According to Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 1), racism/discrimination/exclusion manifests itself discursively: ‘racist opinions and beliefs are produced and reproduced by means of discourse . . . through discourse, discriminatory exclu- sionary practices are prepared, promulgated and legitimized’. Hence, the strategic use of many linguistic indictors to construct in- and out-groups is fundamental to political (and discriminatory) discourses in all kinds of settings. It is important to focus on the latent meanings produced through pragmatic devices, such as implicatures, hidden causalities, presuppositions, insinua- tions and certain syntactic embeddings, as frequently manifest in the rhetoric
Figure 3.1 ‘We are cleansing Graz’ say Peter Westenthaler and Gerald Grosz, from the BZÖ – formerly part of the FPÖ, which split in 2005 into FPÖ and BZÖ. They are
Figure 3.2 Wojciech V., serial car thief, states: ‘Do not vote for the BZÖ because I would like to continue with my business dealings’
Figure 3.3 Amir Z, asylum seeker and drug dealer, states: ‘Please do not vote for the BZÖ so that I can continue with my business dealings’
Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis
of rightwing-populist European politicians, such as Jörg Haider, Jean Marie Le Pen, HC Strache, or Silvio Berlusconi. To be able to analyse these examples, it is important to introduce a few analytic concepts of the DHA:
Systematic qualitative analysis in the DHA takes four layers of context into account:
the intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between utterances,
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texts, genres and discourses,
the extra-linguistic social/sociological variables,
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the history and archaeology of texts and organizations, and
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institutional frames of the specific context of a situation.
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In this way, researchers are able to explore how discourses, genres and texts change due to socio-political contexts.
‘Discourse’ in the DHA is defined as being
related to a macro-topic (and to the argumentation about validity claims
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such as truth and normative validity which involves social actors who have different points of view).
a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within
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specific fields of social action;
socially constituted as well as socially constitutive.
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In sum, the DHA regards (a) macro-topic-relatedness, (b) pluri-perspectivity and (c) argumentativity as constitutive elements of a discourse (see Reisigl and Wodak 2009, for extensive discussions of particular aspects).
Furthermore, the DHA distinguishes between ‘discourse’ and ‘text’: Discourse implies patterns and commonalities of knowledge and structures, whereas a
text is a specific and unique realization of a discourse. Texts belong to ‘genres’.
Thus a discourse on exclusion could manifest itself in a potentially huge range of genres and texts, for example in a TV debate on domestic politics, in a political manifesto on immigration restrictions, in a speech by an expert on migration matters and so forth. A text only creates sense in connection with knowledge of the world and of the text.
‘Intertextuality’ refers to the linkage of all texts to other texts, both in the past and in the present. Such links can be established in different ways: through continued reference to a topic or to its main actors; through refer- ence to the same events as the other texts; or through the reappearance of a text’s main arguments in another text. The latter process is also labelled ‘recontextualization’. By taking an argument out of context and restating it in a new context, we first observe the process of de-contextualization, and then, when the respective element is implemented in a new context, of
recontextualization. The element then acquires a new meaning, because, as Wittgenstein (1967) already claimed, meanings are formed in use. Hence, arguments from parliamentary debates on immigration or from politi- cal speeches are recontextualized in a genre-adequate way in the posters depicted above through the use of salient visual and verbal features and elements.
‘Interdiscursivity’, on the other hand, indicates that topic-oriented discourses are linked to each other in various ways: for example, a discourse on exclusion often refers to topics or sub-topics of other discourses, such as education or employment. Discourses are open and hybrid; new sub-topics can be created at any point in time, and intertextuality and interdiscursivity always allow for new fields of action.
The construction of in- and out-groups necessarily implies the use of strate-
gies of positive self-presentation and the negative presentation of others. The DHA
is especially interested in five types of discursive strategies, which are all involved in positive self- and negative other-presentation. These discursive strategies underpin the justification/legitimization of inclusion/exclusion and of the constructions of identities. ‘Strategy’ generally refers to a (more or less accurate and more or less intentional) plan of practices, including discursive practices, adopted to achieve a particular social, political, psychological or lin- guistic goal.3
First, there are referential strategies or nomination strategies, by which social actors are constructed and represented, for example, through the creation of in-groups and out-groups. This is done through a number of categorization devices, including metaphors and metonymies, and synecdoches in the form of a part standing for the whole (pars pro toto) or a whole standing for the part (totum pro parte).
Second, social actors as individuals, group members or groups as a whole, are linguistically characterized through predications. Predicational strategies may, for example, be realized as evaluative attributions of negative and posi- tive traits in the linguistic form of implicit or explicit predicates. These strate- gies aim at labelling social actors in a more or less positive or negative manner. They cannot be neatly separated from the nomination strategies.
Third, there are argumentation strategies through which positive and negative attributions are justified. For example, it can be suggested that the social and political inclusion or exclusion of persons or policies is legitimate.
Fourth, one may focus on the perspectivation, framing or discourse representa-
tion by means of which speakers express their involvement in discourse, and
position their point of view in the reporting, description, narration or quota- tion of relevant events or utterances.
Fifth, there are intensifying strategies on the one hand and mitigation strategies on the other. Both of these help to qualify and modify the epistemic status of a
Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis
proposition by intensifying or mitigating the illocutionary force of utterances. These strategies can be an important aspect of the presentation inasmuch as they operate upon it by either sharpening it or toning it down.
Positive self- and negative other-presentation requires justification and legit- imation strategies, as elements of ‘persuasive rhetoric’. Topoi are the content-re- lated warrants or ‘conclusion rules’ which connect the argument or arguments with the conclusion or the central claim. As such they justify the transition from the argument or arguments to the conclusion, like a ‘short-cut’: topoi func- tion as warrants: if p, then q the argumentation structure in Toulmin’s sense is condensed and remains implicit. Topoi are central to the analysis of seemingly convincing fallacious arguments which are widely adopted in prejudiced and discriminatory discourses (Kienpointner 1996: 562).
In Table 3.1, I list the most common topoi which are used when writing or talking about ‘others’, specifically about migrants. These topoi have been inves- tigated in a number of studies on election campaigns (Pelinka and Wodak 2002), on parliamentary debates (Wodak and van Dijk 2000), on ‘voices of migrants’ (Delanty et al. 2008), and on media reporting (Baker et al. 2008). Most of them are used to justify the exclusion of migrants through quasi rational warrants (‘they are a burden for the society’, ‘they are dangerous, a threat’, ‘they cost too much’, ‘their culture is too different’ and so forth), without giving the necessary evidence – in this sense, they condense a complex argumentative structure by appealing to common sense: Migrants are thus constructed as scapegoats; they are blamed for unemployment or for causing general discontent (with politics, with the European Union, etc.), for abusing social welfare systems or they are more generally perceived as a threat for ‘our’ culture. On the other hand, some
topoi are used in anti-discriminatory discourses, such as appeals to human
rights or to justice.
Similarly there is a more or less fixed set of metaphors employed in exclu- sionary discourse (Reisigl and Wodak 2001), such as the likening of migration to a natural disaster, of immigration/immigrants as avalanches or floods, and of illegal immigration as ‘dragging or hauling masses’.
Table 3.1 List of prevailing topoi
1 – Usefulness, advantage 9 – Economy 2 – Uselessness, disadvantage 10 – Reality
3 – Definition 11 – Numbers
4 – Danger and threat 12 – Law and right 5 – Humanitarianism 13 – History
6 – Justice 14 – Culture
7 – Responsibility 15 – Abuse 8 – Burdening
Analysis
Let us now return to the examples depicted above: The three posters which form the data of our brief pilot study condense many features of racist and discriminatory rhetoric; most importantly, the insinuation to Nazi rhetoric is apparent both in the choice of words, and in the use of visual metaphors and symbols (‘washing the streets with brooms’). This also applies to the stereo- types of ‘drug dealing black asylum seekers’, and ‘Polish thieves’ (as nomina- tions), which are common in Austria.
In this way, the BZÖ attempts to construct itself by applying several visual and verbal topoi to imply the ‘law and order’ party which could save Austrians and the citizens of Graz from ‘immediate and huge threats’. The posters employ many nominative and predicative strategies whereby the ‘others’ are named and cer- tain negative characteristics are attributed to them. On the other hand, the BZÖ leaders are also labelled and characterized, albeit contrasted in positive ways.
Moreover, all posters utilize layout and fonts in black and white; explicit paradoxical statements serve as presuppositions to contrasting latent meanings: the real and right norms and values are implied through the subtext – the opposite meanings. These persuasive strategies (implicature by contrast) belong to the political sub-field of advertising.
If we continue briefly with a multimodal analysis, we have to point to colours and contrast between dark and light which are salient features (see Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996): dark for the ‘others’, the bad people who steal and deal drugs; light, white and orange for the ‘good guys’ who ‘will cleanse’ the city of threatening inhabitants. In this way, the images combine metaphorical, met-
onymic, and pragmatic devices in intricate ways. The latter devices are employed
as argumentation and intensification strategies.
Due to the fact that we are discussing images where the depiction of the ‘others’ employs biological characteristics, like skin colour, certain hairstyles, dark eyes, etc., we could necessarily conclude that racist meanings are inten- tionally (re)produced as persuasive devices. At this point, we should explore the context of the election campaign in much greater detail, the history of the two parties involved, as well as the broader historical context in Austria, where similar slogans and meanings were employed by Nazi rhetoric before and during WWII. ‘Cleansing’ streets/stores/towns of ‘others’ (Jews, Slavs, Roma etc.) stems from such fascist rhetoric and has now been redeployed and
recontextualized to apply to Poles, migrants from Africa, among others, for this
context.
Debates about immigration and nationhood are also crucially linked to
assumptions about place thus to deixis. ‘Our’ culture belongs ‘here’ within the
bounded homeland, while the culture of ‘foreigners’ belongs ‘elsewhere’ (Billig 2006). The theme of place is particularly threatening to groups who are seen
Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis
to have no ‘natural’ homeland, such as the Roma or other diasporic commu- nities today, or the Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. Religion as a central condition for inclusion/exclusion, frequently triggered by indexical markers such as the ‘headscarf’ worn by Muslim women, has recently become dominant in some EU countries.
Summary
This chapter provides a summary of CDA approaches, their similarities and dif- ferences. One of CDA’s important characteristics is its diversity. Nevertheless, a few salient cornerstones exist within this diversity:
CDA works eclectically in many aspects.
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There is no accepted canon of data gathering; however, many CDA
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approaches work with existing data, that is texts not specifically pro- duced for the respective research projects.
Operationalization and analysis are problem-oriented and imply linguis-
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tic expertise.
The most evident similarity is a shared interest in social processes of power, exclusion and subordination. In the tradition of Critical Theory, CDA aims to shed light on the discursive aspects of societal disparities and inequali- ties. CDA frequently detects the linguistic means used by diverse groups in power to stabilize or even to intensify inequities in society. This entails careful systematic analysis, self-reflection at every point of one’s research, and dis- tance from the data which are being investigated. Description and interpreta- tion should be kept apart, thus enabling transparency and retroduction of the respective analysis. Of course, not all of these recommendations are consis- tently followed, and they cannot always be implemented in detail because of time pressures and similar structural constraints; therefore some critics will continue to state that CDA constantly sits on the fence between social research and political argumentation (Wodak 2006); others accuse some CDA studies of being too linguistic or not linguistic enough. Such criticism seems necessary to keep a field alive because it stimulates more self-reflection and encourages new thoughts.
Notes
1. In this chapter, I draw on the more extensive overviews of CDA in Wodak and Meyer 2009, Fairclough et al. 2010 and Reisigl and Wodak 2009. The pilot analysis draws on
the in-depth analysis in Richardson and Wodak 2009a; Wodak and Köhler 2010; and Wodak 2009b.
2. In the cases cited here, the primary theoretical model is the pragma-dialectics or so- called Amsterdam school of argumentation theory developed by Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004.
3. All these strategies are illustrated by numerous categories and examples in Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 31–90). It would be impossible to present all these linguistic devices in this chapter, owing to space restrictions.
Key Readings
Chilton, P. (2004), Analyzing Political Discourse. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2003), Analyzing Discourse. London: Routledge. Van Leeuwen, T. (2005), Analyzing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
Wodak, R. (2009), The Discourse of Politics as Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wodak, R. and Krzyżanowski, M. (eds) (2008), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave.