Discursive psychology and social psychology

Attitudes towards confessional and sexual minorities in the discourse of the media in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from a historical perspective

Out of the three fields of discursive psychology, social psychology and discourse analysis, the last one will carry most weight. The reason for this is that discourse is not only the research object, but also the medium through which other (mental, social) phenomena are communicated and may be studied. Thus, the concepts and methods of discourse analysis will be discussed in length separately. Here, I would like to introduce the concepts contributed by the two other disciplines that are relevant to this project. 

Social psychology
 In this project, I am interested in the influence of various aspects of social life on an individual’s attitudes. 
An individual, “self”, is always both a “unique human being” (van Dijk 1998: 119) and a member of various groups and communities. An individual is the recipient, contributor to, but also a product of, culture. 

cultural common ground	The concept of culture will not be defined here for obvious reasons (I refer the curious to Geertz 1973). It must suffice to say that people within a culture share cultural beliefs that are relatively stable at a given point in time (although historically subject to variation and change), that comprise cultural “common ground” which is taken for granted. This common ground provides a “shared reality and order for people” (Brown 1996: 27). Cultural norms and values are internalized by individuals via socialization and become obvious, “unmarked”; but they are not universal, and outsiders coming from other cultures may fail to recognize and abide by them. Cultures are abstract, generalized entities, and thus “cultural identities (e.g. Afro-Caribbean) have to be actively created and constructed; this construction involves a struggle over representation and narrative (…) and power” (Wetherell 1996: 225).
group	A group, on the other hand, is an aggregate of people who think of themselves as being group members, experience a sense of belonging and common identity, and who have psychological effects on each other (Brown 1996: 44). Next to their unique personal identities, individuals have numerous group memberships and identities; identification with a group involves self-categorization, even self-stereotyping (i.e., adopting stereotypical group attributes in relation to oneself). Properties of group membership ascription include “impact on self-esteem, adoption of stereotyped ways of thinking, and the influence of group membership on one’s judgements and decisions” (McKinlay & Dunnett 1998: 48). Each group has its own norms, values, attitudes, etc. Group members are affected by group norms through social interaction, by observing the behaviour of other members, by being confronted with their beliefs, attitudes and opinions (van Knippenberg 2000: 161). According to van Dijk (1998), ideologies – understood as shared sets of beliefs of groups, general, abstract beliefs that underlie other social representations – operate at the group level. [more on ideologies here] If we think in terms of group memberships, we naturally distinguish groups we belong to (in-groups) and groups we do not belong to (out-groups). This accounts for the framework of intra- and inter-group dynamics, including intra-group loyalty, obedience, conformity, cohesion, (avoidance of) conflict; inter-group cooperation (e.g. against a “common enemy”), competition, conflict, etc. It also accounts for certain biases in perception and thinking, e.g. internal diversification of an out-group may be underestimated or ignored, while differences between the in-group and the out-group (intergroup differences) may be exaggerated (McCauley 1995). [more on this issue here]
reference groups	Social psychology also talks about reference groups, “which we take as a reference point for our views or behaviour whether or not we are present in them or have any realistic expectations of joining them at any time” (Brown 1996: 26). Reference groups are thus important sources of social influence. An individual may even adopt certain attitudes in order to attain membership in a desired group (Fleming & Petty 2000: 197).
imagined communities	Imagined community is a term coined by Anderson in relation to the concept of nation: nation is an imagined community because it is impossible for members of a nation to know all other members, but still they share a common identity – national identity (Anderson 1991) – that in some cases may even constitute one of the most important and central values of an individual. The definition of a group given above may thus be applied to imagined communities with one exception – the second defining feature of a group, that of members’ psychological effect son each other, is not obligatory, although it is possible. Sexual minorities and, to a lesser extent, religious minorities may be thought of in terms of imagined communities.
individual	All the entities listed above contribute to an individual’s set of beliefs and attitudes. Social psychology recognizes the following foundations of beliefs and attitudes: persuasion, interpersonal influence, social norms, influence of reference groups. We may assume that social norms come from all levels (culture, communities, groups), persuasion – from imagined communities and reference groups (understood e.g. in terms of intellectual elites) and interpersonal influence – from groups. Of course, “each member may have a personal version of the shared belief or ideology, a version that is obviously a function of individual socialization or ideological development” (van Dijk 1998: 30). This way, beliefs are both personal and social, and they tell us something about both the individual and the society he/she is a part of (Billig 1991).

Other important concepts: 
Social representations – are “mental schemata or images which people use to make sense of the world and to communicate with each other” (Potter & Wetherell 1987: 138). An example may be a representation of a political party: “First, there is the political party; second, there is the person’s social representation of that party; third, there is the person’s opinion, which is derived from the representation” (Potter & Wetherell 1987: 139). So, when people are asked for their opinion about the Party X, they respond by giving their opinion of their social representation of Party X. A member of another group may have a completely different social representation of the same party. 

Attitude inconsistency, dissonance, cognitive dissonance, and similar – all refer to the lack of consistency between someone’s attitudes, attitudes and beliefs, or attitudes and behaviour. The theory of cognitive dissonance accounts for attitude change, which takes place when a person’s behaviour does not match their attitudes, creating a feeling of discomfort. This person may find it easier to change an attitude to match the behaviour than to look for justifications and explanations of this behaviour (Bem 1970). 

Discursive psychology’s focus is “the action orientation of talk and writing (…) how events are described and explained, how factual reports are constructed, how cognitive states are attributed” (Edwards & Potter 1992: 2). For example, “remembering is understood as the situated production of versions of past events, while attributions are the inferences that these versions make available, and that participants treat as implied” (Edwards & Potter 1992: 3). 
Discursive psychology rejects cognitivism and looks to discourse for patterns of “everyday procedures” that people use to do things, to act with their words. Such patterns are employed in descriptions, accounts, narratives, etc., in order to construct facts, factual versions that “appear credible and difficult to undermine” (Edwards & Potter 1992: 3). For example, discursive psychology identifies and investigates discursive strategies people use to attribute blame, justify, make excuses, etc. Scott & Lyman (1968) came up with a typology of excuses that includes appeal to: accident (‘I tripped up’), mental elements (‘I forgot’), natural drives (‘I couldn’t help myself’), scapegoating (‘he made me do it’); denial of injury (‘it’s only a scratch’), victim (‘she deserved it’), and appeal to loyalties (‘I owed it to him’). 
Attitudes in discursive psychology are not reflections of underlying cognitive entities – they are not something we have “inside”. Just as factual versions or memories, they are constructed in specific situations, specific contexts. Different people construct very different accounts of the same event; one person constructs very different accounts of the same event under different contextual conditions. This way, discursive psychology deals with the problem of cognitive dissonance – it is seen as a contextual effect of attitude talk: “people modify their behaviour, including their talk, in accordance with different social contexts. (…) Discourse analysts see variation in accounts as a consequence of people performing a whole range of different acts in their talk. Some variations may be due to considerations of face saving and creating a good impression” (Potter & Wetherell 1987: 37). Note that face management and politeness research (initiated by Goffman (1967) and Brown & Levinson (1987), respectively) are very important parts of discourse analysis too. 

Other important concepts: 
Disclaimers – are “pre-accounts which attempt to ward off anticipated negative attributions in advance of an act or statement” (Potter & Wetherell 1987: 77), e.g. I am no racist, but… (also van Dijk 1984, Billig 1991, among others). 
Interpretative repertoires – “are recurrently used systems of terms used for characterizing and evaluating actions, events and other phenomena. A repertoire, like the empiricist and contingent repertoires, is constituted through a limited range of terms used in particular stylistic and grammatical constructions. Often a repertoire will be organized around specific metaphors and figures of speech (tropes)” (Potter & Wetherell 1987: 149). Also Billig 1991, Wetherell, Taylor & Yates (eds.) 2001, Goodman 2007.

Social representations vs. interpretative repertoires:

social representations	interpretative repertoires
concepts and images of objects originate in the course of social interaction provide an agreed code of communication their sharing makes a group a group we have one social representation of an object	terms and metaphors used to talk about objects a limited range of terms used in particular stylistic and grammatical constructions we may activate different repertoires according to context

 

Zukunftskolleg - project introduction

Project summary
Embedded in the frameworks of critical and historical discourse analysis, this project examines the construction of attitudes to confessional and sexual minorities in the post-socialist, transitional societies of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, and the role played in this process by the media. The project regards the construction of religious and sexual minorities against the backdrop of national identities, showing that in the post-socialist societies, identification with a religious or sexual minority may put into question an individual's loyalty towards the nation and state, making it a political issue. This project examines the role of the media discourse in sustaining such harmful and prejudicial notions.
The project examines a corpus of samples in the three languages excerpted from printed periodicals, radio and television programs, digital versions and websites of mainstream newspapers, radio and television channels, and blogs, all published after 1991. Following the historical development of discursive strategies marked with textual means over this period of time, it shall reveal the developments of explicit and implicit attitudes under the influence of important political, economic and cultural events, thus reflecting on the larger context of globalization and Westernization and the transitional societies' response to these processes. The critical part of the analysis is based upon the hypothesis that the media discourse serves power groups in legitimizing their ideologies and thus shaping and affecting public opinion. Exposing ideological content that is often subtly concealed and imposed on the public opinion may help to educate a more critical and informed media audience. 

Interdisciplinarity

The approach applied in this project may be called transdisciplinary (in Fairclough’s (2003, 2005) terms) or pluralist interdisciplinary (in van Leeuwen’s (2005) terms). Interdisciplinary research of this kind is problem-oriented rather than method-oriented, and recognizes that the problem “may rightfully belong to a number of different disciplines” (van Leeuwen 2005: 6). This approach is believed to be required for the study of the phenomenon of attitudes.

An attitude is one of the basic concepts in social psychology, which makes it interdisciplinary in its essence, if social psychology is understood as the discipline serving as “interface between the study of cognition and the study of society” (van Dijk 2009: 23). Attitude may be defined in purely “individualistic”/psychological terms, as “a relatively enduring organization of beliefs around an object or situation” (Rokeach 1968: 112); however, most modern approaches define it in one of the two prevalent interdisciplinary ways: 

1. emphasizing its social nature: “attitudes are the apotheosis of social cognition, because they are unobservable cognitive constructs that are socially learnt, socially changed, and socially expressed” (Hogg & Terry 2000: 1); 

2. emphasizing its discursive nature: attitudes are “the subjective evaluation experiences that are communicated through various channels but particularly through language” (Eiser 1987: 5).

So, attitudes are subjective entities that are socially determined and discursively expressed. We have thus three objects of study: the individual, the society, and the discourse. We have three processes associated with attitudes: construction (by the individual), internalization (of attitudes prevalent in the society) and reproduction (in discourse). This network is illustrated in Fig. 1.

The diagram also shows – very roughly and approximately – the disciplines involved in the project:
1. discursive psychology – “studies texts and talk for how they are constructed and what they do”; “emphasizes the way versions of actions and events are constructed in discourse” (Potter 1996: 168); see also Potter & Wetherell 1987, Edwards & Potter 1992;
2. social psychology – interested in such intra- and inter-personal phenomena as attitudes, self-concepts, identities, group dynamics, social influence and persuasion, among others. See Wetherell (ed.) 1996;
3. discourse analysis – a loose interdisciplinary framework of methodologies to study text and talk that (should) have the following in common:
· an interest in natural language use,
· a focus on units larger than words or sentences,
· a study of action and interaction beyond sentence grammar,
· the extension to non-verbal (semiotic, multimodal, visual) aspects of communication,
· a focus on dynamic (socio-)cognitive moves and strategies,
· the study of contexts of language use (Wodak & Meyer 2009: 2).
Different strands of DA attend to “a vast number of phenomena of text grammar and language use”, such as coherence, anaphora, speech acts, turn-taking, politeness, argumentation, and others, to different extents. Critical discourse analysis, in contrast, is interested in studying social issues – here, the analysis of the phenomena listed above is a means rather than an end. More information on:
· approaches to discourse – Schiffrin 1994, Schiffrin, Tannen & Hamilton (eds.) 2008;
· methods of textual analysis – Stubbs 1983, 1996, Wetherell, Taylor & Yates (eds.) 2001, Fairclough 2003, Richardson 2007, Wodak & Meyer (eds.) 2009;
· more on CDA in Wodak & Ludwig 1999, Wodak & Chilton (eds.) 2005;
· (socio-) cognitive approach to CDA – van Dijk 2008b, 2009.
For case studies and examples of applying the CDA framework in social research, see Gelber 2002 (on hate speech), Blackledge 2005 (on power in a multilingual society), Fairclough 2006 (globalization discourse), Hodges & Nilep (eds.) 2007 (war and terrorism in discourse), and many others.

 State of the art
This project rests upon two extensive sets of scientific literature. The first set provides the background of historical, political and cultural events, conditions and consequences of transition in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (e.g. Pollack, Jacobs, Muller & Pickel (eds.) 2003, Savicka 2004, Juknevičius (ed.) 2005, Myant & Cox (eds.) 2008, Berg & Ehin (eds.) 2009, Mole 2012, Wangler 2012), against which the results of the empirical study will be presented. The second set provides the methods and measures of carrying out this empirical analysis (this post). 
When it comes to the literature on minorities in the countries in question after the fall of communism, the discussion so far has mostly focused on ethnic minorities – especially Russians in Latvia, Russians and Poles in Lithuania, Ukrainians (e.g. Wangler 2012) and Germans in Poland. These texts often focus on the process of nation-(re)building carried out by the “titular nations” and the role played in it by the minorities – “historical” or more “recent” immigrants (e.g. Jubulis 2001, Galbreath 2005, Mole 2012). There are also many sources that look at the identity of the Russian Diaspora in the post-Soviet countries in general (e.g. Kolstoe 1995, Laitin 1998, Commercio 2010) and in the Baltics in particular (e.g. Agarin 2010). Due to the fact that the breakup of the Soviet Union left millions of people uprooted and displaced (cf. Polian 2004), leading to conflicts and tensions in many places, the issues of ethnic identity and ethnic minorities in the post-socialist world has been topicalized, neglecting the questions of other, e.g. sexual or religious, minorities. The former have been mentioned in passing by Mole as he writes that homosexualism is now being constructed as a new “threat to national survival” in Latvia and Lithuania, and that the problem requires further attention (2012: 167). The latter is brought up by Juknevičius (2005, see above). 
The method of discourse analysis adopted in this project has been slowly claiming its place in the research on ethnic and other minorities and related issues in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland over the past few years. Worth mentioning are Golubeva & Gould (eds.) 2010 and Muižnieks (ed.) 2008; while the former deals with the political and media discourse on non-citizens in Latvia, the latter focuses on the portrayal of Latvia by the media discourse in Russia. When it comes to Lithuania, the method has been used to study the “positive” construction of nationalism against the backdrop of the imperial past (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), national minorities (Dudzińska 2011) and the emerging European identity (Savukynas 2005). With regard to Poland, the method has been applied to the study of official patriotic discourses that construct “foreign influences, cosmopolitan values and cultural diversity” as challenges to the Polish “way of life” (Cox & Myant 2008: 5, also Sidorenko 2008). 
Overview of the literature regarding the situation of sexual minorities in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland may be found here and here. 

Digging deeper

Many authors, such as Kolstoe 1995 or Pabriks 1999, juxtapose the decrease of interethnic stability and solidarity following regaining independence with the Latvian citizenship policy, indirectly suggesting that the former results from the latter. The focus on pure political developments seems safe enough, as it involves working with more-or-less verifiable historical facts, figures and documents. Its failure, however, is that it ignores the human factor behind these facts and figures. Granted, psychological and social developments are much more difficult to pin-point and analyze objectively, but ignoring them seriously flattens the picture.

Focusing only on describing and analyzing politics and policies has also another advantage: it makes it easier to preserve a consistent line, keep to one side. Paying attention to the “human” circumstances of creating those policies may inadvertently lead to mitigating the hard line. Commercio (2010) studies mostly Russian informal networks in post-Communist countries, but the formal policies of those countries form a necessary background:

What is happening in the post-Soviet states (…) has nothing to do with nation-building (…) on the contrary, post-Soviet elites are engaged in nationalization, which is founded on the principle of ethnic differentiation rather than ethnic integration. (p. 18, emphasis original)

The state of affairs regarded in this somewhat critical statement becomes more justifiable, understandable, more “human”, if we consider it against the backdrop of the following claims:

Russification generated resentment toward Russians that provided legitimacy for nationalization policies and practices (p. 28)

Russification eventually generated anti-Russian sentiment that elites channelled into support for nationalization projects (p. 30)

elites who wished to nationalize the state over which they presided were able to mobilize popular support based on the plausible claim that Moscow had, at some point, persecuted the respective titular nation. This made it easy for elites to frame nationalization projects as remedial and therefore justifiable. (p. 29)

On the one hand, these fragments present Latvian policies in the negative light, implying that they made use of, turned to their advantage the suffering of Latvians during the Soviet times. What is more, the repeated use of the word elites suggests that this abuse of a traumatic experience came “from above”, was a deliberate and scrupulously designed political move. On the other hand, these fragments presuppose Russification as a historical fact, and this term is not neutral; it undeniably entails coercion, compulsion, violence, and resistance as an understandable and justifiable reaction to it.

Blaming (however implicitly) the existence of a two-community society in Latvia on the Latvian exclusive citizenship policies suggests that such a society was created in the 1990s. If a publication does not include even a short description of social relations in Soviet Latvia, its readers might receive a distorted picture. This shows how important the historical context may be.

In the following fragment, however short, Mole (2012) captures not only the existence of a two-community society in Latvia during Soviet times, but also hints at the issue of two different versions of history[1] that is still an important part of the interethnic conflict today:

Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians (...) became profoundly alienated from the societies in which they lived. The Soviet project was, however, successful at embedding its particular version of history and society among the non-indigenous inhabitants (p. 62)

Note that in this interpretation, it is the titular nations that became alienated from the societies in their own republics. The passive voice reinforces lack of popular support, consent, legitimacy for this alienation that was forced upon them.

The meaning of the next fragment from Mole (2012) basically corresponds to that of the quote from Commercio (2010) above. But the use of passive constructions makes it much less judgemental, and the lack of a responsible actor makes the demands more universal and objectified (they may potentially be shared by the entire society, not only the elites):

all laws, institutions and values from the Soviet past as well as the Soviet past itself were considered not just illegitimate but a threat to the continued existence of the desired conceptualization of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nations and states. In the immediate post-independence period it was thus sufficient for social, political and economic demands to be presented as negating Soviet practice for those demands to be considered legitimate. (p. 82)

Negating everything Soviet basically meant negating everything Russian, as the two identities merged both in the minds of Latvians and in the minds of non-Latvians: “the Soviet practice of conflating Soviet with Russian meant that there was also a tendency among Balts to conflate “Russia with the USSR” and cast everything Russian as a threat”[2]; “the distinctions between Russia, the Soviet Union and the ‘Motherland’ had become blurred in the mind of most Russians. The Russians are the only group among the major Soviet peoples to have linked their national identity to the multinational Union to any appreciable degree”[3]. Pabriks (1999) makes a very interesting claim – that the population was “ethnicized” discursively so that the Soviet identity could be marginalized and loyalty to the Soviet state weakened:

people’s collective identities were ethnicized, and the population became increasingly aware of its ethnic variability. Frequently, ethnic identity replaced the former political identity, which meant that the link between the population and the Soviet state was weakened and lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the population. (p. 148)

The use of active voice in the fragment underlined suggests that there was a kind of “grand design” imposed on people from above (compare with Commercio’s (2010) statements analyzed above), which brings to mind constructivist theories of identity and the creative power of language propagated by critical discourse analysts.

Let us now go back to the issue of ethnic differentiation being preferred over ethnic integration, as Commercio (2010) claimed in the fragment quoted above. It is often presupposed that the latter is the solution to the ethnic conflict in Latvia, that it is what Russians in Latvia need and want and Latvians resist and oppose. For example:

Segregation was a post-colonial strategy which guaranteed that Russian culture would not marginalize Latvian culture. (Björklund 2003, p. 267)

many ethnic Latvians were more concerned about reversing the decades of Russification by rejecting everything associated with Russia and Russian-speakers. Given their “demographic minorization” (Karklins, 1994), ethnic Latvians were concentrating on healing their ethnic identity and ensuring their majority rights. (Silova 2006, p. 86)

The second quote raises some interesting issues: first, the discourse of medicine used when talking about national identity (it needs healing because it has been infected, polluted) and the somewhat surprising combination of majority and rights. Under normal circumstances, we talk about ensuring minority rights, because majority rights are obvious, taken for granted. This reversal indicates abnormality, which refers to the “order of the absurd” which was prevalent under the Soviet rule; the absurd was the official definition of normality[4].

Jubulis (2001) suggests that it is the minorities, not Latvians, who oppose ethnic integration, because this integration is not necessarily in their interests:

For most purposes, the crucial status is residence, not citizenship. (p. 118)

non-citizens enjoy certain benefits in Latvia, such as the ability to travel more easily to Russia and the fact that non-citizens avoid military service (…) many residents may simply lack the necessary motivation to apply for citizenship because they don’t feel that it will have a significant impact on their lives. (p. 119)

Elsewhere he also refers to advantages of being a non-citizen (p. 180).

There are also publications which attribute resistance to ethnic integration to both sides:

latviešu attieksme pret naturalizāciju nav gluži tāda pati kā pret latviešu valodas izplatību cittautiešu vidū. Latvieši nepilsoņu naturalizāciju uztver rezervēti, daudzos gadījumos noliedzoši. Arī liela daļa cittautiešu (nepilsoņu) visumā apzināti izvairās no naturalizācijas. (Vēbers 2007, p. 118)

(transl.) the attitude of Latvians towards naturalization is not exactly the same as towards the use of Latvian among other nationals. Latvians approach the naturalization of non-citizens with reservation, in many cases with rejection. Also a large part of other ethnic groups (non-citizens) deliberately avoid naturalization.

Also Silova (2006) indicates that “the ideas of ethnic integration (…) were initially perceived to be threatening to both Latvian and Russian language speakers in Latvia” (p. 86); “for both sides, it was quite difficult and in some cases impossible to accept the principle of living together” (p. 87).

Attitudes of both sides must be regarded with understanding: while for some Latvians it may be difficult to understand why they should “share” the freedom they fought so hard to achieve with exactly the people they won it from, Russian-speaking Soviet-time immigrants must “make the psychological shift from being members of the dominant cultural group of the Soviet Union to being a minority group in Latvia”[5].

What is interesting, some authors seem to go to great lengths in criticizing Latvian resistance towards ethnic integration, presumably in order to defend “minority rights”, even if the minorities themselves (at least the Russian-speaking groups) appear to be relatively satisfied with the status quo. In the fragment quoted above Björklund (2003) refers to segregation of minorities, elsewhere also called non-recognition or exclusion. She even goes as far as suggesting that Latvians fear that their culture could be “transformed or diluted by the more established and resourceful Russian culture” (p. 278). At the same time, at least some Russian-speaking leaders might have “found the idea of a segregated, two community society more useful politically” (Silova 2006, p. 88). 

*part of the project “Discourse-historical analysis of the press discourse on ethnic conflict in Latvia” carried out at the Herder Institute in Marburg, Germany, in January-February 2013. For full bibliography, see here.

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[1] “As Jānis Jurkāns, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, reminisced: ‘I learned two histories: one at school and one at home.’” (Mole 2012: 62).

[2] Mole 2012: 83.

[3] Kolstoe 1995: 7.

[4] B. Lindqvist 2003: 298.

[5] Jubulis 2001: 18.