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Topic Progression and Social Categorization

Ursula Piontkowski

University of Muenster, Germany

Research on intergroup behavior and in the social psychology of language has examined the role of social categorization and language behavior in situations in which two ethnolinguistic groups come into contact. This study attempts to extend this domain of inquiry by addressing the role of coherence violations in topic progression during face-to-face intergroup communication. It is hypothesized that violations of neutral and local coherence toward out-group members are linguistic devices that participants in a conversation use to achieve positive social distinctiveness. An analysis of group discussions with highversus low-salient intergroup categorization-each between two East and two West Germans-confirms the hypothesis concerning the principle of neutral coherence. Violations of neutral coherence toward out-group members are significantly more frequent if intergroup categorization is of high salience.

Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 4, 444-455 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X970164005


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