Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization

Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies Author(s): Gerald M.
Platt and Rhys H. Williams Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Nov., 2002), pp. 328-359 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108615 Accessed: 19/05/2010 20:17
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Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies*
GERALD M. PLATT
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

RHYS H. WILLIAMS
Universitv of Cincinnati
The current "culturalturn" in the studyof social movementshas produceda numberof conceptsformulating the cultural-symbolicdimension of collective actions. This proliferation, however,has resultedin some confusion about which cultural-symbolicconcept is best applied to understandingculturalprocesses involved in social movements. Wearticulate a new definitionof ideology that makes it an empiricallyuseful concept to the study of social-movement mobilization. It is also formulated as autonomous of
concepts such as culture and hegemony and of other cultural-symbolic concepts presentlv used in the movement literature to explain participant mobilization. We demonstrate the usefulness of our ideology concept by analyzing letters written to Martin Luther King, Jr. from segregationists opposed to the integration of American society. The analysis indicates that the letter writers particularized segregationist culture, creating ideologies that fit their structural, cultural, and immediate circumstances, and that the ideologies they constructed thereby acted to mobilize their countermovement participation. The particularizing resulted in four differentiated ideological versions of segregationist culture. The empirically acquired variety of ideological versions is inconsistent with the role attributed to cultural-symbolic concepts in the social-movement literature and requires theoretical clarification. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for social-movement theory of the variety of segregationist ideologies.
Considerthe following statementstakenfrom correspondencewrittenby four white Americans to MartinLutherKing, Jr. in the mid-1960s:' The move of the Negro race towardequality with, or even supremacyover, the white race is immoral. I quote the law against desegregation, as it stands in Galatians 5: 19-21 ... so the attempt ... is immoral and is punishable by death, unless those involvedask God'sforgivenessfor this sin andcease pushingfor equalityor supremacy.
*We want to thankthe MartinLutherKing, Jr.Centerfor Nonviolent Social Change for permissionto quote the correspondenceto Dr. King. Special appreciationfor their help is extended to the former director of the King Libraryand Archive, Dr. BroadusN. Butler,and to Mrs. CorettaScott King. We also wish to thankGene Fisher, Bill Gamson, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Gary Marx, Neil Smelser, Marc Steinberg, and Fred Weinstein for their comments on the earlier version of the essay. Addresscorrespondenceto: GeraldPlatt, Departmentof Sociology, University of Massachusetts,Amherst, MA 01003; e-mail: platt@soc.umass.edu. An earlier version of this essay entitled, "Ideological Discourse, Segregationist Ideology, and Social Movements:A Sociolinguistic Analysis," was presentedat the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 9, 1999, Chicago, IL. 1For this article, we have edited the letters for spelling and typographicalerrors;however, we have preserved the punctuation,capitalization,and phrasing as faithfully as is possible in order to convey the 'feeling" of the message without distractingattentionto the form in which it was expressed.
Sociological Theory 20:3 November 2002 ? American Sociological Association. 1307 New YorkAvenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
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After all, this is a whitemans'country,and if the Negro, who was broughtin here by the English, is not satisfied with our way of life, why don't they go back to Africa, to educate and civilize their own people. It is said that ... the group NAACP[National Association for the Advancement of to ColoredPeople] gets paid well-by Communists, violate laws, provokeviolencefor publicity.... you and your un-Americanemployees-are mercenary anything ... violate all decency for money, largely supplied by enemies of USA. If you really want to do something for the Negro race, teach them to live like human beings, pull themselves out of the filthy low down lives they are living.... Then you would have a race of people that would be acceptable. These claims are familiarto anyone who has studied the Americancivil rights movement. They are statementsmade in letters sent to Dr. King by opponents of integrationand are examples of "segregationist ideology." But examine the assertions more closely. Each rests upon a different ground as to why segregation should be preserved. The first is religious, claiming that segregation is God's will. The second is based in a segregationist of interpretation Americanhistory.The thirdnegates integrationby associating it with the great symbolic demon of mid-20thcenturyAmerica,communism.The fourthholds out the potentialfor equality at some unspecified futuredate but claims that, as yet, AfricanAmericans are not ready for that condition. This variety of ideological versions of segregation suggests the need to rethink our views of social-movement culture and ideology. Almost every sociological approachto social movements takes the cultural-symboliccomponent of collective action to be unifying, producing solidarity.Whetherthe term is "frame,""identity,""cognitive liberation," or "ideology," sociologists have formulatedthe culturalcomponent as reducing and unifying the meanings membersof a social movementhold aboutthe movement and the social world.2 However, while each ideological statement above opposes integrationand supports a segregationist order,each also representsa distinct adversarialvision that makes sense of a variety of cultural and structural crises confronting the correspondentand interpreters Jim Crow society (Platt and Williams 1988; Platt and Fraser 1998). In the 1950s and 1960s, Jim Crow society and the cultural worldview that legitimated it were threatenedwith the collapse of their ability to justify and recapitulatethat order.The four ideological versions are examples of the "practicalconsciousness" (Giddens 1984:xxiii) or "operativeideology" (Williams and Blackburn 1996:170) that these segregationistadherents producedto meet these crises. The cultural-symbolicdimensions of social-movementtheorizingare much in debate in the currentsociological literature.Concepts such as "frame,""identity,""cognitive liberfor ation," and "ideology" are profferedas most appropriate the requiredtheoreticaltasks (Snow, Cress, Downey, andJones 1998; Goodwin andJasper1999; Polletta 1998; McAdam 1999; Oliver and Johnston2000; Snow and Benford 2000; Benford and Snow 2000; Williams and Benford 2000). We wish to avoid engaging in "concept wars,"while still entering this debate by offering a theoretically autonomousand empirically useful conception of ideology as a cultural-symbolicconcept designed to explain social-movement mobili2We realize this contention may be controversial,and will returnto the issue in the conclusion. Suffice to say here that examples from such varied authorsas Snow and colleagues (1986), McAdam (1982), Melucci (1995), and Klandermans(1984, 1988) all view the power of culture as residing in its unifying the meaning-systems of movement adherents. We are arguing for the importance of ideology, but for the opposite reason-precisely because it offers diverse and particularizedmeanings.
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zation. The power of ideology, we contend, is achieved through its diverse and often contradictoryappeals, not through its unifying functions. We illustrate the usefulness of this conception by examining letters from countermovementsupporterssent to Dr. King and the SouthernChristianLeadershipConference (SCLC). THE CONCEPTOF IDEOLOGY Our formulationof ideology narrowsits traditionalmeanings while developing a comprehensive cultural concept for social-movement mobilization. Our formulationis also distinctfromthe broader notionsof cultureandhegemony.It suggeststhatmovementadherents' ideologies are experientiallydesigned versions of the past, present, and futuresocial order and that these ideologies organize adherents'cognitive, moral, and emotional practices (see Goodwin, Jasper,and Polletta 2001). This conceptualizationintegratesstructuraland cultural factors, describing how they combine to establish and differentiate ideological perspectives. Ideology is often inflated by theorizing that equates it with the whole symbolic world. It is also often deflated by reducing it to a pejorative charge hurled against those who speak for objective truth.3While ideology is not empirically independent of culture, without its conceptual autonomy from other symbolic concepts its analytic usefulness is hindered. We draw upon the theorizing of Antonio Gramsci (1971), Clifford Geertz (1973), and Raymond Williams (1977, 1981) to establish our conception. We begin our inquiry with a provisional formulationof ideology as an assemblage of ideas providing conceptions of past, present, and future social conditions.4 We use the phrases "assemblage of ideas" and "conceptionsof past, present, and future social conditions"because we wish to portray ideology as lacking any necessary logical coherence. Further,we conceive of ideology as constructions of the social world arising from a variety of influences, such as cultural and structuralcircumstances and idealizations about the social world used to interpretthem. Ideology is expressed in a number of symbolic forms, but mostly it is delivered in spoken and written language. Therefore, we offer a sociolinguistic analysis of how it is in formed,operates,anddifferentiates language'suse (Hymes 1974;Gumperz1982).Because of ideological language's malleability, it provides movement participants, in Giddens' sense, with both agency and organizationalstructuring(Giddens 1984; Sewell 1992). For this reason, we formulate ideology as a cultural resource for its adherents. It is in the language of ideology that activistsjustify theirparticipation,constructtheirconceptions of past, present, and future social worlds, and orient their moral, cognitive, and emotional practices (Platt 1980; Williams 1995). In ideological language, adherentsmobilize and orient their movement activities.
3Geertz (1973) attemptedto reformulatethe concept of ideology so as to protectit from becoming, as he put it, "ideologized."His attemptis more elegant but less systematic than our effort. He provides less of a handle on how the concept might be empirically used. Additionally, his essay focuses upon producersof ideology. Our essay focuses on the interpretivelanguage that groups of individuals use to transforma culturalworldview into a resonantmobilizing ideology. 4In this definition of ideology, and in two subsequentelaborationsof it, we privilege neither ideas nor conditions, neitherculture nor structure;rather,both are involved in determiningthe substanceof an ideology (Fields 1990). Ourposition is thatideologies express some coherence, but they are not systematic, nor are they addressed solely to ideational-cognitiveconceptions of the social world. Ideologies are symbolic, to be sure, but they also provide orientationsto and conceptions of the moral, cognitive, and expressive ordersof the social world (Jasper 1998). The word "assemblage"implies ideas, symbols, and meanings about a variety of dimensions, from material to cultural,from cognitive to expressive and moral, and from myth to science. Our conception of ideology is influenced by its earlierformulationsin the symbolic Interactionisttraditionof Turnerand Killian (1987), and it resonates with the recent formulationof ideology found in Oliver and Johnston(2000). See also footnotes 4 and 5 below.
IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION Some Troubles an AutonomousConception of Ideology for
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Ideology has often been conceptualizedas false-consciousness thinking (Dant 1991:5-6). It has been conflated with cultureand hegemony in the Marxiantradition(Althusser 1971; Williams 1977). And traditionalsociology also suggests thatideology is value-boundthinking (Shils 1968).5These approachesproducetwo troublingissues for an empiricallyuseful and autonomousconcept of ideology: (1) the belief that ideology consists of ideas imbued in the masses, creating in them a false consciousness that obscures the reality of their circumstances(Williams 1977:55); and (2) the incapacityto conceptually distinguish ideology from other symbolic processes that orient social practices (Williams 1981:26-30). From its outset, the ontological status of "reality"has been central to the concept of ideology. Marxand Engels (1939), the theoristswho broughtthe concept into social analysis, conceived of ideology as masking reality, thereby creating an appearanceof reality serving the interestsof the dominantclass. In this tradition,the standardfor obtainingtrue knowledge of the social world resides in the analysis of the material conditions of existence, set against the ideological conception of them. However, the Marxisttraditionsoon moved away from a conceptual dichotomy of appearance and reality to the creation of reality by interweaving ideas with material circumstances. Starting with Engels in 1893 (1959) and his concession to ideas and continuing among left theorists for more than a century, the significance of ideas in social formationhas provided a revision of this conception of reality. In contemporary Marxism, ideas and the material operate simultaneously to create the realities in which persons exist. These realities reflect class-based interests,butmayalso incorporate bourgeoisbeliefs (Hall 1986a, 1986b;Steinberg1994, 1999). Writingin the Marxist tradition,Purvis and Hunt (1993) provide a theoretical solution to the problem of ideological distortion versus objective reality. They resolve this dichotomy by removingtheirconceptionof ideology from the domainof ontologicaltruth.Instead, they note that"Ideologyis concernedwith the realmof the lived, or the experienced,rather than 'thinking.'... . [It] implies the existence of some line between 'interests'and 'forms of consciousness'" (Purvis and Hunt 1993:479, 476). Ideology so formulatedis a consciousness that expresses, among other things, the interests of a particularlysituated class and thus constitutes a subjectively constructedtruth. Purvis and Hunt conceive of this ideological consciousness as a form of truth,but with a small "t".It is the truththat reflects a class's interpreted,lived experiences and interests but does not provide for ontological truthin the sense of depicting a reality separatefrom its social construction.They refer to ontological truthas truthwith a capital "T", but consider it beyond reach. Thinkingof ideology as interest-based,constructedversions of reality informs our conception of ideology as a mobilizing resource. However, the interestsupon which ideology is constructedare those designated by classes of persons as important.There are no funintereststhattrumppeople's constructionsof theirown circumstances. damental"rational" Further,we add to our conception of ideology a dimension of the emotion of hoped-for realities. Thus, ideology incorporates idealized beliefs also derived from lived experiences. These idealizations orient thinking as they mobilize courses of action aimed at promoting or resisting change. We ask, how do ideologies that incorporateinterest-based
5Oliver and Johnston refer to their conception of ideology as a "nonpejorative" formulation,contrastingit to pejorative conceptions of ideology that emphasize its reality distorting function. They note that there is a core body of work that "provides a solid basis for investigating ideology in its nonpejorativesense as a system of meaning undergirdinga social movement" (Oliver and Johnston 2000:42). We concur, and have relied upon similar sources to develop our conception of ideology as meaning constructing.However, we conceive of ideology as a less coherent assemblage of ideas than do Oliver and Johnston (see 2000:44-45), and we also focus We more on its constructedand differentiatedcharacter. do agree that ideology is a more comprehensivecultural conception than frames or framing.And, insofar as "culturalwars"are forms of struggle over culturalresources, we also accept Oliver and Johnston's idea that ideology carries with it a political connotation (Williams 1997).
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truths and idealized visions for change and resistance come about? And how do they operate and differentiatein social processes? The second issue that stands in the way of a useful formulation of ideology is the confusion between ideology and other symbolic concepts. Ideology as a symbolic process has been equated with culture and hegemony, because all three have been conceptualized as dominating and orienting both consciousness and social practices. Ideology is distinguishable from culture and hegemony in its capacity to act as a mobilizing resource for change and resistance. Michael Billig and colleagues argue that ideology and culture are often conceptually indistinguishable.To this point, they write: [T]he concepts of cultureand lived ideology are similarbecause both seek to describe the social patterningof everyday thinking. It might be said that ordinary people living in a particularsociety partakeof the general culturalpatternsof that society, and their thinking is shaped by these patterns.The word "culture"could easily be substitutedby "ideology" in the previous sentence. (Billig et al. 1988:28) RaymondWilliams(1977:108-14) also struggledto provideconceptualdistinctionamong hegemony,culture,and ideology. To this point he writes, "Wehave then to note that,unless we make these extensions and qualifications, 'ideology,' even and perhaps especially in some powerful contemporarytendencies in Marxist analysis, is in effect repeating the history of 'culture' as a concept" (Williams 1981:28). His solution was that, among the three, hegemony is the most comprehensive;he referredto hegemony as the "whole social process."Having createdthis distinction,however, an essential featureof the threeremains similar in Williams's formulations:for him, hegemony, culture, and ideology are all symbolic systems of social control that shape consciousness and orient social practices. To be sure, the concept of hegemony implies a dominating metanarrative,but the traditional ideology concept also implies domination, and culture is often formulatedas a society's Insofar as the concepts' capacities for dominadominatingand controlling metanarrative. tion and social control remain at their hearts, it is impossible to conceive of them as conceptually autonomousof one another.Although we agree with Williams that conceptualizing cultureand ideology requirestheir distinction and thatboth cultureand ideology are createdby real practices, we do not agree with him regardingwhat these practices are and what they accomplish.As with our criticism of Geertz (see footnote 2), we believe that Williams does not provide an empiricallyuseful or precise conception of ideological practices, or of their consequences. and Put anotherway, the concepts "ideology,""culture," "hegemony"have consistently been employed to explain dominationand the reproductionof existing social forms. However, within both the Marxist and the traditionalsociology traditionsthere are dissenting voices. Gramsci (1971) and Geertz (1973) suggest that ideology is derived from immediate circumstances.Gramscinotes that counterhegemonicideologies arise from those who exist in conditions of oppression and would challenge the powerful. Geertz remarksthat ideologies derive from conditions that prohibit the interpretationof immediate circumstances accordingto establishedculture,resultingin ideological forms as alternatesto, and in conflict with, established conventions. For Gramsci and Geertz, ideology arises from immediate circumstances;it is structuredby these conditions, even as it interpretsthem. Our theorizing draws upon both approaches.We conceive of ideologies as organic interpretationsarising out of the experiences of the immediatecircumstancesfacing a segment of society and acting for them as a mobilizing resource for change or resistance. If we are to develop a concept of ideology that is distinguishablefrom culture and hegemony, we
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suggest that it be hinged to interest-based assemblages of ideas proselytizing for hoped-for or idealized social conditions that do not exist, or interest-based assemblages of ideas advocating for the perpetuation of social forms experienced as failing. Ideology can be formulated as independent of culture and hegemony if it is confined to ideas advocating interest-based social processes oriented to bringing about or resisting change. We may refine our definition of ideology, then, as a symbolic perspective regarding desired social conditions; it is an assemblage of ideas about the construction of activities and circumstances oriented to achieve interests and life experiences as visualized in an idealized past, present, and future. SPECIFYING IDEOLOGY FURTHER We do not intend to relativize the concept of ideology. We propose a concept of ideology formulated as experience-driven, interest-based idealized conceptions of society. This formulation ties ideology's construction to its immediate circumstances. Therefore, ideology is a circumstantially restricted conception of reality, and it is hardly relative (Seliger 1977; Brandist 1996). Ideology comes into play when cultural meanings and the structuring of the social world run into trouble. Gary Marx and Doug McAdam suggest that ideologies arise when cultural meanings and practices become "inadequate, indifferent, or in dispute" (Marx and McAdam 1994:18). These troubling conditions create subjective experiences of disruption and undermine people's capacities to employ conventional cultural symbols and routine social practices to construct their social worlds. Experiences of cultural and structural disruption have been termed "sense-making crises" (Platt 1980:82) and described as "disrupting the 'quotidian"' (Snow et al. 1998:1; also see Useem 1998).6 They have been theorized as cultural and structural conditions that mobilize movement participation. For persons so affected, it becomes problematic to fit practices to the moral conceptions that provide authority for one's own and others' activities. Individuals seek explanations in ideologies not so much when events in the world cannot be interpreted as when events seem-and are experienced as-"uninterpretable" (Williams 1996). Such situations encourage the search for ideological interpretations of these settings. Individuals in these settings struggle to make moral, cognitive, and emotional sense of their experiences by describing them, finding their causes, and offering solutions in ideological doctrine (Weinstein and Platt 1973; Weinstein 1990:83-121). In these situations, persons actively construct the meanings of their experiences and the direction of their courses of actions. They use their ideological interpretations as cultural resources or as "normative tools" to make sense of their circumstances and to guide their activities (Swidler 1986; Platt 1980; Williams 1995).
6Snow and colleagues (1998) suggest four conditions that create breakdownsand strainsthat foster movement mobilization. They do not claim that this is an exhaustive list of the disruptive conditions that cause strain. the Instead,these conditions exemplify the circumstancesthatunderminethe "quotidian," latterformulatedin the Schutzian and Durkheimian traditions as the routine practices and the normative characterof everyday life. Within that context, Snow and colleagues single out loss as the primarystrainthat causes movement mobilization. They formulate "loss" as the loss of economic or utility resources, ratherthan as generalized cultural and social psychological experiences within which economic or utility resources are a subcategory.However, it is theoretically appropriatein the Durkheimian and Schutzian traditions to assume that "loss" would not give priority to a utilitarian formulation. Instead, loss should be conceived of in terms of the cultural and social psychological experiences of it. Not only would such a formulationbe consistent with social-movement theorizing derived from Durkheimand Schutz, but-more significantly-it could also provide a conceptual framework within which the authors might develop theoretical cohesion among the myriad potential forms of disruptionbreakdown-strain-loss conditions. A sizable culturaland social psychological literaturein the Durkheimianand Schutziantraditionsfocuses upon a generalized conception of breakdown,strain,loss, and movement mobilization (e.g., Geertz 1973; Weinstein and Platt 1973; Weinstein 1990; Emirbayer1996; Useem 1998). Althusser's would also be helpful in influenced structuralstatementon "overdetermination" classical Durkheimian-Freudian clarifying these issues (Althusser 1979:87-128).
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The disruptionof everyday life and the incapacity to make sense of immediate conditions occur in two forms: (1) the experience of the failure of extant culturaldoctrine and practices to cope with and make meaningful sense of immediate situations; and (2) the culturaldoctrine and practices to provide for the experience of the absence of appropriate changing circumstances that are developing in society (Platt 1987). Geertz (1973) and Snow andcolleagues (1998) emphasizethe failureof interpretive capacities,butthe absence is also influential, as for example, when cultural of culturaldoctrine and social practices ideals do not exist or the culture is "indifferent"or "in dispute" about recognizing and rewardingthe changing-and often rising-performance capacities among a category or class of persons (Marx and McAdam 1994:18). Both forms of interpretation were exhibited in the counterreactions the integrationof to African Americans into the mainstreamof American institutionallife. Two of the segregationist ideological constructionsdescribedbelow attemptto repairand reasserta segregationist cultureand its practicesthat were experiencedas failing. Two others supplement segregationistdoctrinewith principlesnot usually associated with it, advocatingideas and practices not usually associated with the conventional southernsegregationistworldview. While these principleswere absentfrom traditionalsegregationistculture,they were experienced as relevantto the historical circumstancesin which integrationoccurredand were included in constructingtwo particularizedsegregationistideologies. Neil McMillen (1971) documents the fact that the circumstancesnoted above fostered the rise of the countermovementsegregationist organizationthe White Citizens' Council (WCC). He emphasizes that [w]hile the most fertile soil for the Council's germinationwas to be found in blackbelt counties, the most salubriousclimate for its growth was that created by racial crisis. The story of Council expansion, then, was not one of steady progress. Represented graphically,its growth in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South resembleda fever chart with peaks occurringin periods of racial unrest when the white population's perceptionsof the imminenceof desegregationwas greatest,andslumpscoinciding with periods of relative calm. The first such growth-producingcrisis came with the Brown decision in May 1954. (McMillen 1971:28) Rhoda Blumberg,in her influentialanalysis, agrees that the WCC formed in reactionto the changing circumstancessignaled by the Brown decision. The "first Citizens' Council ... formed in Indianola,Mississippi, in July, 1954 ... determinedto resist and nullify the school desegregation decision" (Blumberg 1991:203). These accounts suggest that the southern countermovementwas constructedfrom several relevant circumstances:apartheid southerncultureformed during slavery and Jim Crow society; reactionsto the crises created for it by the immediate events of Supreme Court decisions and the executive branch'senforcementof them; and local circumstantialcrises createdas reactions to legal and activists' efforts to integrateAfrican Americans fully into southernsociety. Ideological discourses are interest- and experience-based idealizations offering alternate courses of action; they provide solutions to circumstancesthat are perceived as having created the uninterpretablemoral, cognitive, and emotional troubling experiences. They constitute challenges and substitutes to conventional cultural interpretations; they also constitute symbolic ways of bolsteringand supplementingfalteringconventionalculturalinterpretations. Ideologies emerge among those who would change society and those who would resist change, those who are advocates of the extant but failing conventional interpretiveorder and its practices. The result is two types of ideological doctrine: emer-
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gent ideologies orientedto change and counterideologiesopposed to the emergingschemes, supportingan extant or past but failing culture. Conflict involving the challenges among ideological interpretationscreates circumstances in which many differentpersonal and collective rationalesfor commitmentsarise. These struggles among ideological camps are often couched as conflicts between truthand falsity, scientific and biased perspectives, or God-given naturalorders and misguided human formulations.We contend that the struggles are none of these. Instead,they are interpretive conflicts among versions of morally appropriatesocial worlds, their change or schemesaremoralandstruc(Luker1984).These conflicts amonginterpretative perpetuation turalstrugglesover culturalandsocial resources,not over truths-no matterhow manygenuflections to scientific or God-given trutharemadeon all sides of the conflict (Smelser 1963). Ideology is local because it arises in relation to the cultural and structuralconditions immediately facing groups. However, not all groups experience and interpretthe same circumstancessimilarly.The resultis thatthereis never a single ideology expressed among movement and countermovementgroups.Instead,varying ideological versions arise out of the different ways in which local circumstancesare made relevantto groups' interests and their experiences (Schegloff 1991; Platt and Fraser 1998). Ideologies serve cognitive functions because they involve the creation of meaningful conceptions and practices appropriateto the immediate conditions. Also embedded in ideology's cognitive meanings are principles regardingemotional expression and control. Ideology links cognitive expressions to emotive ones by interpretingand containingemotions about local circumstances while providing hope for instituting an idealized past, emopresent, and future. Ideology provides for its adherentsdefinitions of "appropriate" tions regardingthe crisis circumstances,courses of action pursued,and futurestates (Platt 1980). Ideology also offers its adherentsmoral legitimacy for courses of action, insisting they will achieve greatercommon or public good in the ideal state (Williams 1995). Within the distinction provided by Jorge Larrain(1996:53-54), our conception of ide(particularized)and "critical"(evaluative) definitions of ology incorporatesboth "neutral" ideology's functions. We adopt a "neutral" conception in that we recognize the mobilizing capacities of the particularperspectives of all ideological symbolic formulations,thereby rejecting any division between truthfuland ideologically distorted understandingsof the social world. We offer a "critical" definition by calling attention to the interest-based natureof ideology by examining its role in criticizing social arrangementsand justifying social movements for change and resistance. We conclude that ideology is a symbolic perspective regarding desired social conditions; it is an assemblage of ideas about the constructionof activities and circumstances oriented to achieve interests and life experiences as these are visualized in an idealized past, present, and future. Ideology is a structurally grounded local construction. It is expressed in language discourse that orients moral, cognitive, and emotive processes responding to and interpretingthe experiences of failures and absences of cultural doctrine and structural circumstances. It mobilizes adherents to resolve these failures and absences, therebysetting them in motion to establish or reestablish idealized conceptions of past, present, andfuture social conditions. IDEOLOGYAS A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PROCESS Ideology is expressed primarily in spoken and written language. We employ a sociolinguistic analysis to investigate how its meanings are signified in language use (Gumperz 1982). We also investigate how ideological language differentiates-that is, how it is particularizedto adherents'circumstances(Gamson 1992).
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A society's culture may be conceived of as its total symbol discourse regarding the constitution of meanings (Williams 1977). Cultureso understoodis the symbolic context within which ideologies are constructed. The ideologies we examine were constructed within the contexts of local circumstances,including the southernsegregationist culture. Racial segregation is a salient element of American society generally, and it was an especially coherent southernsubculture.It was a significant cultural-symboliccontext during the civil rights era. The ideological expressions we discovered were constructedwithin this cultural context. In these conditions, conducive to the development of social movements, a variety of arose (Hunt 1991). Ideological language influenced by the hisideological interpretations tory, experiences, interests, and structuraland cultural circumstances of segregationist adherentsresulted in varying ideological conceptions (Schutz 1962; Platt and Williams 1988). A sociolinguistic analysis of the interpretative processes involved in creatingmobilizing ideologies provides insights into the ways in which alternatesegregationistideological expressions were constructed. Ideological sentences used to make immediate circumstancesmeaningful are referred to as "indexical"expressions. Referringto an expression as "indexical"calls attentionto the inherent ambiguity existing in everyday language, requiring, in speech, the use of discourse strategiesto express and acquirethe intended meaning of these sentences (BarHillel 1954; Peirce 1931; Wittgenstein 1958). As is the case in all everyday language conversations, the meanings of ideological sentences are achieved by using discourse strategies. Discourse strategies are conversationalinterpretivepractices. There are two forms of discourse strategies. One form is grammatical,semantic, and syntactic interpretivestrategies: thatis, interpretivestrategiesembeddedin the sentences themselves that are used by speakersto express and by hearersto comprehendsentences' meanings.These are referred to as linguistic interpretivestrategies because they are expressed in and restrictedto the sentences. They reveal their meanings in textual analyses of spoken and writtensentences. The second interpretiveform that speakersemploy to assist them in providing meaning to everyday language sentences is referredto as extralinguisticor pragmatic discourse strategies. These are interpretationsdrawn from the interactionalfeatures that exist between speakers, such as facial and tonal expressions, shared historical and experiential backcircumstancesin which conversationsare congrounds,and sharedculturaland structural ducted.These are revealed in contextualanalyses of languageuse. Sociolinguistic analysis relates everyday language use to the circumstancesof its production.Language comprehension and the capacity to share meanings requirethe use of both linguistic and extralinguistic discourse strategies. In interpersonalinteractive settings, the comprehension of language is especially influenced by the use of extralinguistic,pragmaticdiscourse strategies (Gumperz 1982). Sociolinguistic analysis assumes that shared communication is accomplished among interacting speakers within the context of their settings. Background experiences plus context are the local extralinguisticfeaturesthat are used as pragmaticdiscourse strategies to achieve sharedmeanings.The communicantsmust know the purpose,occasion, participants, and what is relevant to each other in order to achieve meaningful communication. Language in and of itself cannot convey sharedmeanings; it must be placed in context to be interpretedcorrectly. Sharedmeanings in ideological language, as in all language discourses, are context-dependent. Meaningfully shared communication can be achieved using everyday language sentences when speakers use similar linguistic and extralinguisticdiscourse strategies. Even jargon, idiomatic, or particularlyambiguous sentences can be understoodwhen they are
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used among persons who share similarhistories, cultures,and situations.However, despite the capacity to achieve shared meanings in spoken or written language, ideological discourse is particularly susceptible to particularizing influences because of the circumstances in which it occurs. Ideological discourse occurs under structurallyand culturally disruptedconditions-that is, when cultureprinciplesare failing or absent, or as Marx and indifferentor in dispute"(Marx and McAdam McAdamput it, when cultureis "inadequate, 1994:18). Sense-making crises underminethe use of shared discourse strategies, making commonly interpretedideological meanings difficult. It must be emphasized, however, that the use of extralinguisticpragmaticdiscourse strategiesto develop sharedideological interpretationsunder these conditions does not merely become difficult; they are often intentionally made difficult. Movement leadersattemptto foment crises, therebymobilizing participation.They also knowingly assert divergentinformationto differentgroups to encouragethem to construct alternatebut circumstantiallyrelevant ideologies in orderto mobilize them. We argue that leaders employ linguistic and pragmaticdiscourse strategiesin their efforts to characterize crisis circumstances as relevant to different groups who may share a cultural worldview (Childers 1990). The degree to which the interpretiveuses of discourse strategiesenhance or differentiate sharedideological meanings between leaders and participantsis, of course, an empirical question. We examine the constructionof both shared and differentiatedideological meanings. We emphasize the latter because it is the alternate ideological versions that illustrate our contention that ideology's power resides in its capacity to mobilize diverse groups with diverse ideological outlooks into a single movement. effects of linguistic and extralinguisticstratOurdatawill emphasize the particularizing egies as these are used to highlight differentfeaturesof the segregationistworldview.They will also be used to illustratethe inclusion of exogamous principles and ideas in particularizing ideological versions. Features from the segregationist worldview and other culturaldoctrinewere used as the groundsfor constructingideological interpretations among variously situated segregationistcorrespondents. Alternate,and sometimes contending,ideological perspectivesappearbecause different groups are encouragedto perceive crisis circumstancesin distinct ways. Adherents'interpretationsvaried because of the differences in their conceptions of the culturaland structural circumstances they confronted, their distinct knowledge of the crisis circumstance and its potential impact upon their interests, their formulationsregardingopportunitiesor obstacles to act, and so forth (McAdam, McCarthy,and Zald 1996). On the bases of such varied local knowledge and circumstances,different groups calculate and derive distinct ideologies and courses of action. The processes of particularizingideological constructions may be further specified. Ideological constructions are accomplished in two ways. First, groups in different social circumstances with distinct backgroundsmnay interpretthe same cultural worldview difthe class- and status-influEnced ideological differences expressed among ferently (as, e.g., movement adherents in Robert White's 1989 study of the IRA). Activists with varying backgroundknowledge, experiences, and circumstances may employ different extralinguistic discourse strategies to make sense of the crisis and a shared cultural worldview. These result in particularizedideological discourses with a variety of ideological lanto guages. This occurs-and can be historicallydemonstrated have occurred-even among who express solidarity with one another. Ideological interpretationsmay share people some perspectives and may overlap in substance but nevertheless be distinct versions of the same cultural worldview adheredto by variously structurallysituated groups participating in a single movement organization(Kertzer 1988; Platt and Fraser 1998).
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Second, different groups of people contextualize different substantive aspects of a worldview-those aspects relevant to their interests and experiences. In response to historical and structural circumstances,they may also "go afield" to find relevantexogamous ideas and principles in cultural doctrine other than that which is expressed in a cultural worldview. Historical and structuralcircumstancesmay encourage them to generate new ideas that they annex to their ideological constructions.In these instances, they assimilate the "foreign" or newly created ideas, integrating them into an ideological construction derived from a cultural worldview. This second form of ideological constructioncenters different substantiveaspects of a worldview and ideas previously not associated with it. This process, too, creates alternateideological versions. However, this form of ideological particularizingoften results in conflict and schisms among groups who share similar outlooks. It has a tendencyto splinterorganizationsexisting within a "social-movementindustry" (SMI; see McCarthyand Zald 1977; Benford 1993). The first form of ideological variationoccurs because differentmeanings are attributed to similar worldview substance. The second form of variation occurs because groups of persons are creating innovative ideological discourses in relation to historical-structural circumstances.Both forms of ideological variationwere found among the segregationists' correspondencewe analyzed. Both forms of interpretivevariationare legitimatedon the bases of interestsas these are drawn from perceived relevant social, structural,cultural, and immediate circumstances. in Each of the differentideological constructionsis deemed "rational," thatactivists impute that the ideological discourse suggests reasonablysuccessful courses of action in the pursuit of change or resistance.Such ideological formulationsare made resonantby providing to ideological adherentswith moral, cognitive, and emotive expressions appropriate their locally experienced circumstances. Ideology language may mobilize different segments of activists to participatein different organizations,creatinga varietyof mobilized groupswithin a single SMI. Ideology can also be used to interpretstructuralconditions similarly for different groups of persons (e.g., those of differentraces, classes, genders), binding them in solidaritywithin the same movementorganization.Put otherwise, it is importantto recognize thatideology can mobilize different segments of society with varying structuralinterests, each group with overlappingyet distinctideological outlooks, to participatein a single organization.This occurs not because ideology unifies meanings, but ratherbecause ideology can differentiateto create mobilizing justifications for a variety of groups. Ideology's flexible capacity to achieve these ends is essential to the creation of mass movements. Mobilizing a variety of groups with diverse backgrounds and interests to engage in the same mass movement depends upon shared, yet varying, interpretiveconstructionsof ideological language (Childers 1990). A DATASET FOR A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF IDEOLOGY The civil rights movement createda crisis for the southernsegregationistworldview. Martin LutherKing, Jr. received letters from segregationists interpretingtheir failing worldview and wishing to educate him about segregation's value for such things as "law and order"and "Black and White relations."These correspondentswere attemptingto open a dialogue with King to convince him of the incorrectnessof his doctrinalpositions and the correctnessof theirs, hoping to convince him to end his integrationcampaigns. Although King did respondto many who wrote to him, he did not respondto segregationists'letters. We analyze these letters to demonstratethe empirical value of our conception of ideology. The letters share many commonly held beliefs, yet at the same time the correspon-
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dents constructeddistinct ideologies. The substance of the letters exhibits segregationist and ideological conceptionsandthe discoursestrategiesthe authorsused to interpret thereby to constructparticularizedideological formulations.The discourse strategiesin the letters are found in the authors'uses of language and in the structural, cultural,and circumstantial features upon which they remark.From the discourse strategies in their letters, we derive of their interpretations King and the civil rights movement and the structural, cultural,and circumstantialinfluences they used to create their ideological conceptions. The letterswere discovered in the libraryand archiveof the MartinLutherKing, Jr.Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta,Georgia.The archive contains a large depository of letters sent to Dr. King and the SCLC duringthe years of the civil rights movement. The correspondenceincludes letters from movement supportersand opponents.The segreletters.The intentof the gationistletterswere frequentlymarkedby SCLC staff as "adverse" staff was to signify a broadrange of antimovementsentiment.However, not all the disapproving letters in the King archive were so marked.We used the SCLC's reference to "adverse" as our initial conception of ideological resistance to the civil rights movement. The and King archiveof documentsandlettersis divided into two series, "primary" "secondary." The primaryseries contain letters writtenby well-known people such as PresidentLyndon JohnsonorAndrewYoung;the secondaryseries containcorrespondencefromordinarypeople. For our analysis, letters found in the secondaryseries were most appropriate. The secondaryseries contains a wide varietyof letters.We did an initial, cursoryreading of all the letters held in this series. After selecting and photocopying,two samples were developed: antimovementletters (i.e., letters marked"adverse"or expressing similar sentior letters(lettersmarked the SCLCstaffas "kind" expressingsupport ments)andsupportive by in andparticipation the movement).7Thereare900 adverseletters.The samplefor this analysis is drawnfromthese. In additionto requiringthatanalyzedlettersexpressresistanceto integration,we used the following criteriato select lettersfor analysis. First, we requiredthat the letters be legible. Second, we selected letters that contained informationaboutthe correspondents'background,such as theirrace, gender,place of residence,andreasonsfor writthis aboutthemselves, presented information ing Dr.King;while some adversecorrespondents a great many did not. Third,letters in the sample had to provide detailed informationabout the correspondents'attitudestowardand descriptionsof the movement and its doctrine,integration,AfricanAmericans,Dr. King, Americansociety, its values, and much more. These criteriaresulted in a sample composed of letters with considerable information about the writers' ideological stances but unsystematic information about their backgrounds.Approximately5 percentof the adverseletters were fromAfricanAmericans.For this analysis we selected letters exclusively from white correspondents. Our analysis stresses the authors'purposes for writing and the cultural, structural,and circumstantiallegitimations they used to justify the continued separationof the races. The letters revealed the practical circumstances of the letter writers, their threatenedreality, and their ideological realities. The correspondentswere telling King which of their cultural, structural,and immediate experientialcircumstanceswere salient to them. These in turn shaped their ideological formulations.The contents of these letters conform to our definition of ideology. Applying a Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ideology We begin this analysis by discerning what is commonly shared in the segregationists' cultural outlook. We derive this by drawing upon two sources: the total sample of segre7A more detailed description of the archive and the acquisition of the letters is presented in Platt and Fraser (1998).
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gationists' letters to Dr. King, and the segregationistculturaltraditionas it is expressed in publishedliteraturefrom the Jim Crow period, including the WCC's responses to activities of the civil rights movement.We pursuethis analysis by examining how the segregationist culture is particularizedin the correspondents'ideological accounts. We discovered that the correspondents'formulationsof their structural,cultural, and immediate experiential circumstanceswere used as discourse strategiesto constructand differentiatetheir particularized versions of the segregationistculturalworldview.8 We use writinglettersto King and SCLC as the operationaldefinitionof supportfor and participation in the countermovement against civil rights. Given the images of signcarrying picketers, lunch-counter sit-ins, and vigilante violence against demonstrators, seems a generousdefinitionof supportandparticipation. However,we believe letter-writing it is justified. First, we are interestedin the spoken and writtenlanguage of ideology, and the letterscomprisea gold mine of these forms of informationaboutsegregationists'beliefs. Second, we are theoretically guided by the importance of participants'formulations of movement ideology, and the letters provide an entirely different source of articulations from the pronouncementsof organizational leaders and spokespersons, the distinction referredto as "formal"in contrast to "operational" ideologies (Williams and Blackburn 1996). We note, too, that the numberof citizens who engage in any kind of political action other than voting is small (Neuman [1986] estimates 5 percent of the adult population). Letter-writingitself is a motivated action that is relatively uncommon. Further,because these letters were cognitive, emotive, and moralizing attempts to educate and persuade King aboutthe values of segregation,we consider them a significant source of information on the ideological stances of countermovementparticipantsand supporters.Finally, what is absolutely apparentis that the letter writers were formulatingideologies in reaction to the crisis circumstancesfacing segregationist society. In face-to-face conversationalsettings, meanings are achieved by interpretinga variety of linguistic and extralinguistic-auditory, tonal, and visual-cues. In written language, these extralinguisticcues are unavailable.Thus, interpretingwritten language requires a modified form of sociolinguistic analysis. Our approachmakes several assumptionsabout creating and acquiringmeanings in written language. First, the segregationistcorrespondents were engaged in constructingand conveying to King their circumstantiallyinformed conceptions of a southern cultural worldview. Second, the meanings they conveyed are explicitly and implicitly embedded in the substance of their correspondence.Third, the linguistic and extralinguisticdiscourse strategiesthey employed reveal the meanings they intendedto convey. Fourth,because this is an analysis of writtenlanguage, extralinguistic discourse strategiesplay a significant role in shaping the correspondents'ideological formulations. Fifth, the extralinguistic strategies were derived from aspects of correspondents' lives-that is, theirinterestsand the relevantfeaturesof theircircumstances.Finally, the interests and relevant features used as extralinguisticdiscourse strategies to construct ideological versions of the southern cultural worldview made the versions authentically meaningful and resonant to correspondents'structural,cultural, and immediate circumstances. We insist that the circumstances the correspondentsuse as extralinguistic strat8A "culturalworldview"is a subcultureof a society's culture.We think of a worldview as applied to a domainspecific set of symbolic meanings, such as ethnic, racial, gender, and geographic worldviews. The segregationist worldview evolved and was elaboratedfrom assumptionsderived from "the naturalorderof segregation."It was and is a subculturethat has much to say about blacks and whites and their relations with one another.It is not mute but has much less to say about,for example, the value of capitalism,democracy,and other such institutional activities. By contrast,a society's culture is a metanarrative, providing for all mannerof meaning constructions and practicalcourses of action pursuedwithin a society. Our point is that the segregationist cultural worldview must be differentiatedand translatedby movement participantsinto their "operative ideology" (Williams and Blackburn 1996).
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egies cannotbe assumeda prioributinsteadmustbe discoveredin the letters'texts (Schegloff 1991:49-57). In our analyses, we ask what these features are, how and in what ways they act as extralinguisticdiscourse strategies, and how they influence the constructionof the authors'ideological conceptions of the southernculturalworldview. The Natural Orderof Segregation:A SouthernSegregationist Cultural Worldview neverachieved countermovement McMillenpointsoutthattheWCC,thepremier organization, ideological consensus. However, he claims there existed "a common body of assumptions generally acceptableto the entire movement."He indicates that "Primarilythe ideology of the Citizens' Council was the ideology of white supremacy." Further,supremacists rested their case for white dominance on the postulate that Negroes were inherently different from Caucasians and that this difference, this hereditaryinferiority, rendered them unsuitablefor free association with white society. In the Council's view the black man's presence could be tolerated only so long as the range of his economic, political, and social interactionwith the white man's world could be systematically defined. In the Council's syllogism of white supremacy,then, segregation was the conclusion that necessarily followed the premise that human worth is calculable in terms of apparentphysical characteristics.(McMillen 1971:161) The segregationist cultural worldview created the moral and practicalreality insisting upon the separationof races, the sharedcultural"bedrock"from which differentiatedideologies were constructed.This doctrine, described in the literature(Myrdal with Sterner and Rose 1944; Dailey 1962; Kilpatrick1962; Newby 1968; McMillen 1971) andexpressed in the adverse letters, suggests a formulationthat may be referredto as "thenatural order of segregation." Over the years of Jim Crow, and during the period of the civil rights movement, the features of the naturalorder of segregation evolved, and yet the center of its formulation authors was buttressedby the same foundationalassumptions.Both anti-andprosegregation whites in particular,race is a suggest that for American society generally,and for southern transcendentfact of social life requiring special norms of conduct. Assumed hereditary inferiorityof blacks-ordained by God or validatedby "science"-initially justified slavery, and subsequentto Reconstructionit underwrotethe moral and practicalseparationof the races as these were instituted in the myriad forms of legal and informal Jim Crow structures.Fixed as it was in inheritance,blacks' inferioritywas immune to environmental influences. This created permanentcircumstancesof incompatibilitybetween blacks and whites, justifying racial separationand allocating blacks to lesser status and second-class citizenship. It is also assumed that these conditions serve the interests of both whites and blacks, as each race is distributedto societal roles consistent with its inheritedintelligence, personal attributes, and ordained destiny. Thus, the prohibitions against intermarriage, physical contact, socializing, and political and economic equalityare consistentwith heredity, serving both races' interests. Having found their appropriateplaces in society, both races should be content in this division of labor. There is also a not-too-subtle subtext, encapsulated in Mary Douglas's (1970) formulation of pollution taboos. Segregationist cultureproposes the idealized-mythologicalbelief that whites are the repositoriesof purity while blacks are objects of danger, and that the natural order of segregation prohibits contact preventingracial pollution.9
90f course, this was a normativetaboo serving white male interests-for example, in the sexual exploitationof black women.
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Below, we describe four distinct ideological versions of the naturalorder of segregation. Each version shares some of the featuresof "natural orderof segregation"culturebut simultaneouslyfashions for its own intereststhe assumptionsof the southernsegregationuses of their own relevant ist culturalworldview. The four versions reflect correspondents' cultures,structures,and circumstances,expressed in the letters as extralinguisticdiscourse strategies, shaping the authors' ideological version of the worldview. Among the four segregationistideologies we describe, the first two envision the worldview as underattack and failing in its capacity to organize social arrangements.When adjusted to the correspondents' situations, these two versions closely advocate the traditionalfeatures of the southern cultural worldview; thus, they are more or less "restorationist." The other two ideological forms assume that the segregationistworldview is missing prescriptionsnecessary to bring about social orderwithin the context of post-World WarII America;these versions innovate upon the segregationistworldview. However, it is axiomatic for all four versions-and within the assumptionof the natural orderof segregation-that the social world is appropriately ordered.Segregationis simply a part of that order.Taken-for-granted routines and culturallylegitimated social practices are seen as operatingin everyone's interest by ensuring order.Concomitantly,overt violence is disruptive and presumablycontraryto order.However, given that segregation is part and parcel of the extant order,violence associated with the civil rights movement is easily assigned to those who are calling for change. Compliance with law implies fidelity both to God's and human law; such obedience is less a definition of order than it is considered integralto the maintenanceof order.Whetherthe maintenanceof orderemerges as an end in itself is differentiatedamong the various ideological versions. The more fundamental point is that the basic naturalnessof order is the result of coherence among a transcendent(eitherreligiously or "scientifically"legitimated) design, the organizationof Americansociety in both its history and present,and the naturalworld. These things share a "createdness"in which each realm reinforces the other. This formulation resonates with Geertz's (1973) description of the meaning-creating functions of culture, in which a worldview unites a cosmology with human society and each borrowsauthorityfrom the otherto normalizeand integratethatworldview.This does not require, of course, logically consistent argumentswithin the articulateddefenses of it segregation.Much of this is unexaminedand often unarticulated; representsan assumption of orderin which the sub-rosaquality itself lends it its power.In similarterms, Larrain function of aligning a moral (1979) understandsideology as playing the "naturalizing" vision of what the world ideally should be with an empirical vision of how the world is. The rough edges of the latterare assimilated to the former,thereby creating in the believer's mind a satisfying correspondencebetween the two. When believers cannot accomplish this correspondence,this is anotherway of referringto a sense-making crisis, the social ordering of crisis and cultural failure, and the failure and absence of organizing cultural principles. The four ideological versions derivedfrom the naturalnessof the segregationistcultural worldview are alternatives struggling to accomplish the alignment while attempting to reinstate and/or reconfigure a segregationist order.Each differentiatesthe source of the naturalnessand justifies the continuing separationof the races on the basis of the correas spondents'circumstancesand interests,which they themselves understand relevant.The four ideological alternativesare: (1) a religiously based constructionemphasizing as an extralinguisticdiscourse strategythe divine source and religious justification for segregation; (2) an historical-"scientific"-groundedconstructionthat highlights relevantimputed traditionalarrangements Americansocial life and an alleged biologically groundednatin ural orderof inequalities;(3) a secular-political constructionthatemploys as extralinguis-
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tic discourse strategies the free enterprise system, national security, and the dangers of communism; and (4) a symbolic constructionderived from the culturalvalues of equality and individualism acting as discourse strategies and disclaiming African Americans' preparedness in terms of these to achieve these circumstances.10 Religious Constructionof Segregation: Segregation as God's Will In the religious ideological constructionof the segregationistworldview, separationof the races is a markof God's plan for humankind-importantly, a directreflection of the sacred orderin the naturalworld. The extralinguisticdiscourse strategyused to create this version is found in the knowledge, sometimes accurateand sometimes paraphrased, the Scripof tures. This emphasis on Scriptureis consistent with the thrust of Evangelical Protestant culture, in which religious authority is uniquely grounded in the Bible. The language, therefore, locates the justification for segregation in a divine will that created separate species and races and a religious doctrine that insists upon their continued separation.A typical example: Turn to Genesis 1st Chapter in the King James Holy Bible and you will see God created the fish, the birds, animals, also man ... after their own kind.... You don't see a black bird integrating with a Robin, etc.... God was displeased with the children of Israel when they intermarried,Even with other nations and tribes, see Exodus 34, 10 to 17 The Covenant or Law of Segregation. Or again: Do you ever tell your people you are a cursed people not by the man in the South but your EarthlyFatherBro. Noah, who cursed you and do you tell your people thatthey are also born in Bondage for as long as the world stands?... as for segregation,you rememberback in the Bible where Nimrod who was a blackmanand he was having the tower of Babel built... Now at the tower of Babel God separatedall nations. .. Here the writer is depending upon the assumed sharedbackgroundknowledge of the biblical story in which Noah's son Ham sees his father naked and is cursed. A common understandingamong many American Christianswas that the "curse of Ham" was dark skin. The letter writeris pointing out to King that God's will (and direct intervention),not southern whites' racism, is the source of segregation practices. Another letter makes the connection specific: I Don't Think You Would WantTo TraceYourAncestry Back to Cane Do You, then afterthe Flood Because Ham Made Lite of His FatherHis Son Had a CursePut up on Him You Can Learn about the Flood in Genesis Six Chapter... Many of the adverse letters are replete with references to God, the church, religion, "Christian" conduct, and the like, but are not necessarily included in this ideological version. What makes this construction distinct is its reliance on theological doctrine as the pragmaticstrategyfor extractingfrom the culturalworldview the justification of segregation in a divine plan. For these correspondents,the ordering of the segregated world is
l?In this instance, we use the term "symbolic"as it is derived from Kinderand Sear's (1981) idea of "symbolic racism."
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easily apparent;a number of their letters refer to "black birds not mating with white birds."' One must only be attentiveto God's truth,as revealed in Scripture,in orderto recognize the rightness and universality of segregation. For example, although the following letter makes references to communism, it is understoodas sin; divine justification is at issue here: [P]rove to me that God teaches Race mixing, any where in the Bible... If you will stop and think a few moments you will be able to see the great sin of Communism and race Agitation in this country.... [Those] trying to force race mixing will never enter Heaven-if you want Bible proof for that statement,I have it. A writer sums up the religious constructionof segregation succinctly: "SEGREGATION IS GOD'S PLAN. INTEGRATION MAN'S PLAN. And we realize we should OBEY IS GOD RATHER THA[N] MAN." In the religious construction, we specifically do not include statementsthat criticized King for not acting like a Christian,or that encouraged him to pay attentionto his preachingand saving souls. References to religion as culturalor social practices are found in the second ideological discourse, the historical-"scientific" ideology. Historical Practices, TraditionalSocial Arrangements, "Scientifically"Based Inequality The historical constructionemploys knowledge of traditionas the extralinguisticbase to interpretand align the segregationistworldview. Segregationis justified as a naturalorder because it was traditionallyinstituted. Letters in this constructioncriticize King for disruptingwell-established,historically legitimatedpractices.This ideological version is also justified in terms of an essential inegalitarianismbased in the alleged biological incompatibility of blacks and whites. The source of inequality is made explicit by referringto establishedpractices,or by referenceto the past as justification for futurepractices.Racial differences and racial separationare partof a natural,established,historical,cosmological ordergroundedin the alleged biological inferiorityof blacks. Correspondents point to the benefits to AfricanAmericans of this naturallysegregatedorder (althoughthe benefits are alleged ratherthan specified). The bedrock of these practices exists in the sexual segregation of blacks and whites, the transgressionof which results in miscegenationand presumably in the polluting of the races. Although God and religion may be mentioned in the letters, this ideological version is shornof theologicaljustification. For example, one letter writer says: God and white men and women made America, its cultureand traditionswith brains and courage, with valor and patriotismby fighting, suffering and dying and everything in it was conceived developed over the centuries by WHITEpeople-negroes had nothing to do with its evolution, its progress or its greatness, yet you negroes think you can step in and claim "rights"which do not exist ... Withinthis circularreasoning,biological differences arejustified by social practicesor by "scientific facts" that legitimate this ideological interpretation, not by a divinely manbut dated plan:
1 Unsurprisingly,this constructionis expressed in the published literaturein Reverend Louis E. Dailey's The Sin or Evils of Integration(1962:15-23).
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Biological differences do exist between the races. There are inborn racial antagonisms. It is not merely prejudice. Perhaps there should be a better name for it, or perhaps there should be a distinction between emotional prejudice and intelligent Whateverit is, it cannotbe changed,andis only intensifiedby yourprogram. prejudice. That segregation is naturaland immutableis often combined with an implicit notion of territorialityabout a historically justified white ownership of America (nowhere in this formulationis there recognition of Native Americans' relation to the land prior to white to settlers). Not surprisingly,this results in a "return Africa"solution to racial antagonism. Some of the correspondentsuse angry language that conflates Africa, the jungle, the presumed animal natureof black people, and a lack of civilization. This is common enough as an epithet, and many of the references have a formulaic quality. But other interpretations of this ideological version of segregation recognize an inevitability of separationof the races and do not view the returnto Africa as punishment,but as a restorationof the natural order.The correspondentnoted below uses linguistic as well as extralinguisticstrategiesto of proffer "a returnto Africa" policy. A semantic interpretation the phrase "to buy out the of slavery while more immediatelysuggesting an instrumenNegroes" requiresknowledge tal formulationof "to buy off" to restorethe traditionalgood orderof the separationof the races benefiting both peoples. The two races are not happy whenforced together.Never were & never will be. The right way to correct the whole trouble is for this Nation to buy out the Negroes & back to Africa, the land that producedthem in the give them all free transportation first place. See to it thatthey have a nationof their own to operateto suit themselves. Then both races will be happy. Some letters cite AbrahamLincoln as an authorityfor a back-to-Africaplan. This suggestion is occasionally punctuatedwith allusions to the inherited incompatibility of the races. These correspondentsdispute King's use of Lincoln as a symbol for his struggle and instead cite Lincoln's prepresidentialproposal for separatism.Lincoln's importance and legitimate authorityare not questioned; in that regard, his image is part of the extralinof guistic strategyused here. What is at issue is the properinterpretation his thought.This is expressed in the following: [Neither] Mr. L. (nor I) believe in slavery,but neitherof us want close association of white and black peoples. The negro race is far inferior to the white race.... Why don't you quote Mr.Lincoln on the following partof a debate speech [followed by a quote advocating separatism]. There is a common admonishmentfor King to "get back to preachingthe Gospel." One letter begins, "You set yourself up as a minister of the Gospel, then why, I challenge you, don't you live it???"Interestingly,the reason for the admonishmentvaries. For some letter writers, it is the job of the clergy to preparebelievers for an other-worldlysalvation, and thus the civil rights campaigns are out of King's institutionally legitimate jurisdiction. Other writers doubt King's understandingof politics or economics, given his training in theology. Yet others accuse him of hubrisand arrogancein criticizing society and call him of leaderunrepresentative the many "goodnegroes"in the United States. a "self-appointed" Whatever the rationale, the naturalorder and history of segregation are taken as given. This formulation,like the religious one, uses correspondents'backgroundknowledge and
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social structuralcircumstancesin a segregated society to realign the segregationistideology with the changing societal conditions. Further,we note the "assembled"characterof the particularizedideological versions of segregation by combining within this version both defenses of traditionalhistorical practices and "scientific"(thatis, pseudoscientific)justifications. For many scholarly analysts, tradition, history, and culture are understood as human constructions, while science is thought of as a legitimating discourse that transcendshuman creation. In that sense, science is like religion in that it is an authoritybeyond human society (see Jasper 1992). However, the religious version of segregation doctrine is clearly theological in its orientation-that is, focused on the manifestationsof a conscious divine will-while the historical-"scientific" constructionis predicatedon the idea that the culture and traditions of segregation are part of a naturalorder that can also be understood through science. Logical coherence is not the ideological glue; rather,it is the interpretivework that makes the segregationist worldview resonantwith local circumstancesand the perceived historical relevance to the correspondents. Secular-Political Constructionand the Threatof Communism The two previous constructionsof segregationistideology conceive of the southernsegregationist worldview as providing legitimate courses of action but failing to achieve its intended purpose of producing and maintainingthe naturalorder of segregation. These differentiatedideological forms offer repair,specification, and reaffirmationof the segregationist worldview. The worldview was failing in the face of social change, and letter writerswere producingidealized, if not mythologized, affirmationsof their versions of the naturalorder.In contrast, the ideological versions discussed here and in the next section consider the segregationistworldview as missing importantfactual and prescriptiveelements in their constructionsof the naturalorder. The first of these includes as extralinguisticdiscoursestrategiesthreatsof communismto the United States and to the free-enterprisesystem formulatedas they are intertwinedwith Jim segregation.These threatswere not partof 19th-century Crowculture,but were relevant to the postwar world and Cold Warculture.Although communism was immediately associated with civil-rights-movementactivities, it did not have a prominentplace in the constructionof the religious or historical-"scientific" ideological versions of the segregationist culturalworldview.Communismandfreeenterprise were assimilatedto the natural-order formulationby assumingthatsegregationwas integrallyinvolved with the historicalevolution of Americansociety into a world-dominant political andeconomic nation.Since integration and communism are conflated in this ideological version, criticisms of segregationare associated with an attackupon America'spresentand futuregreatness. 2 The pragmaticbasis of interpretation the secular-political ideological constructionis in a particularizedhistorical conception that intertwinesAmerica's greatness with the separation of the races. However, implied in this ideological version is the belief that if integration doctrine were shorn of the communist attackupon America, equality between the races might be possible. The second version, which we discuss in the next section, also includes important factual and prescriptiveelements that were not originally partof the southernsegregationist worldview. We refer to it as the symbolic ideological constructionof racial separation.
'2It has been suggested that J. Edgar Hoover initiated the association of black activism with radicalism and communism. Hoover was militantly antiblack and anticommunist.These animosities were conflated and first directed at Marcus Garvey, whom he considered a dangerous black radical. By "1919, Hoover had already defined political movements within the black community as a permanentfield of investigation for his Radical Division" (Powers 1987:127-28).
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This version involves the inclusion of the culturalvalues of equalityand individualachievement as the extralinguistic,pragmaticbases for interpretingthe perpetuationof the separation of the races. In the segregationistversions presentedhere and in the next section, the correspondents attempt not only to adjust and reassert, but also to amend and embellish the southern segregationistculturalworldview. Both ideological versions suggest thatchange be sought "judiciously,"according to the correspondents'perspectives, but that it could result in greaterjustice for African Americans. Charges of communist influences in the SCLC and the NAACP abound in the correspondence. These expressions range from folk wisdom to the columns of such establishment commentatorsas Joseph Alsop (a photocopy of an Alsop article titled "Reds Worm Into Rights Groups"was included in a letter from April 1964). Many of the remarksare seemingly off-hand, or handy epithets easily drawn from the general vocabulary of the early 1960s. For example, one letter claims "you are one of the biggest liars in the country . . . calling your communistprogram 'Christian'."Another writerrefers to "yourCommunist coalition," while yet another writer addresses King as the leader of the "Southern CommunistLiars Conference."One letter begins: A-The real VILLEN of the RACE PROBLEMare the REDS! They are in turn, B-Using the N.A.A.C.P. as DUPES, to, C-Destroy the freedom of both the Whites and Colored in the south. Particularlyafter King's public condemnationof United States involvement in Vietnam, many letter writersquestionedhis patriotismand accused him of being naive and of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Interestingly,while the connections between civil rights organizationsand communism were made easily, the condemnationsof communism in our sample overwhelmingly did not include its putative atheism. Rather,the distinction exists in the advocacy of a natural secular order of American segregation, in contrast to the misguided secular disorder of communism. The most common charge against communists was their plans for intermarand riage and "race-mixing" thereforeconstitutinga threatto the good orderand continued vitality of American society: talks are creaters of hatreds and violence ... NAACP uses [Y]our "rabble-rousing" big money ... to promote violence, race-mixing or any other un-Americanactivities.... Communistsare known to demand "race-mixing." Even though socialism is frequentlycontrastedwith the "freeenterprisesystem,"no vision of socialist economics emerges. Rather,socialism is typified as the symbolic counterto the Americansystem, which is portrayedas a vehicle of opportunity,one that is as available to AfricanAmericans as to anyone else. The idea thatAmerica remainsa land of opportunity for all, and all must bear responsibility for their own circumstances, leads to the fourth version. Symbolic Segregationist Construction,the Open System, and Questions of Strategy If the United States is a society of mobility, the responsibilityfor achieving equality rests on individuals and their motivations. The fundamentalproblem of equality is one of per-
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sonal effort and worthiness. One can potentially earn one's place as a full member of society in an open system. In this accounting, segregationremainsa measureof the extent to which black Americansare not yet ready for or entitled to equality.The path to equality comes not from protests,demands,or disorder,but from education, self-improvement,and patience, virtues the southern segregationist cultural worldview does not associate with African Americans. Contrary to the principles guiding the religious and historical"scientific"constructions,the potential for equality is available, if African Americanscan find within themselves the wherewithalto achieve it. We find these values appendedto the symbolic segregationistconstruction(see Kinder and Sears 1981). It often is associated with an idealized image of the immigrantworking classes' upwardmobility and assimilation in the new world. The extralinguistic strategy for this image is incorporatedin the overused adage, "We made it on our own [by implication, throughhard work, diligence, and civility]; you should do the same." Sometimes these experiences are intertwinedwith expressions of religious doctrine counseling a virtuous morality applied to secular achievements and law-abiding behavior.It is frequently expressed in the correspondence: We Denverites are sick & tired of the way you are leading your people to animosity toward the White and Black ... Those Southernpeople will come aroundone day, but no, you have to try to force and show them that you want the same now. The religious underpinningsof this argumentexist in the naturalcondition of social order as partof God's plan, and "agitation" "militance"is not a "Christian" or strategyfor social change. Even less is there a religious justification for breakinghuman law: [T]he Bible does NOT record a single instance where the church, as such or even a group of "BELIEVERSIN CHRISTJESUS"engaged in any overt act of aggression against "THE LAW OF THE LAND" . . . you had bettercheck your acts of aggression with what God's Word authorizesand instructs.... Breaking laws illegally as you and the NAACP are doing, is against the teaching of the Holy Bible, and at the same time being done with malice in your hearts to make trouble instead of peace. The religious language used in this example does not recount a divine plan that separates the races, nor does it define an essential inequalityas natural.Rather,the assumption is that orderis natural,American society is ideally organized, and any people who follow Christianprinciples would be pursuing a different course of temporal action (if not necessarily different goals) from that being pursued by King and the SCLC. Although religious objections to King's campaigns are numerousin this ideological construction,they are not identical to the theological justifications for continued segregation. Whether the authors fully faced the implications, the religious references used within the symbolic constructionleave open the possibility of change and equality, if pursuedcorrectly. In the following example, the earned component of equality is articulated and contrastedwith the presumablydeserved quality of segregation: Why don't you colored people get busy and do something worthwhile, so you will deserve to be integratedwith the whites? ... Look at all the colored people who have achievedworthwhilepositionsfor themselves... the white people acceptthembecause they deserve to be accepted.
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The symbolic version of the segregationistideology emphasizes the "landof opportunity" and "earnyour equality" themes couched in the secular language of social and political order: [Respect] must be earned not demandedby a personof any race.... We have negroes in our community who have earned the respect of the white people ... [and] retain that respect by living useful and well-orderedlives. With very best wishes, A loyal American E PLURIBUS UNUM Interpretedas a linguistic strategy,the addition of the national motto "out of many, one" may simply be a postscriptthat was meant to reinforce the writer's legitimacy as a "loyal American."However, it may also be ironic in that the expression holds out the promise of eventual integrationinto national life, but does so by summoning the images of the successful assimilation experiences of Europeanimmigrantsand the qualities of their collective charactersthatpresumablymade thatpossible. Hence, in this view segregationremains understoodas a naturalorder,but integrationachieved in an orderly manneris consistent with national identity. Several writers who employ the symbolic pragmaticstrategy feel it importantto provide a context for their opposition that distances them from the traditionalintransigent racial hostility common among correspondentswho created the religious and historical"scientific" constructions. Such authors portray themselves as concerned with issues of law andorder,the welfareof AfricanAmericans,andthe potentialconsequencesof backlash: [G]o back to preaching the Gospel of Jesus ... to your race and try to win souls to the Lord, and stop wasting your time in violating city ordinancesand stirringup your race to get them into more trouble. ... I love the colored people, worked in the fields with them, listen to them preach, sing and pray. My father gave the colored people the land to build them a churchwhen I was just a child, and they had some glorious meetings there and there was always good order. I'm no enemy of the negro. I talk [to] and like them. But why agitate and build up race hatred.Most southernnegroes try/want to get along. [signed] A Mississippian (not a negro hater) Ideological Versions:Agency, Structuring,and SituatedLanguage as These four particularizedideological versions offered language "repertoires" potential courses of action upon which opponents to integrationcould draw to apply to their cultural, structural,and immediate circumstances (Tilly 1977, 1995; Williams 1995). These repertoireswere createdsimultaneouslywithin the context of one historical moment, circa 1955-1968. That four differentiatedversions occurredsimultaneouslyis evidence of cultural agency, as groups of persons fashioned particularizedideological "repertoires" fit to their interests and relevant circumstances. enabled correspondentsto create the four distinct ideological Language'sinterpretation versions. We wish to delve deeper into a specific aspect of this sociolinguistic process. We want to bring into bold relief a direct connection between an immediatelyrelevantcircum-
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stance and its effects upon the structuringof a particularizedsegregationistlanguage. We illustrate how King's efforts to integratehousing in the urbanNorth influenced the constructionof a particularizedideological version. During the period of the SCLC's efforts to integrateChicago housing, correspondents from the area wrote to King interpretingcampaign events occurring in that city. They perceived King's appeal for open housing as a threat to their economic and cultural interests-as a threatto both their propertyand their status. Interpretingthese crisis circumstances within a northernurbanenvironmentresulted in a particularizedideological formulationfit to the cross-cutting pressures from the segregationist worldview, the corculture.Ourexample from Chicago illustratesa respondents'interests,and a liberal-urban use of the fourth ideological version presentedabove, the symbolic situationallygrounded segregationistconstruction. King in Chicago: Symbolic Segregationist Constructionand the Potentialfor Equality King moved his activities to the North in the mid-1960s, beginning protests for Chicago open housing in January 1966 (Ralph 1993:60-65). Not surprisingly, the movement's geographicchange from the South to the North was controversial.There had been support for from white northerners changing southernJim Crow laws and practices.There was less for charges of northerncomplicity in segregationist institutional arrangements, support in particularlywhen these appearedto involve voluntarysocial arrangements civil society ratherthan overt discriminatoryactions enforced by state and local segregationlaws. The contents of adverse letters written to King during this period reflect the changing situational context of their production. The Chicago demonstrationsfor open housing In promptedmanylettersfromlocal correspondents. theirletters,the correspondents emphasized the symbolic ideological construction.The discourse shifted from the argumentthat segregation was an immutablepart of a changeless naturalorder,as was expressed in the religious and historical constructions, to a rationale that implied a potential for greater equality that was as yet unrealized.However, the source of the inequalitywas still located in African Americans. It was alleged that blacks lacked the strengthor will to participate fully in societal opportunities.Continuedsegregationitself became a measuringrod of the degree to which black Americans were not yet ready for, or worthy of, equality and integration. The extralinguistic strategies imputed alleged motivational and circumstantialproblems among AfricanAmericans.Black Americanspurportedlylacked the wherewithalfor integration, and their neighborhoods were evidence of their motivational shortfall. The letters sent to King during his Chicago campaign for open housing highlight the situated characterof the productionof ideological language-that is, a symbolic constructionfit to the multiple cross-pressures impinging upon the letter writers. An example of this formulation: So you are going to get rid of the slums, well let me tell you, in order to do it, you would have to eliminate all the negroes, because they create slums; I lived in poor neighborhoodsin my life, we did not call them slums, the houses were old and no conveniences but we ... kept them clean and bought soap and paint instead of liquor and dope . . . our mothers cleaned the house . . . our fathers cleaned and fixed the premises.... A self-identified Jewish woman from Chicago described her relationshipwith a black woman from her neighborhoodwho had taken care of her as a child when her father was
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sick; the writer also provides examples of anti-Semitism she had experienced in her own life, and asked why no one protested the Holocaust. She goes on: May I ask why you [King] must clean the apartments,carry garbage, and ashes? Why are not the tenants keeping clean their apartments.... But we also lived in slums ... and I never saw a rat or roach-why because our jewish people kept the premises CLEAN.... [Negroes need to be taught] CLEANLINESS,NUTRITION, CARE OF THEIRCHILDRENand all the attributesthat contributeto a measureof, true not gracious living, when ones funds are limited.... Other,more blatantlysegregationist, letters coming from Chicagoans are less nuanced but still within the symbolic frame, attributingto blacks themselves the circumstancesin which they live: "who turnsa nice neighborhoodinto a nigger slum. Of course, the niggers themselves." Another letter asks King to pay attentionto Atlanta'scondition (presumably before focusing on Chicago): It [AuburnAve.] is a sad place to see now as far as business is concerned. From Jackson St. up to Boulevard all that valuable land vacant not a coffee bar, sandwich shop or caf6 to be seen.... While you arerunningall over the worldto partsunknown and encouraging the negroes to go in and push the white man out of all the decent places he has workedhardto establish for his people.... why don't you get together and put up some nice places on the Avenue and give the negro girls and boys who need jobs so bad something to do. The circumstancesthat promptedthese letters, the region of origin of the writers, and the writers'often-relatedpersonalexperiences with poverty or discriminationcombined to produce a discourse not found in the first three versions of segregationist ideological doctrine. A few of these adverse letter writers had an authentic commitment to an open place in society and perhapseven a desire for AfricanAmericansto achieve an appropriate it. Among others professing this stance, there are two prominentundertonesthat express the authors'continuing commitmentto segregationistworldview. The first is a "disingenuous commitment"to an open society. The commitmentis noted, but it is interlacedwith beliefs thatAfricanAmericansdo not, and cannot,possess the motivationalwherewithalto succeed. The commitmentto an open society is declared, but without potential cost to the The second theme thatemerges from these lettersis thatthe commitmentto correspondent. an open society provides the ideological adherentswith the time to maintaintheir advantage no matterwhat may evolve for succeeding generations. Both of these stances originate in a commitment to the religious and historical ideological perspectives as these beliefs are expressed at the heart of "the naturalorder of segregation."However, these discourses resonatedwithin the northernurbanenvironmentfrom which they were derived and situated. Some of these letters include racist epithets; others, as noted, doubt that the conditions African Americans face can be overcome. We are not trying to soften the extent to which these, too, were adverse letters using segregationistlanguage to oppose King and the civil rights movement and were in favor of continuing segregation. We suggest, however, that conflating these various sources of ideological thinking overly simplifies potential understandingof the resistance specifically to the movement and underminesa general ability to understandhow ideological language contributesto the accomplishment of locally situated social-movement activism.
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THEORY CONCLUSION:IDEOLOGYAND SOCIAL-MOVEMENT Ouranalysisuses sociolinguisticconceptsdevelopedby Gumperz(1982) andHymes (1974) to describe the meaning variation in culturally and structurallysituated communicative processes; their sociolinguistic approachhas been termed "the ethnographyof communication" (Goddardand Wierzbicka 1997:232). We extended their lines of thought to the communication of ideological language within social movements. In reading the correspondence from countermovementactivists communicatingtheir ideologies to King, we realized that while they shared aspects of what they intended to convey, significant portions of their discourse divergedfrom one anotherin the meaningsthey were attemptingto communicate.In that observation, we realized the importanceof the uses of situated language in communicatingideology. Language is alive to its situated expressions; in being so, it provides for the constructionof sharedbut situationallyvaried meaningful ideological versions. Thus, we conceived of ideology as a cultural resource for mobilizing movement participation.We illustratedits mobilizing capacity by applying a sociolinguistic analysis we fashioned to study language in correspondencesent to MartinLutherKing, Jr. by segregationist countermovementopponents. We described how these letter writers particularized their segregationist ideologies in order to make them meaningfully authenticto and resonantwith their structural,cultural,and immediate experientialcircumstances. In our analysis, we designed conceptions of linguistic and extralinguistic discourse cultural,and expestrategies,operationalizedas textual expressions of relevant structural, riential circumstances,that correspondentsused in their letters to King. We demonstrated how these discourse strategies appearedin the segregationists' correspondenceand how they shapedthe correspondents'ideological versions of resistanceto the civil rights movement. The analysis producedfour particularizedideologies, ratherthan a single "formal" ideological discourse advocated and proselytized by movement organizations and their activist leaders. We demonstratedhow a cultural worldview shared by different groups may be differentiatedinto resonantparticularizedideologies, ratherthan trying to posit a single, univocal ideology to which all members of a movement for change or resistance adhere. This differentiation into particularizedideologies is important because it illustrates how activists integratecognitive, moral,and expressive understandings with both practical and normative courses of action. The ideologies they constructprovide them with idealized conceptions of past, present, and future conditions. The correspondentsused these ideological versions in their efforts to restore and maintaintheir visions of an appropriately orderedsocial world. In accomplishing these ideological constructions,the segregationists created for themselves an experientially grounded, interest-based "operative ideology" that they used to mobilize and orient their participation. This conception of ideological processes is more comprehensive than several other cultural concepts that attempt to link movement organizations' formal ideologies with participants'operative ideological stances. We believe, along with Weber, Gramsci, and Geertz, "thathumansare suspendedin webs of significance which they have spun. .[C]ulture is those webs and cultural analysis is a search for the interpretivemeanings of those webs" (Geertz 1973:5). This formulationis a metaphor,more than a definition, and yet it implies that a culture concept appropriatefor social-movement mobilization cannot be confined to "framing,""cognitive liberation,""identity,"or even "ideology" when ideology is expressed solely as ideational processes. Instead, Geertz suggests, culture requires of individuals that they be immersed into meanings that are affixed to a collective past, present,and future.This formulationof the concept also implies that culturerequiresof its
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believers a dedication to its determiningmoral evaluations, its emotional expressions, and its cognitive conceptions. All of this is implicit in Geertz's idea that culture is "webs of significance":that is, culture is a discourse about multiple social and personaldimensions of significant meanings.Thus, whetherhandeddown from above and unexaminedor interpreted and constructedby groups of persons, cultureis a discourse to which its adherents are deeply committed because it is the narrativethat they use to organize and orient the moral, cognitive, and emotional-expressivedimensions of their personal and social lives. A lesser formulation of culture caricaturesthe human symbolic experience, and a lesser formulation ideology as culturewould not explainhow movementadherents mobilized. of are Adherents to the segregationist worldview constructedparticularizedideological versions of that culture in the language they employed, cultures in which they could fully immerse themselves. They aligned their ideological constructionsusing their interestsand immediate experiences to particularizethe southernsegregationistworldview. Withinthis formulation,we developed a comprehensiveconception of ideology as a locally produced, interest-basedmobilizing culturethatacts as a resourceto mobilize movementparticipants for change or resistance. We intentionally depicted ideology as "particularized," eschewing terms such as "privatized"or "individuated."We wanted to avoid the relative and reductive connotationof those words, suggesting instead that movement ideologies can be made particularto socially structured groups' interests,experiences, and circumstancesin a manneranalogous to the way Gumperzdemonstratedthat ethnic and racial groups may particularizetheir language use and comprehension (Gumperz 1982:153-203). To "particularize" is a structuringconception, not a form of "phenomenologicalindividualism" (McAdam, Tarrow,and Tilly 1996:20). It refers to groups' uses of linguistic and extralinguistic discourse strategies to construct particularizedcultures as ideological languages relevant to their interests, experiences, and circumstances. In complex societies, groups of persons adheringto a cultural abstractionsuch as the southernsegregationistworldview exist in differentsocial structures. This worldview may be shared, but in order for it to be resonant and meaningfully authentic within specific differentiated circumstances, each group must particularize it. By doing so, the group constructs, in Gramsci's (1971) conceptual language, an "organic ideology"-what we refer to as "operative ideology." Without particularizing,a cultural worldview contains abstractideas that individuals may believe in, such as "the naturalorder of segregation," but such abstractthought is inherentlydifficult to apply to groups' socially situatedmeanings and interactivepractices. Our illustrationof the Chicago resisters' reactions to King's efforts at open housing is directly addressed to the linguistic process of constructing an "operativeideology" that would provide a repertoireof socially situated norms and practices fit to the culture of a northerncity. While this symbolic form of countermovementoperative ideology was distinct, it drew, in common with the religious and historical segregationistideologies, on an assumptionof the innate inability of African Americans to integrateinto white American society. The Chicago ideological language muted this assumption, suggesting that if this inability were overcome it would be possible to integrate black Americans into white society, although many of these correspondentsdoubted that this would or could ever occur. We recognize that we are suggesting a different epistemological conception of social structuresthan is found in traditionalstructuralapproachesto social movements, whether approving (e.g., McAdam, Tarrow,and Tilly 1996) or critical (e.g., Goodwin and Jasper 1999). The structureswe point to are real. They exist, but they affect groups' cultural constructions when they are made relevant to a group's circumstances. Situated groups make structuresrelevant through the manners in which they interpretthem. However, it
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should be kept in mind that it is not possible to determinea priori what structureswill be made relevant and what proportionof a group will do so within terms sanctioned by the for group.And while theremay be predictabletendencies of interpretation differentgroups, even in these instances whole groups never conform to a priori interpretiveexpectations drawnfrom specific structures.Measuredagainstpredictableexpectations,anomalouscultural interpretations practices are always created within a single group. and Additionally, no exhaustive set of structurescan be listed a priori that will influence ideological constructions. We discovered in our investigation that four very differentsome unusual and unexpected-structural and culturalcircumstances acted as pragmatic discourse strategies (Steinbergforthcoming).'3The immediatecircumstancesthey used to shape their particularizedideologies included religious scripturalbeliefs, historical traditions and pseudoscientific formulationsof race, the structuringof American society as a great political and economic nation, and the values of equality and individualism as the bases for full participationin American society. To be sure, our approachto ideology and movement participationhas been influenced by the cultural constructionist theoretical tradition, particularly that of symbolic interactionism (Turnerand Killian 1987). However, it is also infused with theorizing from culturalanthropology,and the "languageturn"in cultural EuropeanMarxiststructuralism, studies. We also note, as we did earlier in the essay, that we have developed our formulation in response to the lively debate in the social-movement literatureregardinga cultural theory adequate to the task of explaining movement participation.Our remarks on the comprehensivenessof our conception of ideology speak directly to this issue. Withinthe social-movementliterature,the cultural-symbolicfeaturesof movements are thoughtto producereduced, unified meanings among movement participants.We suggest that they operate differently.For example, Snow and colleagues write, "By frame alignment, we refer to the linkage of individual and SMO interpretativeorientations,such that some set of individualinterests,values and beliefs and SMO activities, goals, andideology are congruent and complementary.... By renderingevents or occurrences meaningful, frames function to organize experiences and guide action"(Snow et al. 1986:464, emphasis in the original). If we carry forward this logic, we must conclude that if members' interests, values, and beliefs and the SMO's activities, goals, and ideology are "congruent," then all members'consciousness are congruentwith the organizationalleadership's conception of the movement and in turnare congruentwith all other members'consciousness (see also a similar critique in Hart [1996]). McAdam offers a different theoretical approachto social movements-the "political process model"-and yet he writes of his cultural-symbolicformulation,"cognitive liberation," that movement emergence implies a transformation consciousness within a significant of of the aggrieved population. Before collective protest can get under way, segment people mustcollectively define theirsituationsas unjustand subjectto changethrough group action.... Evidence of this optimistic "stateof mind"is again sketchy, but is so consistent as to leave little doubt that it was sharedby large numbersof blacks in the early 1960s.... If the generation of insurgency depends on the presence of sharedcognitions within the movement's mass base, then just as surely the absence of these same cognitions contributesto movement decline. (McAdam 1999:51, 161, 201)
13Steinberg makes the coherentpoint that structuresand cultures should be read semiotically and situationally ratherthan providing them with a priori, invariantmeanings (Steinbergforthcoming:3-9).
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McAdam's assertion that sharedcognitions makes insurgencypossible and the absence of shared cognitions contributes to its decline makes clear the necessity, in his model, of movement members' sharedculturalmeanings. Alberto Melucci represents a third approach to social movements. The culturalsymbolic component of movement members' subjectivity is formulatedin his concept of "collective identity . .[:] this process of 'constructing'an action system. Collective identity is an interactiveand shareddefinition producedby several individuals (or groups at a more complex level) and concerned with the orientationsof action and the field of opportunities and constraintsin which the action takes place" (Melucci 1995:44). Otherexamples may be quoted here; for example, see Klandermans's notion of the "consensus mobilization"(1984, 1988, italics ours) necessary for collective action. However, we need not belaborthis point further.We simply note that the conception of a movement's cultural-symbolic component-whether in the frame alignment, political process, or new social-movementtheoreticalapproaches-is to formulatecultureas reducing and unifying meanings held among movement participants, rather than to provide them with the agency to create distinct "operative ideologies" fashioned to the group's situated cultures, structures,interests, and immediate circumstances. We also should remark upon the recent synthetic effort at bringing into accord the contributionsof structural, rational-choice,and constructionistapproachesto social movements. We applaudthis ecumenical attempt. However, note that structuralfactors, traditionally conceived, still hold pride of place in this effort's sociological thinking about social movements, as, for example: "Moreover, structuralistassumptions probably still constitute the conceptual fulcrum on which most movement research rests" (McAdam, Tarrow,and Tilly 1997:159; see also McAdam 1999:x and xii). In McAdam, Tarrow,and Tilly's latest effort (2001), the authorsstrugglemightily to include an autonomousculturalsymbolic conception, using the terms "identity,""collective identity," "identity shifts," "identity mechanisms," and so on. However, they have not yet achieved that conceptual goal. They still use the identity concept to reduce and unify the consciousness among movement participants.Further,identity is conceptualized and empirically illustratedas determinedby structuresand structuralchanges that exist and occur within the environmental contexts of contention. In contrast, we formulate structuresas real, but interpretedfrom the perspectives of groups relating to their circumstances.This formulationpermits groups to engage in conventional cultural interpretationsof structures,objectifying and recapitulatingthem as recognized in their conventionally encountered forms. However, it also permits groups facing crisis situations regardingstructuresto attemptto restore or change conventional structural Whetherconventionally objectified and strugglingto recapitulate arrangements. themselves or seeking to change, structuresare the products of human agency, the outcomes of the practices in which humans engage, whatever those practices. To be sure, practices have a solidity, and they may insist upon their recapitulation-but they may also be changed. In this regard, we have also entered into the debate over how to conceptualize social movements' organizationalefforts to define the situation for participantsand in so doing acquire, mobilize, and align participants'and movements' frames (Best 1987; Snow et al. 1986; Snow and Benford 1988; Benford 1993). Snow and Benford (1988:199, 1992) have elaborated several factors that they suggest affect the mobilizing power of movement organizations'frames. Among these, they point to the importanceof the ideology's relevance to belief systems already extant among a targeted population, and to ideology's relation to the life-world and experiences of potential participants (Snow and Benford 1988:205). They term these processes "frameresonance."Benford also remarksupon the
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"variationacross a movementwith regardto its activists' networksand experiences";these variations,he suggests, "can yield divergent views as ... types of framings will resonate or stimulate participation"(Benford 1993:692). We concur with the call to attendto the importanceof frame resonance (e.g., Williams and Kubal 1999). However, to understandhow ideology authenticallyresonates across a spectrum of potential users requires a theory, not of social-movement organizationsand their leaders as spokespersons, but of the interpretivepractices of participants and how these practices may act as a resource to mobilize them. Joan Scott writes that by examining language, we may ascertain the ways in "which and people established,interpreted, actedon theirplace in relationto others"(Scott 1988:59). Scott is suggesting an analysis from the point of view of those who, in theircircumstances, interpretideology, not one from the perspectiveof those who hold positions of authorityin movement organizations.We followed Scott's suggestion by providing a sociolinguistic analysis of the relationship between a worldview and the ways in which it is used in practice to create ideologies according to movement participants'use of language. It is within this analytic context suggested by Scott, we found, that ideological language has the power to appeal to diverse populationscohering a variety of perspectives into a movement ratherthan unifying perspectives in order to do so. Ideology's conceptual strength, how groups of persons expressing a variety therefore,resides in its capacity to understand of ideas-sometimes contradictoryones-are mobilized into a single movement. We discovered thatactivists are multivocal. Conceiving movementparticipantsas univocally expressing only the formal ideology of the movement organizationserves the analyst well, because it providesfor the unity of activists'beliefs and actions amongthemselves and between participantactivists and the movement's organization.However, such a view runs the risk of portrayingactivists as consensual and passive, limiting their agency to accepting the organization'sformal ideology as its leaders express it, the elite bias often found in the literature(e.g., Benford 1997; Williams and Blackburn 1996; Williams and Kubal 1999). Despite the analytic difficulties participants'multivocality may create for social-movement analyses, it is appropriateto envision participants'diverse ideological constructionsas expressions in their own voices. In our theoreticaland empirical analyses, we centeredcultural,structural,and immediate experiential circumstancesin relation to the constructionof ideological expressions. We illustratedhow ideology is fashioned so that it resonates authenticallyfor its users. In order to achieve these goals, we formulatedthe interpretivecharacterof social life as a "double hermeneutic"(Giddens 1984:xxxv, 284) involving the simultaneous interpretation of language, interests, experiences, and structuraland culturalcircumstancesthat are themselves interpretationsof a cultural worldview. This interpretivework creates resonance between a larger cultural worldview and the practices of living in particularized ideological versions of the social world. Throughout,we have attemptedto demonstrate that language and verbal communicationare sociological processes, and that "meaningis 'socially situated'-deriving from the particularcircumstances of the interaction-and are individualcontributions not meaningfulapartfromthatsituation"(Krauss2001:16164). of we have contributedto an understanding the culturalprocesses of interpretation Thus, and to the mobilization of participationin social movements specifically. generally, REFERENCES
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Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies Author(s): Gerald M.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION Some Troubles an AutonomousConception of Ideology for

IDEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT MOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

IDEOLOGICALLANGUAGEAND SOCIAL MOVEMENTMOBILIZATION

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