PERSONHOOD AND ACCOUNTING FOR RACISM IN CONVERSATION

Racism is traditionally studied from an individualistic perspective em phasising personality characteristics, motivations and basic cognitive processes. Some researchers have shifted their attention to the study of racist discourse. The present study tries to extend this work on d iscourse in two ways. First, by focusing on the everyday meaning of ra cism itself, rather than by defining racism and using this definition as the central analytical category It is investigated how ethnic Dutch speakers when they talk and argue among themselves, reconcile racist talk with their identity as a reasonable and moral person. Second, con versational interactions were studied in order to examine the effectiv eness of constructions. Few studies investigate the question of conseq uences of varying constructions. It is argued that in order to show th at constructions play an important role in shaping subjects' understan dings and actions it is necessary to go beyond textual deconstructions and to investigate conversations.