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    Discoursive strategies for coping with sensitive topics of the Other

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    Authors
    Galasinska, Aleksandra
    Galasinski, Dariusz
    Issue Date
    2003
    
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    This paper explores border residents' strategies for coping with topics which they perceive as difficult or sensitive in their discourses about people living in such European border locations. Thus we are concerned with the way in which people negotiate accounts of implicit or explicit ethnic conflict, prejudice or negative stereotyping of 'the Other'. We indicate two types of such strategies. First, the strategy of mitigation, in which informants attempt to soften or licence their stereotypical views. Second, we shall discuss a strategy in which mitigation is replaced by the practice of 'oracular reasoning' in our informants' constructions of the ethnic Other; this occurs in those instances when a basic premise is confronted with contradictory evidence, but the evidence is ignored or rejected. The data for our analysis come from 12 border communities in which informants talk about the Other from either across the border, or, in the case of multi-ethnic communities, from within the community itself. We focus upon constructions that purport to give a universal answer to questions of 'what they are like'. Specifically, we explore those constructions where informants have to deal with conflictual voices (either explicit or implicit in the informants' discourse) which question their accounts or contradict the claims they make. Finally, we see the strategies for coping with conflictual accounts of the Other as indicative of the tension between the discursively postulated social/ethnic separation of the border communities and the constructed threat from the Other on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the new and changing public discourse of the Other and the politics underpinning it which goes counter to those more private discourses. (Routledge)
    Citation
    Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 29(5): 849-863
    Publisher
    London, Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
    Journal
    Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/2436/27098
    DOI
    10.1080/1369183032000149604
    Additional Links
    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/1369183032000149604
    Type
    Journal article
    Language
    en
    ISSN
    1369183X
    14699451
    ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
    10.1080/1369183032000149604
    Scopus Count
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