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

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suggest that people remember situations primarily in evaluative terms (e.g., Forgas, 1979). In our example, indeed, the notion of "unreasonable aspects of the ethnic situation" may have triggered the situation model containing the event-information this story is expressing.

A high-level evaluative (macro)proposition not only controls understanding, but once represented in the text and situation model, also later retrieval by the hearer. Negative attitudes about ethnic groups, thus, will facilitate both this high-level interpretation, as well as later retrieval of this story (e.g., when used for giving illustrations to others about why favoring foreigners is unreasonable) . We return to these "uses" of ethnic information in memory in the next main section, and further limit ourselves to the understanding processes per se.

After the first clause, the woman hesitates and breaks off her sentence, starting a new one. This suggests that instead of directly stating her problem (the content of the dominating "I find ..." clause in a cleftsentence construction, "what I find ..., is ..."), she takes a less direct option, which strategically and narratively, however, may be more effective: She starts a description of her own personal and social situation. The fact that she is a "woman on her own" adds, for the hearer, to the speaker model, for instance, information from which respect, or pity, may be inferred, but that in production may at least be intended as a functional move that explains the reason that the woman needs money from the welfare agency. Less personal, but also a good reason, is the information in line 2 that she had moved. This piece of information is also functional for the rest of the story, because it shows that her "case" is similar to those of Surinamese, who also "moved" (from Surinam to Holland), and who did get money to decorate their apartments.

At this point of the understanding process, the hearer has inferred overall macropropositions about the opinion of the speaker and information about the setting of the events to be told, including further information about the speaker. At the same time, the passage obviously is going to be a story, so that the story schema may be activated, and the first sentences interpreted as Setting for that story. We see that local semantic, global semantic, and schematic (superstructural) interpretation takes place at the same time, in parallel with personal and social interpretation of the speaker as a person and as a social member.

Model Formation

These on-line processes of textual understanding result in a hierarchical text model in episodic memory, but also in the activation or the construction of a relevant situation model: The hearer tries to "imagine" what happened at the welfare agency. We

assume that the evaluative (macro)proposition is also used to construct the highest nodes of the situation model and thus represents the overall opinion of the woman about the events told in the story. The model further features the information expressed by the text about the woman and her moving to a new apartment, and her need for money. This information may have activated special frames about "women living alone" or "moving" scripts, which explain why exactly the woman needs money (an explanation that is necessary to interpret the conclusion connective "so"). The model, thus, incorporates instantiated information from previous knowledge of the hearer, maybe even fragments of personal situation models (the hearer's own experiences with moving). The same happens with the interpretation of the subsequent sentences of the story: A model is being reconstructed of the woman going to the welfare agency, asking for money, getting none, and of a Surinamese who does get his money after threats with a knife. This model may be the result of a strategic construction from possible other models, such as experiences with the welfare agency or with people threatening with knives. Details of the model conveyed by the woman are, however, unique, and the first question of the interviewer suggests that the model thus constructed is not exactly routine: he (narratively, or rhetorically) "doubts" whether it is true. In other words, conversationally "credibility" is not a priori "given," but continually negotiated by the speech partners. The interviewer at this point shows that for him, insufficient evidence has been given to accept such an "unbelievable" story (of course, he may actually believe the story, but may tactically say he doesn't in order to get more details, which is a well-known interview move).

Note that the local interpretation of the text, for instance, of clauses such as "and asked if they could help me" requires models and scripts. Helping in this case, therefore, is interpreted as "give money," which is a regular component of the "welfare" script. Together with the brief sentence, "But no," this yields the inferred interpretation that the woman did not get money. Here the overall negative evaluation ("unreasonable") begins to make sense, and top-down provides the further interpretation that the woman did not like to get no money. Narratively, we have moved from the Orientation to the Complication of the story (in fact, the first part may be constructed as a ministory, ending with the unsuccessful Resolution that she didn't get money, but obviously this first part is merely an Orientation for the rest of the story).

Before she starts telling about the narratively and evaluatively "interesting" events, however, the woman strategically interpolates a general statement about Surinamese who easily get money from welfare. This prejudiced opinion is used, in the following sentence (line 7) to make her question ("Why do they get it?") intelligible. Although, on its own, this

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general statement only indirectly coheres with the previous sentence, it establishes coherence between the first part of the story and the second part (I did not get money, but they get money, for instance, that Surinamese man). The rhetorical strategy of the woman, both in the welfare office (note the contrastive stress on they) and in her retelling of that situation, is to establish a contrast between herself as a group member (us) and Surinamese (them), which is in line with the overall structure of ethnic prejudice schemata and models. This also implies the persuasively very effective proposition that she is not simply personally frustrated because of the refusal of the agency; rather, she protests against the unfair treatment of (White) Dutch people in general. That is, unwittingly she speaks for the in-group, which is, of course, less self-serving and, hence, more credible than speaking for her own interests. The actual model being expressed by the woman, thus, appears to be an instance of more general models representing favorable treatment of ethnic minority groups. This is why the story is relevant as an argumentative illustration of the general prejudice that foreigners are being favored by the authorities. We may assume, on the basis of evidence derived from retellings of such stories, that the intended prejudiced models may indeed be represented as such by prejudiced recipients, or provide "good reasons" for having negative opinions against foreigners, at least on this point. Indeed, a substantial number of the people we interviewed do not appear to have many grudges against minorities, except for the prejudiced opinion about their "favorable treatment" by the authorities. Such stories, thus, form or confirm highly relevant socioeconomic attitude propositions.

Representing Opinions

The representation of this situation by the hearer, both in a text and in a situation model, is rather straightforward but, for our discussion, a number of specifics need to be attended to. The opinions of the woman may be inserted into the speaker model of the woman, and/or may be added to the model of the situation, for instance, as part of the participant node. For the hearer, however, the situation as told need not be "unreasonable" at all, for instance, because the unique situation of immigrating Surinamese who have no house or furniture at all cannot be compared to that of Dutch people, even when poor, who want to move to another apartment. Or he may know that it is false that Surinamese got such financial help when they immigrated. In that case, the hearer may agree with the welfare officer who is a participant in the story model. The overall evaluation of the sítuation may thus change from "unreasonable" to "reasonable," or another evaluation on a scale between these two. This is to say that understanding and repre-

senting a story, including opinions expressed in them, may have complex consequences on the processing of opinions by the hearer. No doubt the hearer will understand and, hence, represent the negative evaluation of the woman, but the question is whether or not the situation itself is headed by this same evaluation in the hearer's model of the situation. The hearer, in other words, may "remodel" the situation, and apply transformations derived from his or her own models, knowledge, and ethnic attitudes. We return to this complex problem of opinion formation and change below.

Further Interpretation

From our informal analysis of interpretation and representation processes, me may conclude that understanding (prejudiced) discourse involves a set of strategic mental operations applied on structures of text and context, on the one hand, and on those of memory models or schemata of knowledge and beliefs, on the other hand. These operations accept (even incomplete) information from various levels at the same time, and work with effective guesses about the intended meanings, reference, or functions of utterances. Their goal is to construct a model of the situation referred to by these utterances through the construction of a hierarchical representation of the discourse. The degree of understanding, thus, is determined by the criteria we follow for the construction of situation models: If these are fragmentary, then our understanding is also fragmentary. "Deeper" interpretation of a discourse in that case means that our model is more complete, more complex, and features more details.

In the example of the story about what happened in the welfare office, the hearer may activate and apply detailed knowledge and beliefs about the welfare system in the Netherlands, the immigration of Surinamese, and the actions of the authorities, or about the (reasons for the) interactions of young Surinamese males with these authorities. To understand the prejudiced story, then, also may involve understanding why the woman tells this story, why (or whether) Surinamese get money for decorating their houses, or why the man in the story allegedly puts a knife on the table. A large part of this information is not expressed by the story itself, but is presupposed by the speaker or may be "assigned" to it by the hearer. In this sense, intended meanings and interpreted meanings of a discourse will seldom be identical when by meaning, we also understand the model derived from the discourse and from personal and social knowledge and beliefs.

Indeed, to "hear" the story as being prejudiced or not largely depends on the role of these social beliefs of the recipient. If a story about the

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favorable treatment of an ethnic group, the aggressiveness of a Black man, or the "discrimination" of White in-group members is understood as a typical instance of the negative stereotypes dominant group members have about ethnic minority groups, then the hearer's model evaluation may be dominated by a concept like "prejudiced." For other autochthonous recipients, the same story may be heard as a typical example of what they think is a social fact: The authorities do not pay attention to us, but only to them. In each case, a different model of the situation will be the result, and it is this model that will be used for further processing, for instance, for retelling the story to others, or for the (trans)formation of ethnic opinions and attitudes.

These representations are in principie hierarchical structures of propositions as they are constructed after the passage. During storytelling itself, only fragments of these models are being constructed, on-line, which allows revision in a later stage of understandíng. In other words, the linear structures of the textual and interactional input are transformed to a more abstract, hierarchical structure in memory. It is this form of the text and situation models that will later allow effective search and relevant activations. The highest nodes in the models, for instance, may be used to summarize the story. For hearers that assign particular, preju- dice-monitored, attention to the reported aggressiveness of the Surinamese man, this proposition may be represented as the highest-level macroproposition and, therefore, be more easily retrievable for later recall and storytelling, for instance, as "evidence" for the assumed aggressiveness of Black men.

Understanding Discourse Strategies

We have repeatedly found that talk about delicate topics such as ethnic groups is highly strategic. Pbsitive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, and other forms of impression formation and persuasion are the interactive dimension of such conversations. Whereas the "contents" of the story typically result in text and situation models, we may finally ask whether and how such strategies are cognitively represented.

In the analysis of the fírst sentences of the story, we have already concluded that sentences such as "1 am a woman on my own" not only denote the social status of the storyteller, which we assumed to be inserted into the speaker model of the hearer. Rather, volunteering this information is strategic in the sense that it contributes to the "point" the woman wants to make, namely, that she is in a similar situation as the Surinamese, and that despite this similarity, she is treated in a different way. The same holds for the contrast between her deferential behavior (begging) and the aggressive behavior of the Surinamese man.

We assume that these strategies have several cognitive functions in understanding. First, such strategies are intended for the construction of a positive speaker model: The woman wants the hearer to believe that she is rather tolerant (while using the mitigating expression "unreasonable sometimes"), deserves help ("woman on my own"), that she is polite and nonaggressive ("begging for my children's allowance"), justified in her claim (they get so much money), and correct in her evaluation of the Surinamese (the man was said to behave the same last time), and truthful ("I don't tell fantasy stories"). Such strategic moves, then, may contribute to a more positive impression and, hence, to enhanced credibility and especially to enhanced empathy with her problem and her opinions. And the converse is true for the strategic construction of the participant minority model in the situation model: Surinamese profit from welfare (more than we do), are aggressive, have money while being on welfare, and, hence, must be cheating (driving around in big cars and have jewels).

These constrastive "images" of the participants in the situation model, and the positive representation of the woman in the speaker model, not only make the story and the storyteller more credible and, hence, more persuasive, they also contribute to the further organization of the story and model structures themselves. Together with stylistic and rhetorical features, these strategic moves contribute to enhanced organization of the model and, hence, to better storage and retrieval. In intuitive terms, indeed, this makes the story more "dramatic" than if the woman had simply said "I went to the welfare agency to ask for money, but I didn't get it, while an aggressive Surinamese got it right away." Her actual story sketches a more complete situation model, but at the same time focuses on those elements of the model that can be fit into well-struc- tured schemata, such as the competitive contrast between us and them, and the aggressiveness of foreigners as opposed to our "reasonableness" or own needs. Concrete reference to a knife being put on the table can be more easily interpreted in terms of a concrete memory image (we may assume that situation models are not only propositional but also may feature more analogical types of information, such as imagelike structures). The same is true for her replaying relevant fragments of the conversations at the welfare office. At the same time, the thematic schema is not only more memorable for the hearer because of its internal organization, but also because of its "exemplary" nature as an instance of a generally shared prejudiced opinion about the favorable treatment of ethnic groups. In other words, the strategic moves of the woman contribute to a better-structured and more positive speaker model, as well as to a more complete and better-organized model of the situation. Empathy, sympathy, model structure, and typical (attitude confirming) contents of the model together may contribute to more effective persuasion.

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And finally, the moves analyzed aboye, while contributing to enhanced empathy with the predicament of the woman may also tie in with affective reactions of the hearer. We have no theoretical model of exactly how this is done. Yet, we assume that situation models contain opinions of hearers (and represented opinions of speakers), as well as representations of affective reactions: If the hearer also becomes angry about the treatment of the woman, this is likely to be stored as part of the model about the situation told about. Recent work has shown that episodic models linked with affect are easier to retrieve by subjects in the same mood (Bower, 1980). Actual empathy, thus, may lead to enhanced retrievability and, hence, possible effectiveness. Also, affect might be a factor enhancing involvement (which also presupposes more and more elaborate models and attitudes) with the issue of the speaker. Heightened involvement may contribute to enhanced attention, focus, deeper processing, and better organization of what the speaker says, which again may influence better retrievability and hence more effectiveness (Chaiken, 1980; Petty & Cacioppo, 1979). Alternatively, affect may, of course, take a mental shortcut, and directly associate positive feelings with what the woman says. This would define what may be called emotional acceptance, that is, acceptance (or "yielding") even without her strategic moves and arguments that contribute to a better cognitive organization (Zajonc, 1980).

We conclude from this tentative discussion that discursive and interactive strategies have an important function in the understanding and representation of prejudiced conversation. They may contribute to a more positive speaker model, enhanced opposition (competition, conflict) between in-group and out-group in situation models and attitude schemata, more and better structure in the story model and the situation model, and finally to links with affective memory structures that allow empathy with the speaker and better reproduction of the story on later occasions. Overall, these assumptions can be subsumed under the goal of enhanced effectiveness, and, hence, as contributions to the process of persuasion: Chances are greater that the hearer represents the storyteller and her situation model more in the way she intends than in any alternative way. And whereas some of the persuasive strategies have a general nature, others appear more specific for the kind of moves that operate in discourse about delicate topics or in prejudiced talk. Thus, it is essential in such conversations that (a) the story is an instantiation of prejudiced opinions and attitudes, (b) the episodic model clearly organizes around a positive us (e.g., as victims) and a negative them, (c) the speaker establishes a positive model of self, especially as an in-group member, and (d) that the hearer is constrained to make similar evaluations of the events described. We have seen that the persuasive strategies

of the speaker are all geared to these dimensions of "acceptable opinion management," and how these contribute to the organization of prejudiced talk in memory of recipients.

4. Prejudiced opinion and attitude (trans)formation

The last phase in the complex process of persuasive communication can be descríbed in terms of the interaction between text and situation models, on one hand, and previous models and attitudes, on the other hand. In our discussion in Chapter 4 on the structures of opinions and attitudes in memory, we found that what is usually termed attitude change is really a very complex process. What are mostly experimentally investigated are isolated changes of opinion. How opinions, or social opinion-complexes such as attitudes or prejudices, are exactly changed is seldom represented in theoretically explicit terms. In this last main section of this chapter, we turn to this problem, although wíthout the ambition of fully accounting for all details and intricacies. Aside from a theoretical analysis, we again use natural data from interviews as part of our empirical evidence about the nature of opinion (trans) formation.

4.1. OPINION CHANGE

Opinions have been analyzed as evaluative beliefs, whereas evaluations were assumed to be based on systems of culturally shared norms and values. If it is a value of our society that "all people are equal under the law," then any situation in which people are not treated equally in the same circumstances may be evalu- ad negatively, if there is a value-based norm that says that "people should be treated equally under the same circumstances." This is precisely what the storyteller in our example in section 3.2. does, finding her unequal treatment by the authorities "unreasonable." Theoretically, propositions that account for such evaluative beliefs may simply be integrated into the models people have about situations. In our example, the probable macroproposition dominating the woman's model of the situation at the welfare agency would be something like "Welfare did not give me money, but it did give money to an aggressive Surinameses' For the woman, this is further interpreted as an instance of unequal and, hence, unfair treatment, so that in addition to this macroproposition, we find the high-level belief proposition "It is unfair ('unreasonable') thatp ", in

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which p is the macroproposition representing what actually happened. The prominence of this opinion proposition in the model may (also) be inferred from the initial position of this clause in the story. It is probably this opinion proposition that was used as an important retrieval cue to find the model representing her experiences at the welfare agency (together with negative propositions about ethnic minority groups, which were already topical earlier in the conversation).

At a lower level of the model, the woman in our example may, of course, have further opinions, for instance, about the aggressiveness of the Surinamese man, about the refusal of the authorities to help her, or about the flashy life-style of Surinamese in general. In these cases, the opinions derive from values such as those of politeness, deference, and modesty, sustaining norms such as "help should be asked for in a polite way" (which makes "aggressive" requests negative), and "if people are poor, they should not show off with rich things" (which makes driving big cars and having jewels negative). The woman has represented and strategically telis these experiences and opinions in such a way that they receive extra focus. Her poverty and lack of money is contrasted with the rich life-style of the Surinamese, the refusal of the authorities to help her contrasted with the high amount (thousands) the Surinamese are believed to get, and her deference contrasted with the aggressive behavior of the Black man. In other words, the story is not primarily about an interesting event, but rather about norms and values being respected by the woman and violated by the ethnic group member and the authorities. The overall opinion implication that can be derived from the story, therefore, is that the woman disapproves of the current ethnic situation in the Netherlands, and especially of (Black) minority groups. These are the (implied) opinion propositions persuasively communícated to the hearer.

We have assumed that the hearer may store such opinions in his or her model of the situation described, as well as in the model of the speaker. Yet, the hearer need not "adopt" or "accept" these opinions of the storyteller. The question of this section, then, is what exactly happens, cognítívely, in this manipulation of ethnic opinions by recipients?

Opinion Formation and Confirmation

As a first step in the solution of this problem, we may assume that, in principie, the hearer goes about opinion (trans)formation much in the same way the speaker does. States of affairs, events, and actions, as represented in situation models, are subjected to strategic evaluation procedures based on activated norms and values. These norms and values have a rather general, socioculturally

based, nature and are, therefore, stored in semantic (social) memory. In principie, they may be assumed by the speaker to be shared by the hearer. This is one of the reasons that speakers in prejudiced talk often explicitly formulate the relevant norms and values, and do so in typical appeal moves to the hearer:

(17)(MA6). (Rice in a Surinamese shop had become rotten because of a flooded basement. The shop owner threw it in the garden, where rats could get to it.) That isn't, those aren't normal things, are they? You can't do that líke that. You can put it with the trash can, so that it will be picked up.

(18)(PD5). (We work hard, and they have never worked like that.) They are married, then divorced, but still live together and they are in business and both are on welfare. What do you think of that?

(19)(RA2). (They have a lot of children.) Well, you pay for that. I pay for that.

(20)(RA2). (Home slaughtering story.) You are not allowed to slaughter sheep at home. You know that, don't you?

Then, the hearer must analyze the situation and determine whether the events or acts are instances of general norm or value statements. An event such as "X got money, but Y did not get money" may be categorized as an instance of differential treatment, which may be found to conflict with the norm of equal treatment. All other things being equal, the hearer should then draw the evaluative conclusion that the event is conflicting with the accepted norms and, therefore, may be evaluated negatively. In our example, this is precisely the cognitive reaction the woman tries to provoke. And in general such stories may, therefore, lead to the intended opinion formation by the hearer. The result in that case is a situation model that is similar to the one expressed by the woman, dominated by the proposition "It is unfair that .... " In other words, much in the same way as the events themselves are being "checked" against frames and scripts of prototypical episodes (which make the events at the welfare agency intelligible), also the opinions associated with these events are being checked against prevailing norms and values. In the first case,the result of the check may be that the events are judged to be possible, probable, orjust true if they do not conflict with information stored in other models of the hearer, or when they are similar to those in other models (the hearer has had the same or similar experiences). For the evaluation procedure of the opinions, a similar process takes place: Are the events or acts instances of (general) events or acts that are normatively prohibited or do they conform to the values shared in society (or in the group)? If so, the result may be that the opinion expressed is found to be "justified," when additionally it does not con-