Van Dijk Teun A. Prejudice in Discourse: An Analysis of Ethnic Prejudice in Cognition and Conversation

John Benjamins, 1984. x, 170 pages. — (Pragmatics & Beyond). — ISBN: 90-272-2536-2; ISBN: 0-915027-43-7.This book reports results from the interdisciplinary project ‘Prejudice in Conversations about Ethnic Minorities in the Netherlands’, carried out at the University of Amsterdam. This project has two major aims. First, a cognitive model is being designed to represent ethnic attitudes in general and prejudice in particular. Second, an analysis is being made of how people talk about ethnic minority groups and how such talk expresses their underlying prejudices. Empirical data have been gathered in some 120 nondirected interviews in various neighborhoods of Amsterdam. The present study is focused on the discourse characteristics of prejudiced talk. Only limited attention is paid to the social-psychological theory about ethnic stereotypes and prejudice.Aims of this study
Theoretical framework
Methods of research
Respondents
Minority groups
Prejudice in other types of discourse
Talk about minorities: An example
Ethnic Prejudice
Classical approaches
Current research
Toward an integrated framework for the study of ethnic prejudice.
The cognitive framework
Strategies of ethnic information processing
The organization of group schemata
The social context
The Contexts of Prejudiced Discourse
Text and context
Production strategies for prejudiced talk
Social strategies and functions of prejudiced talk
Topics of Discourse
Dimensions of discourse analysis
Topics of discourse: A theoretical account
Building topics: An example
Topic sequences
Topic changePrejudiced topics
An experimental test
Stereotypes about stereotypes: topoi
Some survey data about ethnic attitudes
Racist discourse: How do majorities talk to minorities?
Stories about Minorities
Stories, storytelling, and minorities
Narrative structures
Schemata of stories about minorities
The categories of narrative
The hierarchical structure of the narrative schema
Some quantitative evidence
An example
Story topics
Argumentation
Conversational argumentation
Arguments about ethnic opinions
Semantic Strategies
The notion of ‘strategy’
Semantic strategies in talk about ethnic minorities
Some cognitive implications
Style and Rhetoric
Strategies of adequate and effective formulation
Some stylistic properties of talk about minorities
The expression of prejudice
Rhetorical operations
Pragmatic and Conversational Strategies
Speech acts and the structures of opinion interviewing
Dialogical structures and strategies
Conclusions