettigrew, 1958). From a sociocognitive point of view, then, prejudices are not always irrational either. They may be very rational and functional ways of organizing information about out-groups that must be kept "out or under;' even if prejudiced generalizations about groups cannot "rationally" be inferred from observations.

The same is true for rigidity. The strategies that handle ethnic information are by definition flexible and not rigid: People must accommodate often conflicting information, such as negative opinions, with neutral or positive experiences (models). In our interviews, we have seen that they must combine conflicting goals of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. In everyday action, they must try to figure out how to combine negative prejudices with the rather strict tales of interaction (politeness, and so forth), at least in a society where overt and blatant racist action is formally prohibited. With lack of interpersonal or social control, and no possibilities of sanctions or retaliation, these forms of control may, of course, be reduced, as ethnic minority group members experience in their everyday life (Essed, 1984). These different forros of social information processing are possible only when people deal with information in a flexible way, even when the outcome may often be stereotypical. And again, this is independent of the rigidity of the personality of the prejudiced group members. Dueto their important social functions, however, group attitudes and especially prejudices, indeed, do not change easily. But in that sense of rigidity, they are very similar to other basic social attitudes and ideologies. Thus, the contents of prejudiced attitudes may remain stable or stereotypical even in the face of conflicting evidence, and this conflict may be resolved through flexible strategies of (re)interpretation.