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

72 Communicating Racism

react aggressively, as is the case in the bread exchange story. Third, the unsolved predicament is also functional in enhancing the argument that "the authorities don't do anything against it either," which we find in many stories. According to competition-frame analysis, in which two parties in conflict represent two angles of a triangle and a judging or distributing authority a third angle (Schank & Carbone!!, 1978), impartial authority is needed in the resolution of conflicts. However, in stories about minorities, the local or national authorities are often portrayed as favoring the minority group, so that the majority members feel discriminated against (Bovenkerk et al., 1985; den Uy! & van der Wurff, 1984). Of course, aside from a breach of in-group solidarity, this "discrimination" by the authorities also represents an instance of real class conflict. Thus, the narrative consequence of the complicating events is that "we (ordinary) Dutch people" have to suffer, which is both narratively and argumentatively very effective in conveying the opinion that the presence of "foreigners" leads to unresolved problems.

Rather characteristic is the fact that in most of the stories in which the storyteller did take initiative to solve a problem successfully, she appeared much more tolerant about the presence of foreigners. The message in that case seems to be: There might be difficulties once in a while, but with some tact and ingenuity they may be solved as mine was. Of course, the tolerance dimension implied in that case is a functional move in avoiding negative self-presentation ("I am not a racist," "I am tolerant"), as well as a form of self-enhancement, as is usual in "heroic" storytelling ("Look how smart I was"). In some of these stories, we also find examples of people who took the side of the foreigner in a conflict, while at the same time denouncing the discriminating acts of their own in-group members. This does not happen very often, however. In most cases in which in-group members display tolerance and problem solving, ethnic minority groups are treated in a rather patronizing way.

The Complications of the story are usually about negative acts of ethnic group members. Of the stories, nearly 70% picture such negative acts by Surinamese and immigrant workers (Turks and Moroccans) alike (each appearing in about 45 % of the stories, the other stories being about other groups, which also shows how prominent only a few groups in Amsterdam are for storytelling). As may be seen from Table 2.3, in which the various topics included in the Complication category are listed, the major topic is "violent conflict" (aggressíon, violence, fights, and so on), followed by that of "crime" (theft, mugging, hold ups, and so on), and various forms of personal harassment and other forms of neighborly "nuisance" (smells, loud music, and so on).

These topics alone account for half of the 131 complicating story events. They indeed make "good" and, therefore, effective storytelling,

Structures 73

TABLE 2.3: Topics in the Complications of Stories About Minorities

1.Aggression, violence, menacing behavior, and fights (27)

2.Holdups, theft, and mugging (13)

3."Abnormal" behavior (dueto cultural differences) (9)

4.Nuisance, bothering, harassment (9)

5.Being dirty, unhygienic behavior (7)

6.Noise, load music (7)

7.Avoidance of contact (6)

8.Leakages and similar neighbor conflicts (3)

9.They ruin their apartments (2)

10.Home slaughtering (2)

11.Independent behavior of women (2)

12.Abuse social benefits (1)

13.They dance differently (1)

14.They do not want to work (1)

15.They are favored in housing (1)

16.They take ourjobs (1)

17.They do not adapt (1)

18.They are stupid/backward (1)

because they clearly show the others in a negative light: Al! these topics embody deviance and threat as perceived by the storytellers. The other topics are less directly focused ón deviance, but may be about cultural differences, and the "abnormal" or "different" behavior of the minority group member (dress, ruining apartments, slaughtering at home, and so on) .

These story complications show in particular how the prejudiced topics analyzed in the previous section are structured in talk. They also show about which topics people tend to tell "foreigner stories" and about which topics people have no personal experiences to report. Thus, general prejudiced opinions, such as "they do not want to work," "they abuse the social services," or "they are favored in housing," appear often in the interviews, but seldom in the stories. This suggests, as shall be shown in more detall later, that they do not originate, cognitively, from models of personal experiences, but directly from more general prejudiced attitudes, as formed from hearsay or interpreted media stories. Storytelling, therefore, also distinguishes talk about ethnic minority groups in high-contact areas from such talk in noor low-contact areas, where more general arguments tend to be used. Similarly, many of the stories more generally exhibit the problem topics on which people in poor inner-city neighborhoods tend to focus: decay, crime, lack of safety, bad quality of the houses, or noise. These are the more general social problems that in our stories tend to be attributed very concretely, namely, by personal experience and, therefore, credible evidence, to the presence and the actions of the "foreigners. "

74 Communicating Racism

An American Story

By way of comparison, let us finally give an example of one of the stories from our interviews held in San Diego. Just as in Amsterdam, such stories are told primarily in ethnically "mixed" neighborhoods, where people have more daily experiences with ethnic minority group members than in the nearly exclusively White and more affluent neighborhoods. The following story is told by an elderly couple who had immigrated from Canada to the United States some 30 years before. They are preoccupied by crime and burglaries in their neighborhood and give an example of a burglary next door ("M"- Man; "W"—Woman; "I"—Interviewer):

(4)(A-TD-Ia,b)

I:And the people who, who, do you have an idea about the people who do the burglaries about here. I mean, what kind of people would they

be?

W:Well, one day ... Yeah tell him about

M:... A lot are Mexicans. I was honre (?) one time 1 had the flu, and uh 1 carne out to the kitchen to get myself a cup of tea, just in my pyjamas, and I happen to look out of the window, and 1 see them breaking

in into the house next door. At first 1 thought they were doing some work, that he had hired somebody to work at the windows and then I realized they are breaking in. Sol carne to the garage door here, and I gota real good description. 1 was terribly sick at the time, and 1 gota real good description, at least one of them.

I:There were two.

M:There were three altogether.

I:Three!

M:And uh, people were in the yard there, and one was out here, and 1 got a good description of him. He must have heard me, cause he took off, and 1 thought well, uhh, 1 can grab that one, so 1 went out of the door,

but he was so fast, he was gone, he was down about there by the time I get out of the door, and he ran around the block, and over the church lot behind us. And uhh, so anyway, l called the police and gave them a description, and it wasn't ten minutes, they had a car in the area apparently, he picked them up.

I:Really?

M:They were illegal aliens, Mexican.

W:They carne over on the bus, didn't they?

M:Carne over on the bus, and they had shopping bags, and they had uh I

don't know how many shopping bags stashed in the bushes.

W:... They had twenty shopping bags stashed in the bushes.

M:... Was it twenty?

W:... Twenty.

M:In the church lot, near the church, behind the bushes. They had broken into how many places was it?

Structures 75

W:I don't remember.

M:I think they said forty honres, up the hill and in the college area, all the way down to here, and they were working their way down here.

W:You wouldn't believe it.

M:And so they brought them back, and uh identified them, this one feller, and uh the police took him away, took him to jail and I was contacted by the police department, by the attorney uhh

W:... prosecutor

M: ... prosecuting attorney, and he said that they were holding him for a trial, and they would be, trial coming up such and such a date. Anyway, uh it wasn't long after that, we got a letter, forget ah l about it, we send him back to Mexico.

I:They wouldn't go through the hassle of doing, of trying him and uh W: .. No

M:. No

I:They just sent him back?

M:They just sent him back. Trying to (???) to the people, and just send them back [laughs]. So this is what's done, they slap their wrist, and tell'em "naughty, naughty," and "go home now."

This story, which reflects much of the ethnic situation and the prejudices in Southern California, features the usual narrative categories: a Setting (one day, house of neighbor), Participants (Mexicans), a mundane Orientation (being at home with flu and looking out of the window), and a Complication that instantiates a general prejudiced opinion (Mexicans, and especially illegal aliens, are criminal), namely, breaking in next door. In this case, however, there is at least part of a Resolution. The man emphasizes, by rhetorical repetition, that he got a "good description" of one of them, and that one of the burglars was quickly arrested by the police. That would be a classical resolution for a crime story, but in this case, this result is not the real Resolution. After a narrative section that emphasizes the criminal acts of the burglars, also by rhetorical means (the number game: 20 bags, 40 homes), it turns out that the burglars were sent back to Mexico. In other words, there is no real punishment, and hence no (moral) resolution. And, much like in other "minority stories," the authorities are held responsible for this lack of firmness. After the apparent Resolution, as we míght call it, the storyteller identifiesafter undeniable, because official, "identification" by the police—the burglars as illegal aliens from Mexico, thereby indicating the relevance of the story for his arguments that much crime in the city is committed by aliens. Finally, the Conclusion of the story features a generalization about the treatment of criminals ("So this is what's done ...").

Whereas this conclusion is sufficient to stress the victimization of law-abiding American citizens (as the couple describes itself), there are some further aspects that contribute to such an interpretation, such as

76 Communicating Racism

the man being "terribly sick," which may also be taken as a good reason why he didn't catch the burglar. Note also that the repeated reference to the "good description" the man was able to get implies that he was doing his duty as a good citizen, that is, by helping the police identify one of the burglars. This is one of the elements in the story that may be seen as a move that is a functional part of positive self-presentation.

The story section that explains what other crimes the burglars had committed in the neighborhood may be read as part of the Complication, for example, by stressing the seriousness of their crime (it was not an isolated burglary), but also as a form of Evaluation, putting the burglary into a more serious perspective. Indeed, it is at this point that the woman expresses an explicit evaluation ("You wouldn't believe it") following the typical rhetorical emphasis obtained by mentioning the numbers of burglaries and bags of loot.

Concluding this section, we have found that stories about minorities tend to be told as "evidence" in an argument to demonstrate that minorities are somehow deviant, criminal, or otherwise problematic, mostly by breaking the law or the customs of "our" society, and that "we" are the victims of such acts. Whereas the Complication typically features such a deviant act, there is often no (real) solution, for which, often, the authorities are blamed. In later sections, we shall see how such stories are made more persuasive by various semantic moves and rhetorical devices.

6. Argumentation

The expression of delicate or controversial social opinions in conversation is routinely expected to be backed up with arguments. It is not surprising, therefore, that interview talk abounds with argumentative sequences. This is also because the interviewer generally is a relative stranger, whose opinions and speaker-judgments are not known to the speaker. Within the combined strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, such arguments have the fundamental function of protecting the speaker against unwanted inferences about his or her ethnic attitudes. Negative evaluations, taken as conclusions, must be sustained by defensible premises, that is, by shared beliefs, rules, laws, principies, norms, or values, and by demonstrably true "facts." Such facts may, for instance, be taken from personal experiences, and stories may function precisely as descriptions of such experience-based facts.

Structures 77

Argumentation Schemata

These elements of acceptable argumentation may become conventionalized in a fixed schematic form in a way that recalls the narrative schema we have discussed in the previous section (Toulmin, 1958; van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1983; van Eemeren, Grootendorst, & Kruiger, 1984). Andjust as for stories, there are differences between abstract, formal reasoning, and informal everyday argumentation, and between written forms of argumentation and argumentation in talk (Schiffrin, 1985). Despite these differences, we assume that in talk also, people generally follow an elementary schema of argumentation, which may be specified as follows for our interviews (where X is a [negative] property or action, and Y is an ethnic minority group; Y 1 is an instance, that is, an example, of Y, and X 1 an example of X):

(A)Position statement (opinion): "I do not like X of group Y"

(B)Inference principie (mostiy implicit): "If Y has/does X, then Y is bad" (here based on value)

(C)General fact: "Y always have/do X"

(D)Particular fact: "I have experienced that X 1 did/had Y 1"

(E)Supporting ("objective") evidence for truth of C or D.

Position statement A, expressing an opinion that must be supported by arguments, usually comes first in conversational argumentation, unlike conclusions in formal argumentations. Sometimes this opinion is expressed only indirectly or remains implicit. In that case, the general negative fact (C) may simply be mentioned. The negative opinion, which presupposes an evaluation, requires an implicit inference principie (B), which must be based on a social value, norm, or other general principie. To apply the principie so that (by informal modus ponens) the conclusion is valid, a general "fact" must hold (C). Sometimes this general fact is itself stated explicitly, as is the case for direct expressions of prejudiced opinions, such as, "They aiways steal." However, for reasons of positive self-presentation and antiracist norms, such general statements are usually not strong enough as evidence, so that sustaining "proof' must be given for the plausibility of C. Typically, such proof may be provided by giving examples or telling about personal experiences. Of course, such experiences must in principie be "verifiable," and we sometimes also find expressions of their nonsubjective (unbiased) nature, as in "You can ask her yourself," or "Other people reacted in the same way" (E).

78 Communicating Racism

Transformations and Realizations

This abstract argumentation schema of informal, conversational argumentation may, of course, be realized in different ways in different communicative contexts. Some speakers give no reasons (arguments) for opinion positions, so that there is no argumentation at all (the zero case). Others only mention a generalized fact, usually a prejudiced opinion, as a basis for their particular evaluation of a group, or just a particular fact in the form of an example or story. Whereas usually general norms and values remain implicit in argumentation, they play an important role in the prejudiced judgments of ethnic minority groups, who are precisely perceived as threatening these norms or rules. This is why in talk, a general norm is often explicitly stated, even when the speaker may assume that the (in-group) interviewer knows and/ or shares this norm. In our bread exchange story in the previous section, we saw that the storyteller explicitly states the norm that "one does not exchange bread in Holland. " The stereotypical and more general form of this norm invocation is the expression "We are not used to that here," which occurs frequently in prejudiced talk.

The simple schema we have outlined aboye may also show different forros of expansion and other transformations. The "particular fact" category may be filled by a lengthy story, which itself may contain subordinate argumentation sequences, statements of general facts, or invocations of norms and values. This also shows that argumentation structures are not just a local, but rather a global phenomenon. They organize complex sequences of propositions (or speech acts), for which they define special functions and, therefore, can be characterized in tercos of superstructures, in the same way as for narrative schemata. Also, for argumentative schemata, we find that there are some core categories that are obligatory, and a few "supporting" categories that are optional. Most of the categories are recursive, in the sense that they may occur several times within an argument. This recursion may also be analyzed in tercos of complex, discontinuous categories, as we also found for certain narrative categories.

Conversational Constraints

Although the schema presented aboye is specifically designed to capture conversational argumentation, it does not capture many other properties of informal "arguing." It still has the flavor of a monological structure, whereas argumentation is, at least implicitly, inherently dialogical. The various strategies that may be used

Structures 79

locally to perform the respective argumentative "steps," may involve questions, (dis)agreements (Pomerantz, 1984), objections, and, hence, counterarguments from the recipient. In fact, the categories are "recipientdesigned" in the sense of anticipating such counterarguments. Similarly, initial opinion positions need not be fixed and well defined but may undergo strategic modifications, especially if the speaker progressively understands that the original position as it stands is no longer defensible. The same may hold for each move in the argumentative sequence, and each of the factual or evaluative propositions used in the defense of the highest-level (main) position may be challenged and in need of independent subargumentation. Hence, apart from being a hierarchical form or schema, an actual conversational argument also has many local, strategic, and interactional features. We shall, however, examine these, as well as those of stories, at the local leveis of analysis we deal with in the subsequent sections. The same holds for our analysis of an example we must turn to now: We limit ourselves to the overall, global argumentation structure.

An Example

The following argumentative moves have been taken from an interview with a 36-year-old woman, a musician in a well-known Dutch orchestra, who lives in a rich, no-contact area of Amsterdam. In the beginning of the interview, she volunteered: "It depends in what neighborhood you are interviewing. If you take somebody from De Jordaan [a well-known old popular area of Amsterdam, which however, contrary to her assumptions, does not have a large percentage of minority groups], you will of course get big stories about foreigners, and that you will of course not hear if you come and taik with people in this neighborhood." She stresses the fact, however, that one can still have opinions about "foreigners" wherever you live in the city. The interview then features the following (macro)moves (we ignore the literal wording here):

(5)(RL2)

(1)I know people [in De Jordaan] who first had nice Amsterdamese neighbors, and who now got Turkish and Moroccan neighbors, who make a lot of noise.

(2)I can very well imagine that therefore it is not easy for them to stay friendly with these new neighbors who have large families.

(3)So, I am glad I live here. They cannot afford living here.

(4)What people would object to here are the large families and especially the noise.

This woman basically defends the position that she can understand that people have "opinions" (read—negative opinions) about the presence of foreigners. The first major step in her argumentative support for this more or less implicit position is an example: the resentment of her friends against being "sandwiched" between "noisy" foreigners with large families. The implication of her position is that the woman would not like to live among foreigners, mainly because they are supposed to be noisy, and the explicit question by the interviewer about the hypothetical presence of foreigners in this neighborhood is reacted to in a complex series of moves, including the argument that "they" would not be able to afford that, and, if they could, it would depend on the size of the family.

Yet, her main objection remains the assumed noise, and for that position she sets up an elaborate series of arguments. The basis for the argumentative steps is her statement that there is a fundamental dífference in life-styles. Foreigners are used to noise, which in turn is "explained" by their outdoor living, briefly supported by a reference to the "warm" countries from which they come. Importantly, the woman stresses that, "as such," foreigners and their noise do not bother her (she even likes the bustling life in these countries), but that their life-style clashes with the quieter life-style of the Dutch. Upon the interviewer's question, whether a large Dutch family is not just as noisy, she provides counterarguments such as the assumption that their noise would be different, that one could communicate (and ask them to be quiet), and there would be mutual respect. A basic position thus being defended is that it would be unacceptable ("strange") if we had to adapt to their life-style, which is a dominant prejudiced opinion in many of the interviews.

Structures 81

As usual in this type of talk, this woman dissimulates her dislike of foreigners behind a potentially defensible point of view, namely, the common assumption about cultural differences, in this case, mainly focusing on noise. This is a rather "safe" strategy if one shares the stereotype that indeed foreigners are "noisy," and if it is legitimate to object to noisy neighbors. The general arguments about cultural or national differences and life-styles protect her against questions or inferences about her personal opinions.

When the interviewer poses a hypothetical question about foreigners moving into that neighborhood, she first states the very impossibility of the hypothesis: They cannot afford that (presupposing that all foreigners are poor), and then a hesitating conditional acceptance (if the family would not be too big). But then she comes back to the general topic of noise and cultural differences, which clearly conveys her dislike for Glose association with foreigners. In fact, she even states explicitly that she is glad to live in that neighborhood. When the interviewer, somewhat later, explicitly asks her about this connection (does she live here because foreigners have a different life-style, and so on), she indignantly rejects that inference, however, "No, not that, oh no, no that is, that would carry us too far, what we what we are talking about now... .

No, therefore of course 1 don't live here because of that. That would be ridiculous ... I live here because I like to live close to my work. " We see that as soon as the interviewer makes an explicit inference that could seriously harm her tolerant self, her reaction is very defensive and emotional, even when somewhat more indirectly she has earlier stated that she is glad not to live "there" (where foreigners bother her friends). We see how argumentation is closely linked with the strategies of positive self-presentation, that is, with the ways people defend their opinions in a normatively acceptable way.

In terms of our argumentation schema, we thus end up with the following basic argumentative steps in our example:

(1)Main position (implicit): I do not like (the noise of) foreigners.

(2)Inference principie: If people make noise, 1 do not like them.

(3)General statement: Foreigners are noisy.

(4)Particular fact (example): Friends of mine had noisy, large families of foreigners as neighbors, and didn't like it.

(5)Support (for 3): They have different life-style, large families, come from warm countries.

This is the highest-level structure of her argumentation, but at several points further important arguments are used to back up each step. Thus, both the inference principie, and the support of the general opinion that foreigners are noisy and have different life-styles, need to be founded