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

32 Communícatíng Racism

bríefly some of its major principies and further explain our own approach. The theoretical frarnework of our analysis is based on earlier work on discourse (e.g., van Dijk, 1972, 1977, 1980a, 198la). Yet, as suggested in the previous section, for a number of additional theoretical notions, especially those that account for the local organization of everyday talk, we borrow from other approaches, such as discourse linguistics, psychology, conversational analysis, ethnography of speaking, sociolinguistics, and microsociology (Brown & Yule, 1983; Coulthard, 1977; de Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981; Tannen, 1981; van Dijk, 1985a).

To illustrate this interdisciplinary approach to discourse analysis, some of its basic assumptions and principles are summarized. More detailed explanations are given at the beginning of each of the next sections of this chapter. Although this summary is primarily intended for those who are unfamiliar with modern línguistics and discourse analysis, it also features some choices and assumptions that are less obvious or less widely accepted in discourse analysis.

Discourse as Social Interaction

First, a rather obvious, if not trivial, assumption: Discourse is primarily taken as a specific forro of social interaction, and notjust as an "abstracted" or "produced" result of such interaction. That is, social members "participate" in discourse in a similar way as they participate in other types of social interaction. This is particularly obvious in face-to-face verbal interaction but, derivatively, it also holds for the production of written discourse forms, which are usually also produced for a recipient. Because notions such as text or discourse are often also used to denote the (abstracted) línguistíc product of monological or dialogical verbal acts, we shall add the term interaction when ambiguity may arise. The terms talk and conversation are only used in this interactional sense: They denote what people do when speaking in face-to-face encounters (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Goffman, 1967; McLaughlin, 1984; Schenkein, 1978; Sudnow, 1972).

I stress this rather obvious interactional nature of discourse because it allows us to integrate a social and sociocognítíve dimension into its theoretical and analytical study. If we abstract from what people actually do, both socially and mentally, we cannot account for many of the contents, forms, or strategies of talk, nor are we able to integrate the analysis into wider frameworks of communication, social interaction, and social structure. That is, the discursive reproduction of ethnic prejudice is neither merely some type of text, nor the individual or solitary activity of speakers or wríters, but a form of social interaction between social members,

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taking place in social contexts that are constrained by (interpreted) social structures and cultural frameworks (Bauman & Sherzer, 1974; Cicourel, 1980; Duranti, 1985).

This implies that talk assumes the usual properties of (inter)action, for instance, that it is planned (intended), goal-directed, controlled, ongoing, and sequential activity, coordinated by at least two participants. This summarizing characterization of (inter)action suggests that it features both observables (Sacks, 1985), namely, utterance or activity fragments that may be produced, heard, or seen, and nonobservables, such as intentions, plans, goals, strategies, beliefs, and interpretations.

It is, however, a sound methodological principie to take into account only those nonobservables that, sometimes very indirectly, show or exhibit themselves in observables and, conversely, to analyze only those observables that are expressions of, interpreted as, or functíons of mental and social representations or processes. In other words, overt activities are integrated with covert cognitive and social processes. We stress the cognitive dimension because some sociological analyses of conversation tend to have a sornewhat "behavioristic" bias and neglect the important cognitive correlates of talk (but see Cicourel, 1973). A full-fledged discourse analysis is not just interested in what is actually observable or "shown." That position would, when taken seriously, reduce our account to the visual or acoustic level, which is obviously not what discourse and social interaction are about. And if we talk about meaning, belief, intention, interpretation, or common sense, we talk about mental objects, even when they are socially shared.

Dimensions and Leveis of Analysis

Whereas the interactional assumption about the nature of discourse stresses the "integral" account of cognitive, social, and textual aspects of talk, all seríous analysís proceeds through a number of divisions and abstractions. Thus, even for the analysis of ongoing discursive activity, we isolate structural units that are theoretically assigned "object" nature, that is, forms, functions, meanings, categorial values, or boundaries, for example: words, phrases, clauses, or sentences at one level of analysis, concepts, propositions, or topics at another level, or turns, moves, speech acts, interactions, or strategies at a third level of analysis. That is, properties of discursive interaction are defined as objects of different theoretical "type," and for each type a different theoretical account may be needed. The same holds for the relations between objects of different types, as is the case between sentences and propositions, or between propositions and moves, or for units that require characterization at several levels at the same time, such as

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repetition, repair, side sequence, or story. Without such systematic distinctions, the analysis becomes vague, confused, and unsystematic.

Linguistic Structure

We recognize, here, the familiar levels, units, and categories of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of structural sentence and discourse grammars, as well as those of speech act theory (pragmatics), conversational analysis, or rhetoric (see the various contributions in van Dijk, 1985a, vol. 2). The theoretical operations that make such levels or units "discrete" properties of discursive interaction do not imply that they do not have a "dynamic," processlike nature. This holds both for small units such as words, as well as for larger units such as stories in conversation. Both are "segments" in otherwise continuous verbal activity. Justas in a physical theory of light, the properties of discourse may be studied as ongoing, dynamic operations or processes (waves) or as discrete units (particles).

Much in the same way as such segments may need analysis of their structures and functions at several levels, they may be studied along different dimensions or from different perspectives. Traditional linguistics, for instance, studies its levels or units of utterances as properties of static, structured objects, such as sentences. The same is true for the additional units studied in discourse linguistics, namely, discourses (texts, dialogues). In both cases, the abstractions may pertain to observables such as sounds, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, or sentence sequences or to nonobservables such as meanings, associated to the observables by abstract relationships, such as interpretation. The account of physical continuities of speech, both in terms of articulation or in tercos of acoustics, is then left to phonetics.

Beyond Grammatical Structures:

Style, Rhetoric, Schemata

Linguistic analysis is often identified with grammatical analysis. However, verbal utterances may be characterized in structural terms that go beyond the levels and units of grammar.

First, discourse exhibits style, that is, a characteristic form of language variation, typically at the surface levels of pronunciation, syntax, and lexicon. Such variation is usually defined in terms of alternative ways to formulate the "same" meaning, namely, as a function of variable factors of the communicative context, such as mood or evaluation of the speaker, or the position, status, gender, age, or social relationships of the speech participants. Discourse style thus may be viewed as the sig-

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naling trace of the context in the text. In this sense, a "formal" style may be globally associated with a "formal" communicative event or social situation (Norton, 1983; Sandell, 1977; Scherer & Giles, 1979).

Rhetorical structures are a step further removed from grammar. Unlike style, they are not inherent properties of discourse, but optional, "extra" structures at all levels of grammatical analysis. Basically, they can be defined in terms of specific transformations of grammatical structure, such as additíons, deletions, permutations, or substitutions, as is the case in alliterations, rhymes, or parallelisms at the morphosyntactic level, and metaphors, irony, or understatements at the semantic level. Basically, such rhetorical operations have a communicative function. They may be used to enhance the effectiveness of discourse, for instance, by making an expression or meaning more salient (Kahane, 1971; Plett, 1977).

As a specific case of the kind of discourse organization also accounted for in classical rhetoric, we may distinguish higher-level forms of a "schematic" nature, namely, superstructures (van Dijk, 1980a). Thus, many discourse types, such as stories, news reports, conversations, or psychological reports, may exhibit a conventionalized (and hence culturally variable) overall structure, defined in terms of hierarchically ordered categories. For instance, severa] discourse types have a Setting or a Summary category, and in dialogues we often find various Opening or Closing categories. The superstructures organized by these categories are filled with variable (macro) semantic content. Schemata or superstructures organize the higher discourse levels in a way that is reminiscent of the syntactic structure of sentences. They provide the overall "form" of the overall semantic "content" (macrostructures) we introduce below. Generally, as we shall see later in this chapter, such schemata are described in specific "genre" theories, such asa theory of narrative or a theory of argumentation.

Acts and Speech Acts

The traditional linguistic isolation of sentences and their elements from ongoing speech activity not only led to a neglect of the dynamic or processual nature of talk, it also meant an abstraction from the action and interaction properties of language use.

This dimension was partly restored by the analysis of utterances as speech acts, by which an abstract account is given of what speakers "do" when they talk, that is, of the social act being accomplished through or beside the meaningful production of sounds. That is, sentences of a given form, and with a given interpretation, when uttered by a speaker in a specific context may also be interpreted as assertions, promises, or threats (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).

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Note that the description of such speech acts should encompass also the other, for instance, the grammatical levels of analysis, mentioned aboye, such as those of sentences or propositions. The additional dimension, that is, the "illocutionary" function (or meaning), thus becomes the specific task of another type of theory, namely, pragmatics (Leech, 1983; Levinson, 1983; van Dijk, 1981a). This theory specifies, among other things, under which grammatical and contextual conditions an utterance may be produced and interpreted as a given speech act type. In other words, a pragmatic theory relates grammar with an (abstract) account of social action. This also means, as suggested earlier, that a cognitive dimension becomes involved: Action also needs analysis in terms of intentions and goals (or their interpretations). Also, for each speech act, other cognitive "states" such as knowledge, beliefs, wishes, or opinions of speakers, may be relevant. Thus, in a request, we wish the hearer to do something that we believe he or she can accomplish. Besides these cognitive dimensions of speech acts, we may require specific social constraints on speakers who accomplish such acts, such as institutional functions, or social relationships of familiarity or power, for instance, in the description of the speech acts of commanding, threatening, or acquitting somebody.

Traditional speech act theory has one limitation it shares with traditional grammars: In practice it is usually limited to the analysis of isolated, single speech acts, performed by the utterance of single sentences. Obviously, in language use, speech acts seldom come alone, and a serious pragmatics of discourse, therefore, also must account for sequences of speech acts. Conditions of connection and coherence at the local level must be formulated for such sequences, as well as rules or conditions for the performance of global or macro speech acts. A news report thus may globally function as a higher-level assertion and a ransom note as a macro threat. Such pragmatic macrostructures also need their own proposition content, namely, in terms of semantic macrostructures.

Obviously, this additional account of verbal interaction in terms of speech acts merely provides a very specific perspective on the nature of interaction. That is, further social analysis may be needed. For instance, by making an assertion, issuing a command, or lodging a complaint, social members may "do" many other things, often at the same time. Indeed, they may defend themselves, attack others, enhance their selfesteem, "save face," show concern or solidarity, or negotiate or cooperate with other social members. In fact, the major goals of talk are often just the accomplishment of such actions or interactions, or their component moves and strategies, through the accomplishment of speech acts, themselves accomplished by the utterance of sentences or discourse fragments. Aside from an additional dimension of analysis, this sociological

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account of interaction also shows the hierarchy of verbal (inter)action, namely, from the plans and goals of word and sentence production (locutionary acts) via those of proposition formation (semantic acts: those of "meaning" and "referring"), and via the plans and goals of illocutionary acts, to the plans and goals of social acts.

The Cognitive Dimension

In the semantics of a linguistic approach already, and certainly in the account of discourse in terms of speech acts and social interaction, we cannot do without an analysis of the cognitive dimension of discourse. Although grammar deals with meanings and interpretation in abstract terms, it should be emphasized that, empirically, meanings and interpretations of utterances or activities are to be accounted for in cognitive terms. No serious account of discourse meaning, coherence, or other semantic properties is possible without notions such as concepts, knowledge and beliefs, frames, scripts, or models, that is, in terms of mental representations and cognitive processes of various kinds. The same is true for the analysis of action and interaction: Notions such as plans, intentions, goals, strategies, control, and monitoring are essential in both the theoretical and empirical description of speech acts and social action. The same holds, at ah l levels, for the representations of the communicative context, including speakers, communicative goals and the social properties of the participants and the situation.

Local Versus Global Analysis

The next set of principies of discourse analysis pertains to the "scope" of our description and theory formation. At several levels, especially those of semantics, pragmatics, and action theory, it makes sense to distinguísh between a "local" and a "global" range of phenomena, that is, between microstructures and macrostructures (van Dijk, 1980a). Local structures of discourse are partly accounted for in terms of the usual grammatical levels: words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and immediate sentence connections. The same is true for the analysis of isolated speech acts or speech act pairs, or for the local analysis of turn taking in conversation. It is, however, characteristic of discourse that global levels of analysis are also ínvolved, for instance, meanings of larger discourse segments, or global (speech) acts (Ferrara, 1985; van Dijk, 1980a, 1981a). That is, we deal with sequences of sentences, propositions, (speech) acts, turns, or moves, and these may exhibít specific forms of organization.

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Some of the special notions that have been introduced in discourse analysis, such as topic or theme, moves and strategies, narrative and argumentative structure, or other schematic forros (superstructures) of text and talk, cannot be explained without such global units, categories, or representations, both in structural terms and in cognitive and social analysis. Obviously, local and global structures are closely related, for instance, in hierarchical networks, by rules or strategies of interpretation and inference, or by other mapping rules. Many local phenomena can only be properly explained in terms of their functions in global structures.

In cognitive terms, this distinction implies the usual complementarity of bottom-up and top-down processing. Many cognitive operations, such as storage, retrieval, instantiation, and application cannot work without the distinction between microand macrostructures. Most discursive interaction is sequentially and hierarchically complex, and plans and goals usually operate both locally and globally. Relations between utterance and situation may hold again at both levels, and characterizations of genres or whole communicative events are ímpossible without analyses at the global, overall level. At this point, we find another basic distinction between traditional sentence grammars or speech act theories, on one hand, and discourse analysis, on the other.

To avoid possible misunderstanding, it should be added, finally, that the micro/macro distinction recalls a similar distinction in the social sciences, but should not be confused with it. In sociological terms, discourse analysis of text or talk in social situations takes place at the micro level of social analysis. This does not mean that typical sociological macro (or structural) notions do not impinge at this level: Social formations, institutions, norms, and ideologies are also relevant at the micro level of social analysis. In fact, it is at this micro level that such macro phenomena are actually occurring or being enacted (Knorr-Cetina & Cicourel, 1981). We show this in detail for the typical macro notion of "racism." This structural property of dominant groups or society finds its actual instantiations at the micro level through (discriminatory) interaction, the communication of ethnic prejudice, and the social cognitions of individual social members as majority group members. The macro analysis of racism generalizes and abstracta from such micro-level cognitions, interactions, and situations, and introduces higher-level notions, such as the role of institutions (government, the police, the media, and so on), of class formations, of ethnic groups, and their complex mutual relationships and processes, such as socialization, education, exploitation, or discriminatión. Obviously, this brief statement about the macro versus micro levels of social analysis is short for a complex theoretical account that cannot be elaborated here.

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Integration

We have briefly summarízed a few basic principies of modern discourse analysis. In many respects, discourse analysis may be seen as a necessary and relevant extension of contemporary grammars, in particular, and of linguistics, in general. Discourse analysis takes into account units or categories of larger scope than the sentence and, at the same time, sets out to study the many complex forms of language use. In its characterization of sentence structures, it, of course, embodies grammar. Yet, it also accounts for relations between sentences or propositions, for instance, in the study of coherence. Classical speech act theories are extended to full-fledged discourse pragmatics. Discourse analysis takes into account many additional, such as stylistic, rhetorical, or schematic, properties of language use, and does so both at the local and global levels of analysis. Its extension toward more natural forms of language use, toward cognition, (inter)action, and communication, suggests that discourse analysis aims at a full characterization of communicative events, as it was advocated by Hymes (1962) more than two decades ago for the ethnography of speaking.

These various levels, dimensions, and approaches of discourse analysis have, often independently, been developed in several disciplines in the past 20 years. One of the main aims of díscourse analysis in the coming years is a theoretically adequate integration of these orientations. The boundaries between abstract grammars of language "systems," on one hand, and the various theories of "language use," on the other, have been crossed and blurred, for example, by the necessary introduction of properties of actíon, cognition, and communication as direct determinants of the structures of verbal utterances. In our analysis of everyday conversations about minorities, we have tried to integrate the various approaches into a coherent framework. Even when we systematically analyze structures at different levels, it should be kept in mind that both empirically and theoretically, all these levels and dimensions are closely related.

3.The discourse environment of prejudiced taik

Before we start with our analysis of prejudiced conversations, we must briefly point out that talk is not the only discourse channel for the expression, reproduction, and diffusion of racísm in society. Informal, interpersonal interaction is certainly at the heart of the individual participation and interaction within overall

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racist societies, but its conditions and consequences should be located at more embracing or higher levels of discursive communication. The news media, magazines, educational materials, novels, comics, movies, advertising, propaganda, political speeches, laws and regulations, institutional documentation (of national or local government, the police, the judiciary, business, and so on) provide the public discourse in which everyday conversations are coherently embedded. Reproduction relations are mutual here: The mass media reproduce and reconstruct the ethnic attitudes and discourses of social members and groups, and, conversely, everyday talk presupposes and refers to the many forms of public discourse that are produced by the many institutions of society.

Unfortunately, we have as yet little systematic insight into the precise structures and functions of these many types of possibly prejudiced discourses. Most work is limited to the mass media, film, literature, and educational materials, such as textbooks. These discourse types are often of a representational and narrative kind: They are about people, actions, events, and situations. That is, they express models of fragments of real or constructed social reality. Analyses in that case often pertain to the contents of these models orto the style of expression. They study how Blacks, immigrants, foreigners, or minority groups are represented.

The general finding is that this representation or portrayal is biased: Ethnic minority group members (or men, or other dominated groups), are shown in stereotypical roles and situations, with prevailing negative evaluations, and from a dominant perspective, if they are represented at all. They also have minority status in discourse, or in discourseproducing institutions. They are portrayed in passive roles, except when attributed negative actions, such as crime, riots, or many forms of deviance. In this respect, public discourse both models and persuasively communicates the position of minority groups in society. That is, it is neither a passive reflection of dominant group attitudes, nor a routine account of social structure. Public discourse both models and forms the dominant consensus. We shall later show (in Chapter 6) that various elite groups, such as politicians (Reeves, 1983) or academics, play a central role in the production and reproduction of these forms of prejudiced public discourse.

3.1. THE NEWS MEDIA

A primary role in this construction of the dominant consensus is played by the news media, such as the newspaper, radio, and TV. This role is not only defined in terms of its vast, mass-mediated scope, or by the assumed representational goals of the print or broadcast media in the reporting of social events; the media also

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play an intermediary role in the reproduction of other types of public discourse. Much of the news is not so much about happenings or events, but about what other people, typically the powerful and the elite, say or write (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Gans, 1979; van Dijk, 1983d, 1985f, 1987a). Most people read or hear about the discourses of institutions, government, politicians, business people, professionals, groups, parties, unions, churches, or other groups and institutions through the media. And news production is organized to access such source discourses routinely in the most effective way (Fishman, 1980; Tuchman, 1979).

The active processing of these source texts and talk in news production is the major contribution of the media in the reproduction and transformation of public discourse (van Dijk, 1987). These news production strategies involve ideologically shared values and routines of attention allocation, institutional access, selection, summarizatíon, relevance assignment, stylistic (re)formulation, and exclusion. This holds a fortiori for socially and ideologically prominent topics such as various minority groups and ethnic relations (Cohen & Young, 1981; Hall et al., 1978). And because the media provide the daily discourse input for most adult citizens, their role as a prevailing discourse and attitude context for thought and talk about ethnic groups is probably unsurpassed by any other institutional or public source of communication.

Hartmann and Husband (1974), in their seminal study of racism and the mass media, have explicitly paid attention to these information sources for what people know and find out about ethnic groups. In standard interviews and written questionnaires, they asked children and adults from which sources they got their ethnic beliefs or opinions. As expected, the media score high in areas with no or few ethnic minority groups, followed by personal experiences and what they heard from other people. Yet, in high-contact areas, both adults and children attribute most of their beliefs to personal experiences. In general, the media are especially given credit for information about national issues such as immigration, the numbers of immigrants, violent conflicts (riots), and the occurrence of discrimination. Personal experiences are espcially mentioned for information about cultural differences, both in the highand in the lowcontact areas.

These findings partially agree with our interview results but should be interpreted with care, additionally because the research method was of the well-known survey type. For instance, the relatively low score on media information in low-contact areas does not necessarily mean that people have actually had much less information from the media in such areas as opposed to high-contact areas, but only that many kinds of beliefs are rather attributed to more reliable or more concrete personal experiences. The same is true for the relatively low scoring on hearsay