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Discrimination in discourses 371

criminated individuals are communication partners of the producers of “dis-
criminatory speech acts”, whereas they consider a “nondirect discrimination”
to be a verbal discrimination of a person who is not present in the situation of
discrimination. In this respect, the form of interpersonal relationship is their dis-
tinguishing criterion, whereas they further distinguish between “explicit” and
“implicit discrimination” according to the form of verbal expression. They re-
gard verbal discrimination as being explicit, if the discriminatory function can
be identified with the utterance taken out of the speech situation. In contrast,
Graumann and Wintermantel judge verbal discrimination to be implicit, if the
discriminatory function cannot be understood without knowing the conditions
of the situation, the presuppositions and contextual implications of the utterance
(see Graumann and Wintermantel 1989: 199). 2
The concepts of “direct” and “indirect discrimination” play an important
role in legal contexts too. Legal approaches consider an act of discrimination to
be “direct”, if a person is treated less favourably than another person in a com-
parable situation has been or would be treated on the basis of a legally pro-
hibited “ground” of discrimination, i.e. of a distinguishing feature such as sex/
gender, “race”, age, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Examples of
“direct discrimination” are an employer’s categorical refusal to hire immigrants
due to foreign nationality or to hire women due to potential pregnancy or
motherhood (see Makkonen 2002: 4). Discrimination is legally considered to be
“indirect”, if an apparently equal treatment or a neutral provision, decision, cri-
terion, procedure or practice is discriminatory in its effects, that is to say, if it
puts a person having a particular characteristic at a particular disadvantage
without legal justification. If an employer hires employees on the condition of
their perfect fluency in the official language of the state, although the work does
not in itself necessitate such fluency, many immigrants are faced with “indirect
discrimination” in the labour market (see Makkonen 2002: 4–5). In cases of “in-
direct discrimination” in the legal sense, it is often difficult, if not impossible
(and, thus, legally not necessary) to prove that there is or has been an intention
to discriminate against somebody, whereas in many cases of direct discrimi-
nation such a proof is legally required.
“Institutional discrimination” is conceptualized as practices or procedures
in a company or an institution, which have been internally structured in a way
that they tend to have discriminatory effects. This form of discrimination is
often unintentional. If it is deliberate, as in the case of the former Apartheid re-
gime in South Africa, Makkonen proposes to call it “institutionalized discrimi-
nation” (Makkonen 2002: 4; see also Makkonen 2003: 12). A special case of
“institutionalized discrimination”, strictly speaking of “positive institutional-
ized discrimination”, is “affirmative action” or “positive discrimination” (the
latter term is sometimes rejected as being inappropriate and, thus, replaced by
“positive action”; see Makkonen 2002: 5). It aims to arrive at equality via tem-