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

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interviews. In other words, for speakers, it is most expedient to organize their topics around the notion of "threat," which is a concept that allows positive self-presentation ("we are allowed to defend ourselves against such threats"), rather than around the concept of "superiority," which would be against the official norms and might lead to loss of face. It follows that an analysis of topics is an important method of assessing the contents of dominant prejudiced opinions, but that transformations due to the strategic management of the communicative context should be applied when inferring thought from talk. These transformations will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.

It should be noted finally that we have analyzed topics only at the level of abstract semantic (and cognitive) macrostructures. We have ignored the local moves of the elicitation, introduction, elaboration, maintenance, or change of topics in talk. Part of these moves will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this chapter in which we analyze the local organization of conversation.

5. Stories about minorities

Especially in high-contact areas, there is much story telling about ethnic minority groups. Unlike many other types of conversational narrative, such stories usually have an argumentative function. They are not primarily aimed at diverting the audience; neither do storytellers tell about their experiences to brag of heroic feats. Much like other forms of informal talk about minorities, they are primarily performed as complaints, in which the storyteller (a family member or friend) is portrayed as a victim of the presence of foreigners in the neighborhood. The narration of such experiences thus serves as factual "evidence," that is, as premises for evaluative conclusions. They are a macromove within an argumentative strategy of negative otherpresentation and positive self-presentation. Negative stories make negative conclusions credible and defensible, so that the general norm of ethnic tolerance is, apparently, not violated.

5.1. STORY STRUCTURE

Conversational stories theoretically display general characteristics of both narrative and conversational structures. Interactionally, they come about notjust within a single turn of a single speaker. Rather, they tend to be constructed dialogically in such a way that one speaker, the primary storyteller, tells about personal experiences in a sequence of narrative moves, and the recipient may routinely interrupt to ask questions, to show surprise, to challenge the interesting-

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ness or relevance of the story, orto interpolate fragments of a story about his or her own experiences. Indeed, the narratability of a conversational story is usually locally negotiated, and the storyteller cannot take or maintain the floor unless the recipients agree that the story is worth telling. And unlike monological stories, such as those in letters or novels, they may run astray and remain incompleted. The general narrative "plan" may not be executed in a straightforward manner and may need permanent local modifications and adaptations to the ongoing communicative context. (For details, see, e.g., Ehlich, 1980; Polanyi, 1985; Quasthoff, 1980.)

Story Schemata

Also, conversational stories display an overall narrative pattern that identifies them as stories. Such narrative structures have been discussed in a vast amount of literature in several disciplines, starting with and inspired by early anthropological work on Russian folktales (Propp, 1928/1958); first, in French Structuralism in semiotics and poetics (Chabrol, 1973; Communications, 1966; Todorov, 1969; van Dijk, 1985b); second, in sociolinguistic and ethnographic work on natural stories (Chafe, 1980; Labov, 1972; Labov & Waletzky, 1967); and finally in psychology and Al, around a sometimes fierce debate on the nature of "story schemata" or "story grammars" (Black & Wilensky, 1979; Mandler, 1984; Mandler & Johnson, 1978; Rumelhart, 1975; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1975; see van Dijk, 1980c, for a collection of papers). We cannot discuss the merits and weaknesses of the recent approaches to story structure here (see van Dijk, 1980b, 1980c, for details), but will merely summarize our own theory of story structure, which combines elements from the theory of action (van Dijk, 1976) with some structuralist and sociolinguistic notions, as well as cognitive dimensions (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983).

Stories are a class of related discourse types that have an overall narrative "form" in common. This abstract, underlying formal structure can be made explicit in terms of narrative superstructures. These are described, just like macrostructures, ata global level of analysis: They characterize sequences of sentences (propositions), and not isolated ones. And much like the "formal" structure of a sentence, narrative superstructures or story schemata, are accounted for by means of typical categories and rules. Categories involve, for example, Summary, Setting, Orientation, Complication, Resolution, Evaluation, and Coda (or Conclusion) (Labov, 1972; Labov & Waletzky, 1967).

These categories are ordered hierarchically, so that severa! of the categories just mentioned are organized in higher-level, more abstract categories. For instance, Complication and Resolution together function as

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the event core, or "happening" of the story, and the Setting, of course, extends its "scope" to this entire happening. The Complication usually contains events that are contrary to the goals, wishes, or expectations of the protagonist or storyteller, and the Resolution the actions performed in such a predicament, with or without success. The Evaluation, which may appear discontinuously throughout the whole story, is the category that collects information about the personal opinions or emotions of the storyteller about the events, in expressions such as "That was really dangerous," or "I was really afraid" The Coda or Conclusion, finally, provides information about the actual relevance of the story for the present communicative or interactional context. In our interviews, for instance, the Conclusion may tie in with the argumentative schema in which the story was embedded, and that aimed at strategically conveying a negative opinion about foreigners.

To provide readers or listeners an important clue about the relevance or interestingness of the story, it is often prefaced by a Summary, which may also locally connect the story to the ongoing conversation. Such a Summary is even obligatory in news stories in the press (van Dijk, 1983d, 1985e, 1985f, 1987a). Whereas the Setting specifies location, time, and participants, the Orientation of the story provides the special circumstances that led to the Complication.

In actual stories, some of these categories may remain implicit, for instance, when they are presupposed by the storyteller to be known to the hearer. Also, especially in rhetorically or literarily effective storytelling, stories may show various transformations of the canonical schema informally outlined aboye, and represented in Figure 2.2.

Different cultures may have different story categories and constraints (Chafe, 1980; Kintsch & Greene, 1978), as we may also find in different story types in our own culture (such as news stories, conversational stories, literary stories, and children's stories).

Story Schemata and Topics

Because narrative structures are only an overall schema or form of a story, they also need an overall "content" to fill the terminal podes of the story schema. This content is precisely provided by the semantic macropropositions or topics we have discussed in the previous section of this chapter. In other words, we may expect that the prejudiced topics we have found earlier are the typical contents of stories about minorities. Each narrative category has typical constraints on the macroproposition by which it defines the overall narrative function. For instance, Settings require place and time descriptions, and Complications must involve interesting, interfering events and actions.

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PR EPA RATION

SETTING C

Figure 2.2: Narrative Schema of Story

The Cognitive Basis of Stories

Cognitively, stories may be treated as partial expressions of situation models, that is, of episodic representations of personal experiences. We shall discuss the nature of such models in more detail later, but it is important to note here that the actual production and understanding of stories is cognitively monitored by a strategic application of story schema rules and categories on the memory representation of some event the storyteller has experienced (lived, or read about). For an adequate analysis of the role of storytelling in the diffusion of ethnic prejudice and the reproduction of racism, this cognitive basis is crucial (van Dijk, 1985d). It shows most directly how people have interpreted and stored an ethnic encounter, including possible "biases" in the representation of ethnic minority actors and actions.

Stories rather faithfully express how people deal with ethnic minority groups in their immediate social environment, and especially how social members of the in-group place themselves within this environment. In other words, stories—much like gossip and rumor (Shibutani, 1966)— are rich data bases for guided inferences about ethnic relations and their cognitive modeling by social members.

5.2. STORIES ABOUT "FOREIGNERS"

To illustrate the general theoretical notions introduced aboye, let us start our discussion about "ethnic" stories with a concrete example. The story is told by a woman who lives in a new suburb that is known in Amsterdam for its relatively high percentage of Surinamese. In the same interview, she had already told other

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stories of negative experiences with "foreigners" (Spanish people who clean fish just aboye the fresh laundry of her mother, and Moroccan kids who urinate down on the laundry of one of her colleagues). The story that follows is prefaced with some more specific experiences of her own that she has when she goes shopping in her own neighborhood, during which she claims to be harassed by young Black Surinamese boys (interview and transcription by Nico Hergaarden; approximate—and far from ideal—English translation of spoken Amsterdam Dutch is ours; "I" stands for the ínterviewer and "W" for the woman). Narrative categories are placed in the right margin on the line where the category begins. In this trancript we do not follow specific transcription conventions, except three points to mark pauses and capitals to mark special stress).

This rather characteristic story about the assumed cultural differences between Surinamese and Dutch, and indirectly about the perceived negative behavior of the Black woman and the polite behavior of the (White) Dutch manager, shows the major narrative categories we have discussed aboye. There is no need for a special introduction or summary because

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the conversation is already oriented toward her experiences with Surinamese in the crea. In fact, the woman had just asked, "Do you want details?," which is—of course—affirmed by the interviewer. So, she directly starts with a description of the Setting, including both location and time ("long ago," which will prove functional at the end, because it shows that the event was important enough to her to be remembered so many years). The Orientation, as we interpret that category, is the description of a usually trivial daily situation, which already may prefigure the "difficulties" to be told in the Complication, as is also the case here. The Complication, in this case, has various "installments," which we encounter more often in conversational narrative: Bringing back the bread, taking on, shouting, and finally stealing packets of cigarettes (revenge for not being given her money back for the bread?). The Resolution also has two installments, and consists in the reaction of the supermarket manager.

At this point, the storyteller interpolates her own explicit evaluation and conclusion about the events: One does not exchange bread in the Netherlands, which at least implies the stereotypical opinion, "They are different." At other points, her evaluation of the events shows in the emphasis on the rhetorically contrasted concepts predicated on the Black woman and the White manager, respectively: to take on terribly and to shout versus politeness and trying to explain.

The illustration of the main opinion, "They are different," or "They have a different mentality," has other dimensions in this story, however. That out-group members are depicted in negative terms and in-group members are portrayed as reacting positively, even after the perceived "unreasonable" or unacceptable acts of the out-group member, are the usual moves of the main strategies in such talk, namely, negative otherpresentation and positive self-presentation (where self here refers to we Dutch people, because the woman does not tell the story as an individual but as a member of the dominant group). But at the same time, "bringing back bread" is not just an act the woman disapproved of or found strange and in conflict with explicitly invoked Dutch shopping norms (which may themselves be "invented" locally to make the story more convincing). Also, the storyteller implicitly conveys that Black women might not be as clean as White Dutch people supposedly are, and that they are impolite, aggressive, and thieves. That is, in a few words, the storyteller sketches a very clear vignette of a stereotypical ethnic "conflict" in which the in-group member remains tolerant and understanding and in which the out-group member not only breaks the rules but also displays other deviant behavior and characteristics.

Although, as such, this incident may be rather "innocent," it goes without saying that its narrative reproduction persuasively argues for a number of prejudiced opinions (foreigners are dirty, aggressive, and

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criminal). Even if the event took place more or less as told by the woman, the story selects precisely this event for further communication, and this selective attention for negative experiences may contribute to the informal communication of such prejudiced opinions. The story is, of course, told from a White, dominant perspective, in which the woman storyteller rather chooses the side of the manager (her possible opponent in shopping conflicts). Also, rather significantly, it is not told why the Black woman brought back the bread (was there something wrong with it?), and whether the bread was packaged, or not (which would be essential in judging abóut the "cleanliness" angle of the story). Packaged items can usually be brought back according to implicit Dutch supermarket rules, and it is rather unlikely that a Surinamese woman would bring back unpackaged, and hence touched, bread given the strict rules of hygiene in tropical Surinam. Finally, we are not told either why the Black woman took the packets of cigarettes from the cash register.

From these few observations we conclude, first, that such stories are subjectively biased, incomplete expressions of ethnic encounters, in which the perspective is that of the storyteller and the in-group, and in which a selection seems to be made of those acts and events that are positive for the in-group and negative for the out-group. This means that such a story is not merely an account of personal experiences, but rather an expression of our "social experiences" as members of the in-group. They are not I-stories, but we-stories, and that makes them particularly effective in informal communication and diffusion. Indeed, the story may relevantly be further told in the community by any of the recipients ("My neighbor told me yesterday that ..."), which is not the case for all personal stories. Negative opinions are not always explicitly expressed but left to the inferences of the recipient. It is sufficient to describe the negative acts and to invoke the general norms, rules, or habits that are broken. Nonverbal clues such as pitch, intonation, angered face, and some specific particles that express anger may be sufficient to convey the appropriate evaluation of the storyteller about the events in particular and about the ethnic out-group in general.

Story Categories

From the brief and informal analysis of one example, we may have gleaned how "foreigner stories" are organized and what they may be about. The individual categories play a functional role within the overall strategic goals of the storytellers. Thus, reasons, introductions, or summaries provide the motivation and relevance of the story that is to follow and, in our case, usually reveal how some general questions or statements about ethnic minority groups can

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be illustrated or backed up. Sometimes such introductory or bridging story fragments also express a clear evaluation, so as to make the story more effective and therefore interesting:

(2)Well, that is not what I call pleasant living. And it so happens that my daughter... .

(3)I'll tell you something funny.... This sheep slaughtering that is really terrible .. .

We already observed that Orientations may express rather mundane situations and actions, such as shopping, walking on the street, taking a streetcar, and doing the laundry. Again, these trivial circumstances may have specific functions for the difficulties that are to follow later in the story. First, they show that what did happen, can happen, any day, to any one of "us," and in most ordinary circumstances. That is, the events need not be highly exceptional and are portrayed as part of everyday life. Second, the triviality of the Orientations also shows the "innocence" of the storyteller: She was just doing her everyday things, minding her own business, and then suddenly.... Without such an implicit guarantee of innocence, the recipient might infer that the storyteller was also part of the "problema' such as by having provoked the minority actor or by having started the conflict herself. Third, the triviality of the mundane activities rhetorically contrasts with the nonmundane, deviant behavior of the minority actor. Fourth, for everyday situations and activities, the usual norms, rules, and habits apply, so that their breach is all the more conspicuous. That is, the storytellers construe situations in such a way that the occurrences in their stories become more salient or prágnant (van der Wurff, 1983).

Evaluations, Explications, and Conclusions are the categories or dimensions of our stories in which the opinions and attitudes, and the norms and rules on which they are based, become most clearly visible. The formal antidiscrimination norm does not allow too open or direct racist evaluations and conclusions, so that these either remain implicit, indirect, or vague, or are toned down through various mitigation moves, which we shall discuss in detail later. Thus, many stories abound with generalities, such as, "That is the way they are," "We don't do that here,"

"You see, they don't know how to ...," "They have a different mentality," "A normal Dutch guy wouldn't do that ...," or more specific expressions, such as, "We do not exchange bread (slaughter sheep at home) in Holland."

The obvious argumentative function is to establish a general, and, therefore, "acceptable," opinion about cultural difference and conflict. This topic alone engenders many stories about strange, funny, or curious

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events and acts, but mostly more is involved. The acts of the minority members are not merely portrayed as different, but as negative and inferior, and so are the roles and norms on which such acts are based. So, evaluative explications of this type provide evidence about the general framework in which in-group members interpret narrated events.

Conclusions in that case are barely necessary. In only a few cases, storytellers say what they have learned from the events (e.g., not to go out at night, not live in the inner city, or not go shopping here or there, anymore). And only occasionally will a storyteller conclude generally by saying, "So, therefore I don't like these guys," as one of our storytellers does. For these stories, one could say that the point or conclusion coincides with the evaluation: The main goal of the story is to provide evidence for a negative opinion about the minority group. Narrative event evaluations thus function metonymically as (negative) group evaluations.

Complications and Resolutions: Story

Topics

The kernel of a story is formed by the combination of a Complication and a Resolution. Unlike the other categories, these are obligatory in storytelling. Without a Complication there is no story, and without a Resolution a story would be typically incomplete and be met with questions such as "What happened (then)," or "What did you do?" Thus, the Complication is the category that dominates topics about what went wrong, which goal was frustrated, or what other undesired or unexpected events or acts took place. The Resolution classically should feature what the story protagonist (for instance, the storyteller herself) did, how she reacted to this predicament or surprising event, and, therefore, how the problem was solved (or not), or what the relevant consequences were.

It is interesting to find, however, that in many of the "ethnic" stories we have analyzed, such a Resolution is absent. In Table 2.2, we see that more than half of the stories do not have a clear Resolution.

There may be several functional explanations for that structural feature. First, as we already indicated earlier, the stories are "complaint" stories, and, therefore, they should not feature (re)solutions. The storytellers want to communicate precisely the opinion that there is a minority problem, and it would not be very effective if they had personally "solved" it in their daily life. Therefore, the storyteller or in-group members are often portrayed in a victim role and the foreigner in the role of villain.

Second, if some tentative resolving actions are mentioned, they are mostly followed by failure, which suggests the powerlessness of the storyteller as an in-group member: The minority actors will invariably

TABLE 2.2: Narrative Categories and Their Frequencies in Stories About Minorities (stories in interviews of Group II were explicitly elicited)

N N Stories/ N of Interviews storvtellers storíes Occasioning Summary Setting Orientation Complication Resolution Evaluation Erplication Conclusion Teller categories/story