Normative regulations and language use in the description of political events:

Pragmatic language use in newspapers

8th International Conference on Social representations

Social Representations: Media & SocietyRome, August 28-Sept. 1st; 2006

J. Valencia, L. Gil de Montes, G. Ortiz (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)

The Pragmatic dimension

of social representations

– Moscovici (1994): “the whole communicative value of the phrase is not condensed in the meaning alone” (1994b, 163). “something“ was beyond the text

– “throughout the studies on the way representations are shaped and diffused in ordinary communication I have privileged questions of meaning” (p. 164).

• This limitation came from two places. First, from privileging questions of form or mental architecture.

• Second, the interaction between psychological content and linguistic content, specially in the notion of anchoring, was guided by the analogy between thought and language.

• Several attempts have recently come into the arena of linking the relation between language use and social representations (Van Dijk, 1998; Harre, 1998; Grice, 1989; Wagner et al., 2000).

– Another recent attempt that might help us overcoming the limitation derived from the semantic communication and support the pragmatic dimension: The Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB). • This "bias" is based on the analytical frame of the

symbolic communication known as the "Tool and Tool Use Model", and on the classification of linguistic terms across the "Linguistic Category Model” (Semin & Fiedler, 1988, 1991)

• Language use in the Media– Accuracy versus manipulation of the language used

in the media. – George Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four (1949) on the

relationship between “duckspeak” and “doublethink” in his “newspeak”, underlined fear and suspicion of manipulation as well as the relation between language use and thought. Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent (1988)

– De Mateo’s (1989) sketch of the newspaper industry in Spain emphasizes the different roles played by the press during Franco’s regime, the transition to democracy and the full restoration of democracy, making it clear that newspapers made ideological purity their first priority at that time.

The linguistic intergroup bias

– People tend to use a more concrete language to describe negative behaviours of in-group members and positive behaviours of out-group members and a more abstract language to describe in-group positive behaviours and out-group negative behaviours.

– Maass, Corvino & Arcuri (1994) presented three studies where the role of the mass media was analysed: a soccer match between two competing teams, the description of an anti-semitic aggression and a report about the Gulf war in the third one.

The Linguistic Category Model (LCM)

– The recent interplay between linguistics and social psychology has provided a privileged “perspective” for the analysis of the relation between language use and thought in a “pragmatic” way

– Language considered as a tool and language use as a tool use. This implies taking language as a pragmatic tool directed to the achievement of goals (Chiu, Krauss, & Lau, 1998, Krauss & Chiu, 1998).

– The properties of the tools can only be manifested in pragmatic contexts, that means “in the hands” of skilled or “capable” tool users.

LCM: Level, Category and Characteristics

I. Descriptive Action Verbs: Objective description of a specific and observable behaviour with clear beginning and end: Kiss, Talk, Stare Speak, shout

II. Interpretive Action Verbs: Describe a general class of behaviours. They provide an interpretation beyond the mere description: help, imitate, cheat, hurt

III. State Verbs: Refer to enduring mental or emotional states: admire, hate, envy

 

IV. Adjectives: Highly abstract person dispositions: honest, impulsive, aggressive, nice

Cognitive Characteristics of Linguistic Categories

Duration Low High

Stability Low High

Probability of repetition Low High

Situational information High Low

Information about the subject Low High

Possibility of disagreement Low High

Verifiability High Low

Possibility of imagining High Low

Concrete Abstract

DAV IAV SV ADJ

Hypothesis

It was expected that different normative regulations, that means, different levels of linguistic abstraction used by newspapers would be used when describing different political events depending on the perspective they take on the political conflict.

Study 1Language use in Socio-Political contexts:

The death of politicians

Context: The death of two politicians of different ideological positioning:

– Muguruza (Basque nationalist parliamentary, member of Herri Batasuna), killed in 1989, action self-attributed by G.A.L. (antiterrorist group of liberation)

– Múgica (non- nationalist politician, relevant member of the Spanish socialist party) killed in 1996, action claimed by E.T.A (Basque Country and freedom)

Method: Analysis of the language used in ideologically different newspapers according to the Linguistic Category Model

Design: 2 (nationalist versus non-nationalist newspaper) x 2 (sentences referring to the victim versus referring to the aggressor) x 2 (level of abstraction: concrete versus abstract)

Case and Level of Abstraction

Object

Press NonNationalist Politician

Concr. Abstr

Nationalist Politician

Concr Abst

Aggressor

Victim

Nationalist

Non-Nationalist

Nationalist

Non-Nationalist

59% 41%

28% 72%

51% 49%

52% 48%

66% 34%

96% 4%

79% 20%

76% 23%

Table 1. Percentages of the linguistic categories in function of the aggressor of nationalist vs. non-nationalist politician and the victim. (X2 (1) = 26,55, p < .00)

Study 2

Language use in Socio-Political contexts:

1998 truce by ETA

Context: the description of the declaration of truce by ETA in 1998

Methodology: analysis of the nationalist and non-nationalist newspapers

Design: 4 subject of sentence (‘ETA’, ‘nationalists’, ‘non-nationalists’ and ‘truce’) x 2 perspective of the newspaper (nationalist , non-nationalist) x 2 level of abstraction (concrete vs abstract) x 2 valence of the category (positive vs negative).

Table 2. Percentage of concrete vs abstract verbs by valence by subject of sentence used by Nationalist and non-nationalist newspapers when describing truce (X2 (4) = 9,49, p < .01)

Subjects ETA Non-nationalist Nationalist truce

Level of abstraction

Type of Newspaper

Valence of categories

Conc Abs Conc Abs Conc Abs Conc Abs

Nationalist Newspapers

Negative

Positive

50 50

59 41

48 52

75 25

75 25

53 47

25 75

55 45

Non-Nationalist Newspapers

Negative

Positive

45 55

90 10

59 41

60 40

54 46

82 18

21 79

61 39

Table 3. Percentage of IAV vs SV verbs by valence used by Nationalist and non-nationalist newspapers when describing truce (X2 (4) = 182,16 p < .00).

Level of Causal Intentionality

Type of Newspaper Valence of categories IAV SV

Nationalist Newspapers

Negative

Positive

89,47

81,25

10,53

18,75

Non-Nationalist Newspapers

Negative

Positive

90,57

92,59

9,43

7,41

Study 3: The banning of Egunkaria newspaper

Context: the description of the banning of a Newspaper in 2003

Method: analysis of the editorials

Design: 2 sentence subject (Basque and Spanish) x 2 ideological view of the newspaper (nationalist and non-nationalist) x 4 level of abstraction (DAV, IAV, SV, ADJ) x 2 valence of the category (positive vs negative).

Table 4. Percentage of linguistic categories by valence and subject of sentence used by nationalist and non-nationalist newspapers when describing the Basque (X2 (4) = 98,49, p < .000)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

bdav biav bsv badj

- ingroup

+ ingroup

- outgroup

+ outgroup

Table 5. Percentage of linguistic categories by valence used by nationalist and non-nationalist newspapers when describing the Spanish

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

sdav siav ssv sadj

- outgroup

+ outgroup

- ingroup

+ ingroup

General Discussion I

– The first study provides evidence for the use of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias in the mass media.

– From a methodological point of view, the design used is not a complete one: a 2 (Subject group membership) x 2 (protagonist membership) x 2 (positive versus negative behavior)

• In situations of strong political conflict sometimes there are many difficulties to do that.

– In relation to the aggressor of the non-nationalist politician the non-nationalist press used more abstract categories than the nationalist press. In relation to the aggressor of the nationalist politician it was the nationalist press which used a more abstract categories than the non-nationalist press. No differences with the victim.

General Discussion II

– The second and third studies found evidence again of biased use of linguistic abstraction in the media.

– On the one hand, compared to findings of the first study, results from the second study show that this differential use of abstraction is also likely to happen in a more “peaceful” context.

– The 2nd and 3th studies indicate that the dimension of dispositionality is qualified by the desirability of the descriptions

General Discussion III

– In relation to the intentional causality dimension, it was found that while both kinds of newspapers used more IAV in their descriptions -underlining in this way causal intentionality (Study 2)- linguistic intentionality was less used in the case of the banning a newspaper (Study 3).

– While results of the second study revealed that nationalist newspapers used more positive descriptions of low intentionality (SV) than negative ones, the third study suggested that this general trend was more commonly used to describe out-group behaviours.

General Discussion IV

– This “mysterious” effect might have two possible explanations. First, the effect could be due to a very well learned authomatic mechanism –with a cognitive individual basis- that involves the expression of stereotyped beliefs and meanings (ej.., Franco & Maass, 1996; von Hippel, et al., 1995), regardless of the presence of a listener or an audience.

– A second explanation -in our view more reasonable-. The framing in favour or against the political conflict by the part of the newspapers is reflected in the use of different normative logics when expressing descriptions about events.

General Discussion V

– Results might interpreted in terms of different pragmatic patterns. Results of linguistic abstraction might possibly derive not only from a “bias” in the sense of social cognition, but also from a) an audience that is implicitly assumed (faced to the public sphere consuming news), and more importantly, b) a specific audience to whom the message is directed.

– This pragmatic requirement might be determined by an implicitly assumed audience, -a public sphere-. It is also determined by the intention to address in the speech act an adversarial audience in a context where a triadic relationship emerges among the source of a message, the addressee and the social object of reference: public sphere (see also Semin et al 2003; Gil de Montes, et al 2003).

Final remarks

– More research, however is needed in order to understand the relation between pragmatic use of language and social representations

– In words of Moscovici “A closer examination of our past ideas and recent evolutions leads me to think that the time has come to reconsider some options. Yes, the time has come to loosen the link with semantic communication, which is too exclusive, and take more interest in pragmatic communication. I am not saying that the former must be given up in favour of the latter, which would be meaningless, but simply that, since representations are fashioned and shared at these two levels of content, one would do well to take both into account” (p. 165).