No abstract

The article examines the links between humour and hatred - a topic that is often ignored by researchers of prejudice. The article studies three websites that present racist humour and display sympathies with the Ku Klux Klan. The analysis emphasizes the importance of examining the `metadiscourse', which presents and justifies the humour, as much as studying the nature of the humour itself. The meta-discourse of the sites' disclaimers is studied in relation to the justification of a joke being `just a joke'. It is shown that the extreme racist humour of the KKK is not just a joke, even in terms of its own meta-discourse of presentation. The meta-discourse also suggests that the extreme language of racist hatred is indicated a matter for enjoyment. The sites portray the imagining of extreme racist violence as a matter of humour and the ambivalence of their disclaimers is discussed. As such, it is suggested that there are integral links between extreme hatred and dehumanizing, violent humour.

This paper argues that people's views of health and illness are best understood as accounts that they give to others. In that sense, such beliefs are neither the expression of fixed inner attitudes, nor evidence for shared social representations. Instead, we emphasise the importance of seeing health talk as both ideological and dilemmatic. The paper explores the way in which individuals who speak of health (or illness) in general must also give an account of their health in particular.Reviewing the distinction between 'private' and 'public' accounts, the article discusses the various rhetorical devices by which this is achieved. This shows how people's talk about health both defines their social fitness and exemplifies their claims to being ill or healthy.

This article looks at the ideological meaning ofthe denial of prejudice, which is common in contemporary discourse on race. Even fascist writers deny their own prejudice, and the use of 'disclaimers' is widespread. However, the general norm against being perceived 'prejudiced' has not received äs much direct investigation äs, for example, images of outgroups. Therefore there is a need to examine what is meant by the concept of 'prejudice' in everyday discourse and to trace the ideological significance of this concept. A rhetorical perspective is recommended. It is suggested that the concept of 'prejudice' reveals the heritage of the Enlightenment liberalism in everyday contemporary discourse. In ordinary discourse, äs in Enlightenment texts, 'prejudice'refers to psychologically irrational beliefs and Speakers attempt to justify, and particularly to self-justify t their own rationality: therefore Speakers try to make their discourse 'reasonable* by finding external reasons for discrimination. A detailed example of these discourse processes is discussed, in relation to justiflcation for discrimination in the British army. The ideological implicationsof this liberal, but discriminatory, type of discourse arebrieflydiscussed.

A bstractThis paper seeks to offer an alternative approach to the study of prejudice than that based upon the notion of categorization which is currently influential in cognitive social psychology. It is argued that the categorization approach assumes the inevitability of prejudice and ignores the issue of tolerance. The assumptions of the categorization approach are criticized, and it is suggested that, by focusing on categorization as a cognitive process, it has overlooked an opposing process-that o f particularization. The result has been a rather mechanical and bureaucratic model of cognition. A less mechanical view is possible if the relations between the two processes of categorization and particularization are considered from a rhetorical perspective, which examines the argumentative nature o f thought. For theoretical and empirical reasons, this perspective does not equate prejudiced thinking with rigid categorization; instead a rhetorical approach permits a distinction between prejudice and tolerance on the basis of content, rather than form, and thereby avoids assuming the inevitability of prejudice.