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Discrimination in discourses 373

approaches to be presented in the following are first and foremost discourse
oriented. If one speaks about “discrimination in discourse”, however, “dis-
course” can assume different meanings. Here, I want to focus on five approaches
to discourse relevant for the analysis of discrimination.
I personally take a “discourse” as a complex topic-related unity of semiotic
action, which, among others, involves argumentation about validity claims such
as truth and normative validity. In contrast to mono-perspectivist conceptuali-
zations of “discourse” (e.g. Fairclough 1995: 14), I consider pluri-perspectivity,
i.e. different points of view, to be a constitutive feature of a “discourse” (Reisigl
2003: 92). In this sense, “discourses” are pluri-perspective semiotic bundles of
social practices that are composed of interrelated, simultaneous and sequential
linguistic as well as other semiotic acts and that are both socially constitutive
and socially constituted. In this view, discursive practices manifest themselves
within, and across, social fields of action as thematically interconnected and
problem-centred semiotic (e.g. oral, written or visual) tokens that belong to par-
ticular semiotic types (i.e. communicative action patterns, genres or textual
types), which fulfil specific social purposes (see Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 36).
Following Girnth (1996), I conceive “fields of action” as institutionalized frame-
works of social interaction structured to serve specific social aims (for more
details, see Reisigl 2003: 128–142). Discourses cross between fields, overlap,
refer to each other, or are in some other way sociofunctionally linked with each
other (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 36–37).
Although this concept of “discourse” is taken as a basis of the present
chapter, there are several other concepts of “discourse” which have been intro-
duced into the discussion about “discrimination in (intercultural) discourses”.
At least four of them must be mentioned:
Teun A. van Dijk was one of the first critical discourse analysts who dealt
with the relationship between social discrimination (especially racist and ethni-
cist discrimination) and discourse (see van Dijk 1984; Smitherman and van Dijk
1988). His socio-cognitive approach conceives “discourse” as part of a concep-
tual triangle formed by cognition, discourse and society (see van Dijk 2001a:
98). Van Dijk understands “discourse” in a broad sense as a “‘communicative
event’, including conversational interaction, written text, as well as associated
gestures, facework, typographical layout, images and other ‘semiotic’ or multi-
media dimensions of signification”. For van Dijk, one of the most urgent tasks
of critical research on discourse is the study of and fight against various forms of
discrimination – first and foremost of discriminatory gender inequality, ethno-
centrism, antisemitism, nationalism and racism – in discourses (see van Dijk
2001b: 358–363). In his numerous studies on discrimination, he especially fo-
cuses on the socio-cognitive, discursive and social conditions of the production,
reproduction and transformation of prejudices and stereotypes that link up with
discrimination (see, e.g., van Dijk 1984, 1987, 1993).