Beyond prejudice: the rhetoric of extreme difference and moral exclusion

Abstract

This paper investigates the particulars of a discourse of extreme difference and moral exclusion about ethnic minorities in a Romanian sociocultural context. The present paper examines in detail the discourse of middle-class Romanians taking up different ideological subject positions on the issue of the fairness of extremist politics. A comparison is made between participants supporting extremist politics and those opposing this kind of politics to see whether there are differences in the way participants from both categories talk about the Romanies. The aims of this paper are twofold. On one hand, this paper illustrates and discusses some of the discursive, rhetorical and interpretative resources used to talk about and legitimate the blaming of Romanies. On the other hand, it documents the constructive ideological processes used to position the Romanies as beyond the moral order, as both outsiders  in society and space, some of the ways in which particular ways of talking dehumanize the ‘other’ (Billig, 2002). It is suggested that a very similar expression of moral exclusion discourse is to be found across both positions, a very similar discourse of nature  embedded in the similar use of various discursive and rhetorical strategies to blame the Romanies and position them beyond the moral order.