Page 394 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

372 Martin Reisigl

porary unequal, i.e. preferential treatment. For this purpose, distinctions on
“grounds” of the above-mentioned social features are legally justified.
“Structural discrimination” is considered to be a type of intersectional dis-
crimination (see Makkonen 2002: 14). It can take the form of “institutional dis-
crimination” and is frequently not deliberately produced, though it can some-
times be intentionally effectuated by a short-sighted policy or institutional
practice. It usually concerns members of groups in vulnerable social positions –
in many societies, for example, women – and is often rendered invisible by
naturalization and backgrounding. To give just one example taken from Cren-
shaw and referred to in Makkonen: “Structural discrimination” is actuated in
states with immigration laws that try to prevent marriage fraud and require an
immigrant to stay in the new state for several years and to remain “properly mar-
ried” before she or he can apply for a permanent status. This legal regulation has
the consequence that immigrant women who have married a national and be-
come a victim of domestic violence have either the option to divorce and get
subsequently deported or to suffer continuing violence (see Crenshaw 1991:
1247; Makkonen 2002: 15–16; see also Piller in this volume).
As the above explanations of the disciplinarily distinct concepts of “direct”
and “indirect” as well as “explicit” and “implicit” discrimination show, we have
to be aware of the problem that different disciplines and analytical approaches
only seemingly speak about the same things when they use the same words. This
problem has scarcely been recognized in the relevant literature on social dis-
crimination until now. Thus, it is explicated rather extensively in the present
chapter, without jumping to a one-sided terminological proposal. My overview
leads to at least four conclusions, which could be taken as a basis for further at-
tempts to elaborate conceptual distinctions which could possibly be interdisci-
plinarily valid: (1) Discrimination in the negative sense of the word represents
an infringement of principles of justice. (2) Discrimination can either be com-
mitted by unequal treatment, where equal treatment would be just, or by equal
treatment, where differentiation would be fair. (3) The distinction between “di-
rect” and “indirect” links up with the relationship between discriminators and
discriminated. (4) The distinction between “explicit” and “implicit” relates to
the way discrimination is semiotically realized.

4. Concepts of “discourse” in approaches to verbal discrimination

The analytical focus of the following sections lies on verbal forms of discrimi-
nation. Whereas Graumann’s and Wintermantel’s (1989) as well as Wagner’s
(2001) approach to verbal discrimination are primarily “speech act” oriented and
therefore try to analyse “discriminating as speech acting” and to identify “dis-
criminatory speech acts” (see Graumann and Wintermantel 1989: 193–201), the