Normative regulations and the use of language in describing political events: an analysis of the pragmatic use of language on newspapers

Abstract

Defined the Linguistic Intergoup Bias as the tendency to describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors in more abstract linguistic categories than negative ingroup and positive outgroup behavior (Fiedler et al, 2003) and basing on the idea of  Moscovici that "something" is beyond the text, (1994; 163), three studies analysing the use of language in newspapers editorials are presented. Editorials where selected from different newspapers describing different political relevant events: killing of politicians, truce of ETA, banning one Basque newspaper. Verbs and adjectives were coded according to the Linguistic Category Model (Semin & Fiedler 1988). In accordance to the LCM, results show that newspapers transmit their perspective by describing differently aggressors to ingroup and outgroup members (Study 1 and 3). Results also show that this effect persists even when the explicit conflictive situation is not longer present (Study 2). In sum results showed that a subtle language use expressing dispositional driven regulations are used depending on the perspective of the position taken by the media. Finally, the pertinence of the Theory of Social Representations to explain the use of different normative pragmatic regulations is discussed to understand this pragmatic use of language so consistent in the mass media.