Presentations of Romanies in the Czech Media: On Category Work in Television Debates

Abstract

This article concerns categorizations of Romanies in Czech media. We analysed four television debates which were broadcast in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 1995. All of them concerned Romanies, and Czechs and Romanies participated in each of them. The analytic technique we used was membership categorization analysis (MCA), associated with Sacks (1992), and with contemporary ethnomethodology. Our analysis focused on how descriptions of Romanies were used and warranted, and how the membership categorizations both changed in arguments and resisted change. We found that participants did not simply describe Romanies, they warranted the descriptions and, in doing so, presented some of the descriptions as matters of common knowledge and others as facts. Not all `common knowledge' of Romanies was, however, held in common by both Czechs and Romanies. Czechs know Romanies as those who do not live like normal people, who create problems and commit crimes, but the facts about Romanies as unique people with a valid form of life are only known to Romanies.

The construction of ethnic minority identity: A discursive psychological approach to ethnic self-definition in action

“…People engaged in conversations about themselves and others construct and negotiate categorial meanings and the 'reality' that they are talking about. Studies of the ways in which ethnic minorities define and account for their identity (especially to members of their own group) are still relatively scarce (but see Leudar and Nekvapil, 2000;Verkuyten, 1997Verkuyten, , 2005Verkuyten and de Wolf, 2002). Perhaps the most interesting and insightful study on the topic is Verkuyten and de Wolf's (2002) that shows how ethnic minority members (Chinese residents in the Netherlands) construct different versions of identity in interactions with members of their own group through mobilizing various discursive and cultural resources, and offering both deterministic and agentic accounts of their identity as minority group members.…”

Talking about Gypsies: The Notion of Discourse as Control

“…Second, Leudar and Nekvapil (2000) look at how Czech Romanies are presented in television debates. Turner's (2000) paper Gypsies and Politics in Britain, examines the treatment of Gypsies in politics and this includes an analysis of some of the things that Jack Straw has said about Gypsies.…”

“…The reader of the article firstly does not know the truth of the situation, and secondly becomes complicit in the normalisation of discriminatory discourse. Leudar and Nekvapil (2000) also looked at the representation of Romanies, but this time in Czech television debates. They examined conversations in debates between Czechs and Romanies and found that many descriptions were used and they were warranted as common sense, or universal truths.…”

Noticing 'us' and 'them' constructions: The pedagogical implications of a critical discourse analysis of referring in political discourse

“… Third, discourse is historical in that a text can only be understood in terms of its context, time, and place (cf. Wodak, 2001: 3 Sacks (1972;1992a;1992b) and expanded upon by a number of researchers (notably Hester & Eglin, 1997;Leudar & Nekvapil, 2000;Leudar, Marsland & Nekvapil, 2004;and Schegloff, 2007), MCA studies how people employ social categories -membership categorisation devices or labels -to organise themselves into specific groups that reflect their identities (cf. Zimmerman, 2007: 72).…”