racist discourse van dijk

8/4/2019 Racist Discourse Van Dijk

1/4

RACIST DISCOUR SERacist discourse is a form of discriminatorysocial practice that manifests itself in text, talkand communication. Together with other (non-verbal) discriminatory practices, racist discoursecontributes to the reproduction of racism as aform of ethnic or "racial" domination. It does sotypically by expressing, confirming or legitimat-ing racist opinions, attitudes and ideologies ofthe dominant ethnic group. Although there areother racisms elsewhere in the world, the mostprevalent and devastating form of racism hashistorically been European racism against non-European peo ples, which will be the focus of thisessay.Two forms of racist discourseThere are two m ajor forms of racist discourse:1acist discourse directed at ethnically differ-ent Others;2acist discourse about ethnically differentOthers.The first form of racist discourse is one of themany discriminatory ways that dominant groupmembers verbally interact with members ofdominated groups: ethic m inorities, immigrants,refugees, etc. They may do so b latantly by using


2/4

352 RACIST DISCOURSE

derogatory slurs, insults, impolite forms of ad-dress, and other forms of discourse that explicitlyexpress and enact sup eriority and lack of respect.Since today such blatant forms of verbaldiscrimination are generally found to be "politi-cally incorrect," muc h racist discourse directed atdominated ethnic group members tends to be-come more subtle and indirect. Thus, whitespeakers may refuse to yield the floor to minorityspeakers, interrupt them inappropriately, ignorethe topics suggested b y their interlocutors, focuson topics that imply negative properties of theethnic minority group to which the recipientbelongs, speak too loudly, show a bored face,avoid eye contact, use a haughty intonation, andmany other manifestations of lack of respect.Some of these verbal inequities are more gener-ally a problem of multicultural communication;others are genuine exp ressions of racial or ethnicdominance of white speakers.

In other words, these are the kinds of dis-course and verbal interaction that are normally-considered deviant or unacceptable during con-versation with in-group members, and thereforeare forms of domination that have has beencalled "everyday racism." Of course, they alsooccur in conversations w ith people of the "own"group, but are then sanctioned as being rude orimpolite. The fundamental difference is thatminority group members daily are confrontedwith such racist talk, and not because of whatthey do or say, but only because o f vvhat they are:different. They are thus subjected to an accum u-lating and aggravating form of racist harassmentthat is a direct threat to their well-being andquality of life.The second form of racist discourse is usuallyaddressed to other dominant group members andis about ethnic or "racial" Others. Such discoursemay range from informal everyday conversationsor organizational dialogues (such as parliamen-tary debates), to many written or multimediatypes of text or communicative events, such asTV shows, m ovies, news reports, editorials, text-books, scholarly publications, laws, contracts,and so on.

The overall characteristic of such racist dis-course is the negative portrayal of Them, oftencombined with a positive representation of Our-selves. The corollary of this strategy is to avoidor mitigate a positive representation of Others,and a negative representation of our ow n group.

Typical for the latter case is the denial ormitigation of racism.These overall strategies may appear at all

levels of text and talk, that is, at the level ofvisuals, sounds (volume, intonation), syntax(word order), semantics (meaning and reference),style (variable uses of words and word order),rhetoric (persuasive uses of grammar or of"figures" of style), pragmatics (speech acts suchas assertions or threats), interaction, and so on.TopicsThus, topics of conversation, news reports, poli-tical debates or scholarly articles about minori-ties or immigrants may be biased in the sensethat they focus on or imply negative stereotypes.Thus, immigration may be dealt with in terms ofan invasion, a deluge, a threat, or at least as amajor problem, instead of as an important andnecessarv contribution to the economy, the de-mography or the cultural diversity of the country.Research into conversation, media, textbooksand other discourse genres has shown that of apotentially infinite number of topics or themes,text and talk about minorities or immigrants,typically clusters around three main topic classes.The first class features topics of discourse thatemphasize the difference of the Others, andhence their distance from Us. Such emphasismay hav e a seemingly po sitive slant if the Othersare described in exotic terms. More often thannot, however, the difference is evaluated nega-tively: the Others are portrayed as less smart,beautiful, fast, hardworking, democratic, mod-era, etc. than We are. These top ics are typical ineveryday conversations, textbooks and especiallythe mass media. This first step of in-group-out-group po larization in discourse, w hich also char-acterizes the underlying attitudes and ideologiesexpressed in these discourses, usually also impliesthat They are all the same (and We are allindividually different).The second group of topics takes polarizationbetween Us and Them one step further andemphasizes that the behavior of the Other isdeviant, and hence breaks Our norms and rules:They do not (want to) speak our language, theywalk around in funny dress, they have strangeha bits, they eat strange food, they m istreat theirwomen, and so on. The presupposition or con-clusion of such topics is generally that They donot, but should, adapt to Us. On the other hand,


3/4

RACIST DISCOURSE 353

even w hen they totally adapt, the Others will stillbe seen as different.Thirdly, the Other may he portrayed as a

threat to Us. This happens from the momentthey arrive, for instance when immigration isrepresented as an invasion, until the new citizenshave settled in "our" country, in which case theymay be seen as occupying our space, runningdown our neighborhood, taking our jobs orhouses, harassing "our" women, and so on.

The most prominent threat theme however iscrime. All statistics on the coverage of immi-grants or otherwise marginal or m arginalizedpeople show that in everyday conversations,the media and political discourse, various kindsof crime invariably show up as a permanentassociation with minorities and immigrants: pass-port fraud, assault, robbery, and especially drugs.Indeed, the quite common expression "ethniccrime" suggests that such crime is seen as aspecial and different category: crime thus be-comes racialized. Doing drugs in the USA andother countries is seen as a typically "black"crime. On the other hand, "normal" topics, suchas those of politics, the economy, work, or("high") culture are seldom associated withminorities. If they are reported positively in thenews, blacks do so mostly as champions in sportsor as musicians.According to the overall strategy ofpositive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation, neutral or positive topics about Usare preferred, whereas the negative ones areignored or suppressed. Thus, a story may beabout discrimination against m inorities, but sincesuch a story is inconsistent with positive Self-presentation, it tends to be relegated to a lessprominent part of the page or newspaper.

The discursiva logic of racist positive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation notonly controls the fundamental level of globalcontent or topics, but extends to all other levelsand dimensions of discourse. Thus, lexicaliza-tion, or the choice of words, tends to be biased inmany ways, not only in explicit racial or ethnicslurs, but also in more sub tle forms of discourse,beginning with the very problem of naming theOthers. There has been opposition to changes innaming practices: for example, the movementfrom (among other terms) "colored," "Negro,""Afro American," "African American" to "peopleof color" was opposed at different stages in

history and by different groups, including, wemight add, some African Ame ricans.Another well-known way to emphasize Their

bad things is to use sentence forms that makebad agency more salient, such as active sentences.On the other hand, if Our racism or policeharassment needs to be spoken or written about,the grammar allows us to mitigate such acts thatare inconsistent with a positive Self-image, forinstance by using passive phrases ("They wereharassed by the police," or "They were har-assed") or nominalizations ("harassment") in-stead of the direct active phrase ("Policeharassed black youths").Similar forms of emphasis and mitigation aretypically managed by rhetorical figures, such ashyperbole and euphemisms. Thus, few Westerncountries or institutions explicitly deal with(own!) racism, and both in political discourseand well as in the media, many forms ofmitigation are currently being used, such as"discrimination," "bias," or even "popular dis-content." On the other hand, the opposite Cakesplace whenever the Others do something we donot like. Thus, for starters, and as we have seen,immigration is often described using the militarymetaphor of an invasion. Sim ilarly, large groupsof immigrants or asylum seekers are describednot only and simply in large numbers, buttypically in terms of threatening amounts ofwater or snow in which We may drown: w aves,floods, avalanches, etc. The same is true for theso-called "number game," used broadly in poli-tics and the med ia, a strategy that emphasizes thenumber of immigrants in society by constantlyemphasizing how many new people have arrived.Strategies of presentationDiscourse is more than just w ords or sentences. Itis typically characterized also at more globallevels of analysis, as we have seen for the studyof topics. In the same way, discourse has moreglobal forms, formats or schemas that maybecome conventionalized, such as the typicalformat of a story, a news report in the press, ascientific article or a mund ane everyday con ver-sation. Although these formats are quite generaland hence do not normally change in differentcontexts, and hence are the same in (say) racistor antiracist discourse indeed, a racist story orjoke is just as much a story or joke as anantiracist one there are some interesting w ays


4/4

354 RACIST DISCOURSE

in which such structures may be related todifferent intentions or opinions of language users.Thus, we found that in negative everydaystories about foreign neighbors, people tended toemphasize the Complication category, contrast-ing it with the peaceful Orientation category ("I

was just walking on the street, and then sud-denly..."), but often leave out the Resolutioncategory, as if to stress that the presence offoreigners is a problem which cannot be resolved.Typically, the less-biased speakers in such a casedo mention some forro of (positive) resolution,even if they were initially confronted with some"trouble."Similarly, in p arliamentary debates, editorials,scientific articles and any other discourse inwhich arguments are very important, we alsomay expect ways in which the argumentationtends to be biased against the Other. Authorita-tive sources, such as the police or (white) experts,are being mentioned in order to "prove" that theimmigrants are illegal, cannot be trusted, or needto be problematized, marginalized, removed orexpelled. This move is typical for the well-knownfallacy of "authority." Immigration debates arereplete with such fallacies, for example, thefallacy of exaggeration, in w hich the arrival of asmall group of refugees m ay be extrapolated to anational catastrophe by a comment such as, "ifwe have lax immigration laws, all refugees willcome to our coun try."Finally, discourse is also mo re than words andglobal structures in the sense that it is semioti-cally associated with visual information, such aspage layout, placement, pictures, tables, and soon, as is the case in the press, or for film on T V,or on the internes. These nonverbal messages arealso powerful ways of implementing the generalstrategy of positive Self-presentation and negativeOther-presentation. Thus, articles in the pressthat are about Their crime or violence (such asurban disturbances defined as "race riots") tendto appear on the front page, on top, in largearticles, with big headlines, with prominentpictures in which They are represented as aggres-sive or We (or Our Police) as victims. On theother hand, our racism, or the harassment ofblacks by "Our" police will seldom occupy sucha prominent place, and will tend to be relegatedto the inner pages, to less substantial articles, andnot emphasized in headlines.

In sum, w e see that in many genres, and at alllevels and dimensions of text and talk, racism

and prejudice may daily be expressed, enactedand reproduced by discourse as one of thepractices of a racist society.Such discourse, however, does not come alone,and takes its conditions, consequences and func-tions in communicative, interactional and socie-tal contexts. Biased or stereotypical news isproduced in media organizations, by journalistsand other professionals. Parliamentary debatesare conducted by p oliticians. Textbooks, lessons,and scholarly publications are produced by tea-chers and scholars. They do so in different rolesand as members of many different professionaland other social groups, and as part of dailyroutines and procedures. News is gathered underthe control of editors, and typically under major-ity institutions and organizations, such as gov-ernment agencies, the police, the universities orthe courts. Minority groups and sources aresystematically ignored or attributed less relevanceor expertise. The newsrooms in North America,Europe an d Australia are largely white. Minorityjournalists are underemployed and discriminatedagainst, with the usual fake arguments. Nowonder that the dominant discourse of society,especially also about ethnic affairs and minoritycommunities, is badly informed and hence in-forms badly. In other words, racist societies andinstitutions produce racist discourses, and racistdiscourses reproduce the stereotypes, prejudicesand ideologies that are used to defend andlegitimize white dom inance. It is in this way thatthe symbolic, discursive circle is closed anddominant elite talk and text contributes to thereproduction of racism.

Fortunately, the same is true for antiracistdiscourse. And once such discourse is engaged inby responsible leaders in the media, politics,education, research, the courts, corporate busi-ness and the state bureaucracies, we may hopethat society will become diverse and hence trulydemocratic.SEE ALSO: bigotry; colonial discourse; culturalracism; epithet (racial/slang); humor; inferentialracism; language; media; O ther; policing;postcolonial; race: as signifier; racial coding;racialization; representations; systemic racism;whitenessReadingDiscourses of Domination: Racial bias in the Canadian

English-language press by Frances Henry and Carol

racist discourse van dijk

Documents