You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Essentialism, historical construction, and social influence: Representations of Pomakness in majority talk in Western Thrace (Greece)
Contributor:
Figgou, Lia
imprint:
Wiley, 2013
Published in:British Journal of Social Psychology
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1111/bjso.12002
ISSN:
0144-6665;
2044-8309
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<jats:p>Social psychological research has been particularly interested to study essentialism in the construction of social categories and to manifest its potential consequences in intergroup attitudes. Drawing upon this literature, the present study focuses on the argumentative resources employed to construct ethnic categories in a specific rhetorical context: focus group discussions between majority <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">G</jats:styled-content>reek educators about the minority group of Pomaks, historically residing in Western Thrace (<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">G</jats:styled-content>reece). Discussions were framed as an attempt to capture the particularities of minority education and data were analysed by the use of tools and concepts of discursive and rhetorical psychology. Analysis indicates that participants have multiple and complex recourses available to construct <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">P</jats:styled-content>omakness. Representations of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">P</jats:styled-content>omakness as an essential a‐historical entity coexist with conceptions of category membership and identification as a result of certain historical conditions and processes of social influence. Essential and de‐essential category constructions are approached as rhetorically situated, oriented towards specific rhetorical ends in specific argumentative contexts. They are also considered, however, to be nested within a complex and dynamic intergroup context which reflects the ideological contradictions of the <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">G</jats:styled-content>reek policy towards the minority and which constitutes (but it is also reconstituted by) shifting group definitions and boundaries.</jats:p>