Page 405 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Discrimination in discourses 383

5.4. The perspectivation, intensification and mitigation of discrimination
Two further types of discursive strategies closely linked with argumentation
strategies and thus to be taken into consideration in the analysis of social dis-
crimination are perspectivation strategies and intensification or mitigation
strategies. The one group of strategies relates to the position or point of view a
speaker or writer assumes with respect to discriminating language, i.e. to the
perspective from which discriminating arguments – but also nominations and
predications – are expressed, and to the method of framed discriminatory lan-
guage. Discriminatory nominations, predication and argumentations, can, for
instance, be realized from an I-perspective, she-/he-perspective or we-perspec-
tive; they can be framed by direct quotation, indirect quotation or free indirect
speech, and so on. The other group of strategies links up with the question of
whether utterances containing discriminating nominations, predications and ar-
gumentations are articulated overtly or covertly, whether the respective speech
acts are intensified or mitigated. The former can, among others, be realized by
hyperboles or amplifying particles like “very” and “absolutely”. The latter can
be realized by questions instead of assertions or by procataleptic concessions
like “yes, but” (for more details on these two types of discursive strategies, see
Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 81–85; Reisigl 2003: 214–237).

5.5. Visual discrimination

Social discrimination is not just realized in the multiple semiotic modes of ver-
bal language, but also in other semiotic modes, including visual modes. Theo
van Leeuwen (2000) approaches “visual racism” with the help of two comple-
mentary methods, combining (a) the method of analysing the “grammar of vis-
ual design” (see Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), which, among others, allows
to grasp the imaginary relationship between visually represented individuals
and viewers, with (b) his functional-systemic model of the representation of
social actors (see van Leeuwen 1996). Although van Leeuwen focuses on the
problem of “racism” (although he does not explicate his concept of “racism”),
his approach offers a far more general framework, which enables the analysis
of diverse forms of social discrimination (especially of implicit discrimi-
nation).
Without any claim of completeness, van Leeuwen distinguishes among
eight strategies of “visual racism”, which, taken more generally, represent eight
strategies of various forms of visual discrimination. They are (1) symbolic
distanciation, (2) symbolic disempowerment, (3) symbolic objectivation,
(4) exclusion, (5) representation as agents of negatively valued actions,
(6) homogenization, (7) negative cultural connotation and (8) discriminatory
stereotyping.