Prejudice is routinely expressed through simultaneous denial in casual talk

Evidence

As various researchers working within this framework have shown, ‘modern racism’ is expressed in covert ways, which avoid a direct appeal to racial values. Discourse analyses of talk about minorities have corroborated the main presuppositions of modern racism approaches. Van Dijk’s ( 1984 , 1987 , 1993 ) discourse-analytic studies of racism share a similar pattern to that of the ‘modern racism’ studies. Racist sentiments are simultaneously expressed and denied. Similarly, Billig ( 1988 , 1991 ), Billig et al . ( 1988 ) and Cochrane and Billig ( 1984 ) analyse occurrences of denials of prejudice as a preface to complaining about blacks and ethnic minorities and fi nd the same expression and simultaneous denial of prejudice. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 209

Categorization

• SHARE: The ‘denial as preface to complaint’ mechanism is a concrete discourse move worth sharing with anyone studying rhetoric or everyday conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Ethnic prejudices are reproduced primarily through everyday conversation — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1074

Related

• Ethnic prejudices are reproduced primarily through everyday conversation (similarity 0.88)
• Racist discourse adapts to context so similar prejudices get varying formulations (similarity 0.81)
• Discriminatory acts rest on shared mental representations even when unintentional (similarity 0.80)
• Prejudice is sustained through routine conversational identity categorization (similarity 0.79)
• Racist discourse varies by context of production, not only by underlying beliefs (similarity 0.79)