社会中的话语与认知.pdfVIP

5 Discourse and Cognition in Society Teun A, van Dijk Introduction This essay analyses some of the relationships between discourse and society. Its maj or thesis is that such relationships are not direct, but should be framed within a theory of the role of social cognition in processes of social, political and cultural reproduction. Thus social representations in our minds (such as socially shared knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and ideologies) are assumed to act as the necessary interface between micro- level interactions and individual text and talk, on the one hand, and societal macro-structures, on the other hand. This assumption goes beyond the classical correlational approaches to the relationships between language and society, for instance in sociolinguistics. At the same time, it provides a necessary extension of work in critical linguistics and discourse analysis about the ways language use or discourse contribute to the reproduction or legitimation of social power. By way of illustration, I shall summarize results of research into the properties of news discourse and its role in the reproduction of racism. It is generally agreed that an adequate study of the relations between discourse and society presupposes that discourse should be located in society, as a form of social practice or as an interaction of social group members (or institutions). This overall inclusion relation, however, remains rather vague and is in need of further specification in order to explain which properties of text and talk typically condition which properties of social, political or cultural structures, and vice versa. The same is true for other relations between discourse and society, for instance if we study discourse as presupposing, embodying, enacting, reflecting or l