The Role of Relevance in Stereotyping: a Schutzian Approach to Social Categorisation

Abstract

This article demonstrates that Alfred Schutz’s theory of typification and relevance together have a great potential to conceptually clarify certain aspects of self-categorisation theory. More specifically, it focuses on the motivational bases of stereotyping, one of the core mechanisms underlying the categorisation of people into groups. Social psychologists have found that stereotyping of out-group members is motivated by factors, such as uncertainty reduction, or the enhancement of the self-esteem of in-group members. What categories and corresponding stereotypes are being activated and applied is ultimately a function of the goals and pragmatic interests of the perceiver in any given situation. The article argues that this phenomenon can be explained, and accounted for, by Schutz’s tripartite system of relevances. To illustrate the theoretical issues at hand, the last section draws on the case of migrants arriving in Hungary and provides a potential explanation for why the ideal type of the Gypsy was triggered and facilitated the way in which migrants have been attended and understood.

Navigating normative sources: How adolescents talk about refugees from Ukraine and the Roma.

“…In Extract 10, Ján starts by anchoring the representation of the refugees in the representation of the Roma, to build his argument on the emotion of threat (Gutiérrez-Vidrio, 2019). Gyollai (2022) similarly pointed out that the negative representations of the prototypical Roma were mobilized in Hungary during the 2015 refugee crisis, serving as an interpretively relevant framework to make sense of incoming refugees. Ján’s portrayal of the Roma using the “feeding off us” narrative (Goodman & Burke, 2011) is presented as common knowledge and indisputable fact (“that’s just the way it is”; Edwards & Potter, 1992).…”