Lecture 11: Discourse and Racism, and Media

Introduction

For most people, and probably also for many readers the notion of racism is not
primarily associated with that of discourse. More obvious associations would be
discrimination, prejudice, slavery, or apartheid, among many other concepts related to
ethnic or "racial" domination and inequality. And yet, although discourse may seem
just "words" (and therefore cannot break your bones, as do sticks and stones), text and
talk play a vital role in the reproduction of contemporary racism.

This is especially true for the most damaging forms of contemporary racism, namely,
those of the elites. Political, bureaucratic, corporate, media, educational, and scholarly
elites control the most crucial dimensions and decisions of the everyday lives of
immigrants and minorities: entry, residence, work, housing, education, welfare, health
care, knowledge, information, and culture. They do so largely by speaking or writing,
for instance; in cabinet meetings and parliamentary debates, in job interviews, news
reports, advertising, lessons, textbooks, scholarly articles, movies or talk shows,
among many other forms of elite discourse.

That is, as is true also for other social practices directed against minorities, discourse
may first of all be a form of verbal discrimination. Elite discourse may thus constitute
an important elite form of racism: Similarly, the (re)production of ethnic prejudices
that underlie such verbal and other social practices largely takes place through text,
talk, and communication. In sum, especially in contemporary information societies,
discourse lies at the heart of racism. This lecture explains how and why this is so.

Racism

To understand in some detail how discourse may contribute to racism, we first need to
summarize our theory of racism. Whereas racism is often reduced to racist ideology, it
is here understood as a complex societal system of ethnically or "racially" based
domination and its resulting inequality (for detail, see van Dijk, 1993).

The system of racism consists of a social and a cognitive subsystem. The social
subsystem is constituted by social practices of discrimination at the local (micro)
level, and relationships of power abuse by dominant groups, organizations, and
institutions at a global (macro) level of analysis (most classical analyses of racism
focus on this level of analysis; see, e.g., Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986; Essed, 1991;
Katz and Taylor, 1988; Wellman, 1993; Omi and Winant, 1994).

As suggested above, discourse may be an influential type of discriminatory

practice, and the symbolic elites, that is, those elites who literally have everything
"to say" in society, as well as their institutions and organizations, are an example
of groups involved in power abuse or domination.

The second subsystem of racism is cognitive. Whereas the discriminatory practices of

members of dominant groups and institutions form the visible and tangible
manifestations of everyday racism, such practices also have a mental basis
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consisting of biased models of ethnic events and interactions, which in turn are
rooted in racist prejudices and ideologies (van Dijk, 1984, 1987, 1998). This does not
mean that discriminatory practices are always intentional, but only that they
presuppose socially shared and negatively oriented mental representations of Us about
Them. Most psychological studies of "prejudice" deal with this aspect of racism,
though seldom in those terms, that is, in terms of their role in the social system of
racism. Prejudice is mostly studied as a characteristic of individuals (Brown, 1995;
Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986; Sniderman et al, 1993; Zanna and Olson, 1994).

Discourse also plays a fundamental role for this cognitive dimension of racism.
Ethnic prejudices and ideologies are not innate, and do not develop spontaneously
in ethnic interaction. They are acquired and learned, and this usually happens through
communication, that is, through text and talk, and vice versa. Such racist mental
representations are typically expressed, formulated, defended, and legitimated in
discourse and may thus be reproduced and shared within the dominant group. It is
essentially in this way that racism is "learned" in society.

Discourse: Definition

Without knowledge of racism, we do not know how discourse is involved in its daily
reproduction. The same is true for our knowledge about discourse. This notion has
become so popular, that it has lost much of its specificity. "Discourse" is here
understood to mean only a specific communicative event, in general, and a written
or oral form of verbal interaction or language use, in particular. Sometimes
"discourse" is used in a more generic sense to denote a type of discourse, a
collection of discourses, or a class of discourse genres, for instance, when we speak
of "medical discourse," "political discourse," or indeed of "racist discourse." Although
it is often used in that way, we do not understand by discourse a philosophy, ideology,
social movement, or social system, as in phrases such as "the discourse of liberalism"
or "the discourse of modernity," unless we actually refer to collections of talk or text.

In the broader, "semiotic" sense, discourses may also feature nonverbal expressions
such as drawings, pictures, gestures, face-work, and so on. However, for brevity's
sake, these will be ignored here, although it should be obvious that racist messages
may also be conveyed by photos, movies, derogatory gestures, or other nonverbal
acts.

Structural Analysis

Discourses have many different structures, which also may be analyzed in many
different ways depending on general approaches (linguistic, pragmatic, semiotic,
rhetorical, interactional, etc.) or the kind of genres analyzed, such as conversation,
news reports, poetry, or advertisements. It will be assumed here that both
written/printed text and oral talk may thus be analyzed at various levels or along
several dimensions. Each of these may be involved directly or indirectly in
discriminatory interaction against minority group members or biased discourse about
them, for instance, as follows:

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• Nonverbal Structures: A racist picture; a derogatory ‫ (ازدراء) ديراكيتوري‬gesture;
a headline size or page layout that emphasizes negative meanings about "Them."
• Sounds: An insolent intonation; speaking (too) loudly.
• Syntax: (De-)emphasizing responsibility for action, for instance by active vs.
passive sentences.

• Lexicon: Selection of words that may be more or less negative about Them, or
positive about Us (e.g., "terrorist" vs. "freedom fighter").
• Local (sentence) Meaning: for instance, being vague or indirect about Our
racism, and detailed and precise about Their crimes or misbehavior.
• Global Discourse Meaning (topics): selecting or emphasizing positive topics
(like aid and tolerance‫ )تسامح‬for Us, and negative ones (such as crime,
deviance‫االنحراف‬, or violence) for Them.
• Schemata ‫(مخطط‬conventional forms of global discourse organization ‫االشكال‬
‫)التقليدية لتنظيم الخطاب العالمي‬: presence or absence of standard schematic categories —
such as a resolution‫ الدقة‬in a narrative schema, or a conclusion in an argument schema
— in order to emphasize Our Good things and Their Bad things.
• Rhetorical Devices: metaphor‫تشابه مستعار‬, metonymy‫الكناية‬, hyperbole
(hīˈpərbəlē/ ‫(مقارنه مبالغ فيها‬, euphemism‫كناية‬/‫لطف التعبير‬, irony‫ سخرية‬, etc. — again to
focus attention on positive/negative information about Us/Them.
• Speech Acts: e.g., accusations to derogate Them, or defenses to legitimate
Our discrimination.
• Interaction: interrupting turns of Others, closing meetings before Others can
speak, disagreeing with Others, or non-responding to questions, among many other
forms of direct interactional discrimination.

Although not yet very detailed, nor very sophisticated, this brief list of levels and
some structures of discourse gives a first impression of how discourse and its
various structures may link up with some aspects of racism. Note also that the
examples given show the kind of group polarization‫ االستقطاب‬we also know from
underlying prejudices‫تحيزات‬, namely, the overall tendency of ingroup favoritism or
positive SELF-presentation, on the one hand, and outgroup derogation‫ ديراكيشن‬or
negative Other-presentation, on the other.

In other words, with the many subtle structures of meanings, form, and action, racist
discourse generally emphasizes Our good things and Their bad things, and de-
emphasizes (mitigates, hides) Our bad things and Their good things. This general
"ideological" square not only applies to racist domination but in general to ingroup-
outgroup polarization in social practices, discourse, and thought.

The Cognitive Interface

An adequate theory of racism is non-reductive ‫ غير اختزالي‬in the sense that it does not
limit racism to just ideology or just "visible" forms of discriminatory practices. The
same is true for the way discourse is involved in racism. This is especially the case

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for "meanings" of discourse, and hence also for beliefs, that is, for cognition.
Discourses are not only forms of interaction or social practices, but also express and
convey meanings, and may thus influence our beliefs about immigrants or minorities.

The point of the analysis of discourse structures above, thus, is not only to examine
the detailed features of one type of discriminatory social practice, but especially also
to gain deeper insight in the way discourses express and manage our minds. It is
especially this discourse–cognition interface that explains how ethnic prejudices
and ideologies are expressed, conveyed, shared, and reproduced in society. For
instance, a passive sentence may obscure responsible agency in the mental models
we form about a racist event, a special type of metaphor (such as in "an invasion of
refugees") may enhance the negative opinion we have about Others, and a
euphemism such as "popular resentment)‫ "ريزنتمنت (االستياء الشعبي‬may mitigate ‫يخفف من‬
the negative self-image an expression such as "racism" might suggest. In this and
many other ways, thus, the discourse structures mentioned above may influence
the specific mental models we have about ethnic events, or the more general
social representations (attitudes, ideologies) we have about ourselves and Others.
However, once such mental representations have been influenced in the way intended
by racist discourse, they may also be used to engage in other racist practices. It is in
this way that the circle of racism and its reproduction is closed.

The Social Context: The Elites

Research suggests that the discursive reproduction of racism in society is not

evenly distributed over all members of the dominant majority. Apart from analyzing
their structures and cognitive underpinnings, it is therefore essential to examine
some properties of the social context of discourse, such as who its speakers and
writers are. We repeatedly suggest in this lecture that the elites play a special role in
this reproduction process (for details, see van Dijk, 1993). This is not because the
elites are generally more racist than the non-elites, but especially because of their
special access to, and control over, the most influential forms of public discourse,
namely, that of the mass media, politics, education, research, and the
bureaucracies. Our definition of these elites is thus not in terms of material
resources that are the basis of power, such as wealth, nor merely in terms of their
societal positions of leadership, but rather in terms of the symbolic resources that
define symbolic "capital," and in particular their preferential access to public
discourse. The elites, defined in this way, are literally the group(s) in society who
have "most to say," and thus also have preferential "access to the minds" of the
public at large. As the ideological leaders of society, they establish common values,
aims, and concerns; they formulate common sense as well as the consensus ‫كنسنسس‬
‫االجماع‬, both as individuals and as leaders of the dominant institutions of society.

This is also true for the exercise of "ethnic" power - in which the dominant
majority needs guidance in its relationships to minorities or immigrants. Given
our analysis of the role of the "symbolic" elites in contemporary society, we conclude
that they also have a special role in the reproduction of the system of racism that
maintains the dominant white group in power. This means that an analysis of elite
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discourse offers a particularly relevant perspective on the way racism is
reproduced in society.

Of course, this special perspective on the role of the elites in the reproduction of
racism, based on the simple argument that they control public discourse, also
explains the role of small groups of elites in the non-dominant forms of
antiracism‫مناهضة العنصرية انتاريسسزم‬. If it is generally true that the leaders are
responsible and need to give a good example, this conclusion also implies that
antiracist ‫مناهضة العنصرية‬policies and change should not so much focus on the
population at large ‫السكان بشكل عام‬, but on those who claim to need it less: the elites. If
the most influential forms of racism are at the top, it is also there where change has to
begin.

The Role of Context

Current discourse analysis emphasizes the fundamental role of context for the
understanding of the role of text and talk in society. As will also appear several times
below, dominant discourses do not merely exercise their influence out of context.
When defining discourse as communicative events, we also need to take into
account, for example, the overall social domains in which they are used (politics,
media, education); the global social actions being accomplished by them
(legislation, education); the local actions they enact; the current setting of time,
place, and circumstances; the participants involved, as well as their many social
and communicative roles and (e.g., ethnic) group membership; and not least the
beliefs and goals of these participants. These and other properties of the social
situation of the communicative event will influence virtually all properties of text
and talk, especially those properties that can vary, such as their style: how things
are said. That is, similar prejudices may be formulated in very different ways
depending on these and other context structures - for example, in government
discourse or parliamentary debates, quality broadsheet or tabloid‫صحيفة شعبية‬, on the
left or on the right, and so on. In other words, the large variety of racist discourses
in society not only reflect variable underlying social representations, but
especially also adapt to different contexts of production: who says what, where,
when, and with what goals. A theory of context also explains in part why, despite the
dominant ethnic consensus‫االجماع‬, not all talk on minorities will be the same.

Conversation

After the more theoretical introduction about the way discourse is involved in racism
and its reproduction, we now proceed to some examples of the various genres whose
role in racism has been studied.

A genre is a type of discursive social practice, usually defined by specific

discourse structures and context structures as spelled out above. For instance, a
parliamentary debate is a discourse genre defined by a specific style, specific forms
of verbal interaction (talk) under special contextual constraints of time and controlled
speaker change, in the domain of politics, in the institution of parliament, as part of
the overall act of legislation, engaged in by speakers who are MPs ‫النواب‬,
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representative of their constituencies ‫مؤسسات الدولة‬/‫كنس تجوينسيز‬as well as members of
political parties, with the aim (for instance) to defend or oppose bills ‫معارضة مشاريع‬
‫القوانين‬, with formal styles of address and argumentative structures ‫الهياكل الجدلية‬
supporting a political point of view ... And this is merely a short summary of such a
definition of a genre, which usually needs both textual and contextual specification ‫كل‬
‫من المواصفات النصية والسياقية‬.

Thus, in the same way, everyday conversation is a genre, probably the most
elementary and widespread genre ‫ نوع‬of human interaction and discourse, typically
defined by lacking the various institutional constraints‫ القيود المؤسسية‬mentioned above
for parliamentary debates. Indeed, we virtually all have access to conversations,
whereas only MPs have access to parliamentary debates. Much of what we learn
about the world is derived from such everyday conversations with family members,
friends, and colleagues. The same is true for ethnic prejudices and ideologies ‫للتحيزات‬
‫وااليديولوجيات العرقية‬.

Whereas everyday conversations are often about other people, and anything may
come up in such talk, topics about minorities or immigrants are often limited to a
few topic types, namely, the increasingly negative topic ‫موضوعات سلبية متزايده‬classes of
difference‫االختالفات الفئوية‬, deviance‫االنحراف‬, and threat. Thus, ethnic outgroups ‫الجماعات‬
‫العرقية‬are first of all talked about in terms of how They look and act different from US
— different habits, language, religion, or values. Such talk may still be neutral in the
sense that such differences need not be negatively evaluated; indeed, differences may
even be discussed in a "positive" way as being interesting, exotics‫ غريب‬/‫أكزووتكس‬, and
culturally enriching ‫اثراء‬. More often than not‫في اكثر االحيان‬, however, different
characteristics will be negatively framed when compared to those of the ingroup
‫الخاصة بالمجموعة‬. Next, Others may be talked about even more negatively in terms of
deviance, that is, of breaking our norms and values, in Europe typically so in
negative remarks about Islam, or the way Arab men treat women. Finally, immigrants
or minorities may be talked about even more negatively, in terms of a threat, for
instance, in stories about aggression or crime or presented as taking away our jobs,
housing, or space, or (especially in elite discourse) when seen as threatening "our"
dominant culture.

Whereas topics are meanings that characterize whole conversations or large parts of
them, a more local semantic analysis of everyday talk about minorities or immigrants
reveals other interesting features. One of the best known are disclaimers ‫اخالء المسؤولية‬
, that is, semantic moves with a positive part about Us, and a negative part about
Them, such as:

• Apparent Denial‫انكار واضح‬: We have nothing against blacks, but ...

• Apparent Concession‫امتياز ظاهر‬: Some of them are smart, but in general ...
• Apparent Empathy‫التعاطف الظاهر‬: Of course refugees have had problems, but ...
• Apparent Ignorance‫الجهل الظاهر‬: I don't know, but ...
• Apparent Excuses ‫اعذار ظاهره‬: Sorry, but ...
• Reversal ‫ ارتداد‬/‫(انقالب‬blaming the victim): Not they, but we are the real victims
...
• Transfer‫تحويل‬: I don't mind, but my clients ...
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We see that these local moves instantiate ‫انشاء مثيل‬/‫ أنستانشييت‬within one sentence the
overall (global) strategies of positive self-presentation (ingroup favoritism ‫محاباة جماعية‬
) and negative other-presentation (outgroup derogation‫)خروج المجموعة‬. Note that some
disclaimers are called "apparent" here, because the first, positive part primarily seems
to function as a form of face-keeping and impression management: the rest of the
text or fragment will focus on the negative characteristics of the Others, thus
contradicting the first "positive" part.

In the same way, we may examine several other dimensions of everyday talk about
minorities. Thus it was found that in narrative structures of everyday negative stories
about immigrants, often the resolution‫ الحل‬category was lacking. This may be
interpreted as a structural device that enhances precisely the negative aspects of the
complication category of a story: stories that have (positive) resolutions of problems
or conflicts are less efficient ‫اقل كفاءة‬as complaint stories about Others.

Finally, even at the surface levels of actual talk management, for instance, in turn-
taking, fluency, and so forth, we may witness that white speakers appear to show
insecurity or uneasiness, for example, by the extra use of hesitations, pauses, and
repairs when they have to name or identify minorities.

News Reports

Everyday conversations are the natural locus ‫ المكان الطبيعي‬of everyday popular racism.
Because they do not have active control over public elite discourse, ordinary people
often have no more "to say" or "to do" against the Others than talking negatively to
Them, and about Them. Of course, ethnic stereotypes ‫ القوالب النمطية العرقية‬and
prejudices ‫االحكام المسبقة‬, just like rumors‫شائعات‬, may spread fast in such a way.

As suggested, however, much everyday talk about minorities is inspired by the mass
media. Speakers routinely /‫روتينلي‬do) refer to television or the newspaper as their
source (and authority) of knowledge or opinions about ethnic minorities. This is
especially the case for those topics that cannot be observed directly in everyday
interaction, even in ethnically mixed countries or cities. Immigration is a prominent
example, in which most citizens depend on the mass media, which in turn depend on
politicians, bureaucrats, the police, or state agencies. Of course, in cities, regions,
or countries with few minorities, virtually all beliefs about the Others come from
mass media discourse, literature, textbooks, studies, or other forms of elite
discourse. In other words, not only for ordinary citizens but also for the elites
themselves, the mass media are today the primary source of "ethnic" knowledge
and opinion in society.

News reports in the press, for instance, have a conventional schematic structure
consisting of such categories as summary (headline + lead), main events,
background (previous events, context, history), comments, and evaluation. Thus,
we may focus on headlines and see whether these typical summaries of news reports
are different for minorities than when they are about dominant group members.

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Following the general ideological square introduced above, we may for instance
assume that headlines in the news tend to emphasize the negative characteristics
of minorities. Headlines summarize the most important information of a news
report, and hence also express its main topic. Further analysis of these overall
meanings of discourse confirms what we already found in everyday conversations,
which apparently seem to follow the media in that respect (and vice versa, the media
in a sense also reflect commonsense beliefs), namely, that topics can be classified as
being about difference, deviance, and threat. If we list the most important topics in
"ethnic" news in different Western countries, or countries where Europeans are
dominant, we always come up with a standard list of preferred topics, such as:

• Immigration and reception of newcomers;

• Socioeconomic issues, (un)employment;
• Cultural differences;
• Crime, violence, drugs, and deviance;
• Ethnic relations, discrimination.

In other words, of the many possible topics, we again find a short, stereotypical list, in
which the categories are usually defined in a negative way. Thus, immigration is
always defined as a fundamental problem, and never as a challenge, let alone as a
boon to the country, often associated with a financial burden. The same is true for
the other main topics. Crime or crime-related topics such as drugs are virtually
always among the top five of minority portrayals – even focusing on what is seen as
"typical" ethnic crime, such as drug trafficking and sales, but also what is defined
as political "terrorism" (for instance about Arabs). Cultural differences tend to be
overemphasized, and cultural similarities ignored. Even discrimination and
racism, which may provide a more balanced view of the "negative" aspects of
society, are seldom news about the prevalence of discrimination and racism in
society, but at most about popular resentment (very seldom or never about elite
racism), about individual cases of discrimination.

We already have observed for headlines that responsible agency may be enhanced or
backgrounded by active or passive sentences. In the same way, backgrounding
agency may occur in nominalizations, or word order of sentences. Again, the
(largely unintentional) strategy that governs such local structures is the combined
polarized tendency of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation.

Besides such aspects of discursive surface forms (syntax), it is especially the rich
system of meaning that incorporates the many underlying beliefs that represent
mental models of ethnic events, or more general, shared social representations of
ethnic groups or ethnic relations. Following the now familiar ideological square, we
thus may expect, and indeed do find, that in general information that is positive about
Us or negative about Them will get highlighted, and vice versa. Semantically this
means that such information will tend to be explicit rather than implicit, precise rather
than vague, specific rather than general, asserted rather than presupposed, detailed
instead of dealt with in abstractions.

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News reports also have an important intertextual dimension. Newsmaking is
largely based on the processing of a large number of source texts, such as other
news reports, press conferences, interviews, scholarly studies, and so on. Such
intertextuality in news reports shows in various forms of citation and other
references to other discourses. Thus, it comes as no surprise that newspapers will
generally take (white) elite source texts (e.g., of government, scholars, or the police)
as being more credible and newsworthy than source texts of minority group members.
Indeed, minority groups have little direct access to the media. If they are cited, they
are always accompanied by declarations of credible majority group members.
Statements about discrimination and racism will often be downgraded to the dubious
status of allegations.

Whereas these and many other aspects of news reporting about race clearly express
and reproduce dominant ethnic attitudes and ideologies, and hence crucially influence
racism, it should finally be emphasized that problematization and marginalization do
not only apply to minorities in the news, but also in the newsroom. Especially in
Western Europe, leading reporters are virtually always white Europeans. So far, thus,
minority journalists have had less access to the media, especially in leading positions.
As we have seen, the elites, especially in Europe, are virtually always white, and they
also control the contents, forms, style, and goals of news and newsmaking. And it
comes as no surprise therefore that the mass media, and especially the right-wing
tabloid press, is rather part of the problem of racism than part of its solution.

Textbooks

Arguably, after the mass media, educational discourse is most influential in society,
especially when it comes to the communication of beliefs that are not usually
conveyed in everyday conversation or the media. All children, adolescents, and
young adults, are daily confronted for many hours with lessons and textbooks —
the only books that are obligatory reading in our culture. That is, there is no
comparable institution and discourse that is as massively inculcated as that of school.

Discourse and Racism: Immigrants, Refugees, Minorities

The bad news is that this is also true for lessons about Them – immigrants, refugees,
minorities, and peoples in the Third World – and that such discourses are often very
stereotypical and sometimes plainly prejudiced. The good news is that there is no
domain or institution in society where alternative discourses have more possibilities to
develop than in education.

Many studies have been carried out on the portrayal of minorities and Third World
people in textbooks. Even simple content analyses have repeatedly shown that such
portrayal, at least until recently, tends to be biased, stereotypical, and Eurocentric, and
in early textbooks even explicitly racist (van Dijk, 1993).

As suggested, much has changed in contemporary textbooks. Whereas minorities

were earlier virtually ignored or marginalized in textbooks, at least until the late
1980s, and despite their prominent presence in the country and even in the classroom,

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current textbooks in the social sciences as well as other fields seem finally to have
discovered that there are also minorities to write about. And whereas information
about Us that could be negative (such as colonialism) used to be ignored or mitigated,
there is now a tendency to want to teach children also about the less glorious aspects
of "our" history or society.

And yet, this is a tendency but still far from the rule. Many contemporary textbooks in
many Western countries remain basically Eurocentric: not only our economy or
technology, but also our views, values, societies, and politics are invariably superior.
They keep repeating stereotypes about minorities and other non-European people.
Third World countries tend to be treated in a homogeneous way, despite -the huge
differences. As is the case in the press, the Others are invariably associated with
Problems, for which however We tend to offer a solution. All this is equally true for
minorities in the country, which largely are dealt with in terms of cultural
differences and deviance, and seldom in terms of their everyday life, work, and
contributions to both culture and the economy. Finally, textbook assignments too
often ignore the presence of minority children in the classroom, and if not, these may
be spoken about as Them, and not always addressed as part of Us.

Political Discourse: Parliamentary Debates

Finally, among the influential symbolic elites of society, that is, those who have
special access to and control over public discourse, we should mention the
politicians. Indeed, sometimes even before the mass media, leading politicians have
already preformulated a definition of the ethnic situation. State institutions such as
the immigration service and the police, as well as their sustaining bureaucracies,
are often the first to actually "talk to" new immigrants, as well as talk about them.
Such discourse will rapidly become official, both as to meaning/content and style, and
routinely adopted by the media which cover these agencies and institutions, thus
spreading dominant definitions of the ethnic situation among the population at large.
Also depending on political parties and contexts, such discourses may again be
stereotypical, biased, or even racist, or indeed take a dissident, antiracist position
based on human rights, multiculturalism, and diversity (see, e.g., Hargreaves and
Leaman, 1995; Hurwitz and Peffley, 1998; Solomos, 1993).

Historically, political discourse on the Others, whether minorities within the country
or non-Europeans in Third World countries or colonies, has been among the most
blatantly racist forms of elite discourse (Lauren, 1988). Until at least World War II,
leading politicians would openly derogate people of Asian or African origin, and
claim their white, Western superiority. But due to the Holocaust and World War
II, and as a result of the discrediting of racist beliefs because of their use by the Nazis,
postwar political discourse has become increasingly less blatant on the right, and
more antiracist on the left. This development, however, should not be seen as a steady
form of progress, because in the 1990s problematizing and stigmatizing discourse on
refugees and immigrants has reappeared more openly, even in mainstream parties.

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Analysis of parliamentary debates on minorities, immigration, refugees, and
ethnic issues more generally shows many features that are consistent with those of
other elite discourses we have examined above (van Dijk, 1993). Specific for this
discourse genre are of course especially its contextual characteristics: the political
domain, the institution of parliament, the overall sociopolitical act of legislation,
the participants in many different roles (politicians, party members, MPs,
representatives, opposition members, etc.), and the local acts involved, such as
defending or opposing a bill, giving a speech, criticizing the government,
attacking opponents, and so on.

Large parts of parliamentary debates on immigration and ethnic issues are

organized as a function of these context dimensions. Thus, populist strategies of
talk ‫استراتيجيات الحديث الشعبوية‬, in which the will of the people is invoked ‫تم استدعاؤه‬, for
instance, to restrict immigration, is of course a function of the position of MPs
needing votes to stay in office or to toe the party line. Positions on ethnic policies
taken and defended in parliament, thus, are not primarily personal opinions, but
expressions of shared political party attitudes. And topics selected are those that
are a function of the actual business of legislation ‫ التشريع‬at hand, such as dealing with
an immigration bill or the arrival of refugees from Bosnia or Kosovo.

Political context similarly defines the nationalism ‫ القومية‬that transpires ‫ التي تظهر‬in
debates on immigration and minorities. In the same way as we find disclaimers in
everyday talk, parliamentary speeches may begin with long sections of positive self-
presentation in the form of nationalist glorification ‫ تمجيد قومي‬of "long traditions of
tolerance ‫ "تقاليد التسامح الطويلة‬or "hospitality for the oppressed‫او ضيافة المظلومين‬." But of
course, "we cannot let them all in," "we have no money," and so forth. That is, the rest
of such debates will often be quite negative when it comes to the characterization of
the others or the legitimation ‫ الشرعية‬of further restrictions on immigration. That at
least is the dominant voice — because occasionally we also find more tolerant ‫تجد اكثر‬
‫تسامحا‬, antiracist ‫مناهضة العنصرية‬, dissident voices ‫ اصوات معارضة‬which make
appeal ‫ استئناف‬to human rights and universal principles.

Structurally speaking, parliamentary debates are organized sequences of

speeches ‫تسلسل الخطاب المنظم‬, by government and opposition ‫ المعارضين‬speakers
respectively. Given the respective political positions and roles, thus, each speaker will
speak "to" a specific issue, such as a recent ethnic event or a bill, and argue for or
against a number of standpoints, for instance, aspects of ethnic or immigration
policy. This means that such debates and their speeches will be largely argumentative
and rhetorical.

Discourse and Racism: The Argumentative Moves

Apart from the well-known rhetoric of nationalism, populism, or human rights

mentioned above, what is perhaps most fascinating in parliamentary debates on
immigration are the argumentative moves, for instance, those that are used to
legitimate immigration restrictions. Many of these moves have become standard
arguments or topoi, such as the reference to our ("white man's") financial burden,

Prof. Dr. Bushra Ni’ma Rashid Page: 11

the regrettable reference to "resentment" in the country, the suggestion of receiving
refugees in their own country, the need to listen to the will of the people, and so on.
Similarly, such argumentations are replete with fallacies of various kinds. Credibility
rather than truth is managed by referring to authoritative sources or opinion makers,
such as scholars or the Church. Selected but emotionally effective examples are used
either of immigration fraud ‫ احتيال الهجرة‬or of torture ‫ التعذيب‬by foreign regimes in order
to argue against or for liberal immigration laws ‫ قوانين الهجرة الليبيرية‬for refugees ‫الالجئين‬,
in both cases giving in to the fallacy of generalization ‫ مغالطة التعميم‬from single cases.
Again, the overall strategy in the selection of argumentative moves is positive self-
presentation ‫ عرض ايجابي للذات‬and negative other-presentation‫عرض سلبي اخر‬. The
Others in such a case may be not only the immigrants, but also those members of
(opposed) political parties who defend their rights, or vice versa, those who are
seen to infringe upon such rights.

Parliamentary debates are public, for the record, and official. This means that both
content and style are strictly controlled, especially in written speeches. There is
less formality in spontaneous debate, with large variation according to countries: in
France such debates may be heated, with many interruptions, heckling ‫المضايقة‬, and
many rhetorical styles, unlike the Netherlands and Spain, where parliamentary
debates are formal and polite. This also applies to meanings and style of debates
on minorities and immigration.

Self-control and public exposure prohibits, for instance, explicit forms of

derogation or lexical selection are obviously biased. This means that such official
discourse will seldom appear very racist. On the contrary, tolerance and
understanding may be extensively topicalized‫موضعية على نطاق واسع‬. But we have seen
that this may also be a move ‫حركة‬, a disclaimer ‫ اخالء المسؤولية‬that introduces more
negative topics. Moreover, in order to legitimate immigration restrictions, thus,
speakers need to spell out why immigrants or immigration are bad for Us, and such an
overall statement can only be conveyed by the general strategy, implemented ‫ تنفذ‬at all
levels of discourse ‫ على جميع مستويات الخطاب‬, of negative other-presentation. Thus, in
parliament, there will be references to fraud ‫ تزوير‬/‫فراد‬, drugs, or crime of
immigrants, as well as to cultural differences and conflicts, and to the disastrous
‫ دزازترس‬impact ‫ تاثير كارثي‬on the job market.

Concluding Remark

In sum, we see that influential public discourses, namely, that of the elites and elite
institutions, show a large number of related characteristics. These not only reflect
similar underlying mental models and social representations shared by the elites, but
also similar ways of social interaction, communication, persuasion, and public
opinion formation. Differences are mostly contextual, that is, depend on the aims,
functions, or participants involved in them. But given similar aims, namely, the
management of public opinion, legitimation, and decision making, we may assume
that very similar structures and strategies will be at work in such discourse types. We
will encounter stereotypical topics, conventional topoi, disclaimers that save face and
hence manage impression formation; they engage in similar argumentative fallacies,
Prof. Dr. Bushra Ni’ma Rashid Page: 12
make similar lexical selections when talking about Them, or use the same metaphors
to emphasize some of their (bad) characteristics. All these different structures at
different levels, and of different elite genres, contribute to the overall strategy of
positive self-presentation and negative other- presentation. We have seen that
precisely such structures may derive from and be geared towards the construction of
similar mental structures, that is, negative attitudes and ideologies on minorities and
immigration. And since among the elites as well as among the population at large
such dominant group cognitions will again inspire similarly negative discourses and
social practices, we may begin to understand how discourse, and especially public
elite discourses, is crucially involved in the reproduction of racism.

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