Nikos Bozatzis

Accounts from a range of disciplines across the social sciences have described an essential ambivalence in modern Greek national identity. Modern Greek national identity is shown to encompass an ideological tension between oriental and occidental cultural stereotypes. Critical ethnographers have described the ways in which this symbolic ambivalence is casually reproduced within everyday discourse in Greece. Recent developments in critical social psychology also draw attention to the ideological dilemmas manifested within lay argumentative practices. Moreover, the discursive turn within social psychology offers a range of analytic concepts and tools for disentangling the identity work accomplished within talk in interaction. Drawing upon evidence from ethnographic analyses, the present research offers a social psychological account of the rhetorical reiteration of the ideological ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk. To that end, two empirical studies were conducted. The first involved Greek students in Lancaster University and the second Greek employees in the European Commission in Brussels. In both studies, the research participants were asked to account for their living experiences in their adopted countries of residence. Their accounts were audio recorded and excerpts of their talk discourse analysed. The analyses highlighted the flexible discursive uses of cultural stereotypes of modern Greek national identity. It is shown that the rhetorical deployment of these stereotypes is designed to ward off negative identity inferences about the speakers. In particular, the identity inferences sought to be disavowed are the one of prejudice (as xenophobia) and the one of xenomania. The latter refers to a culturally specific ideological charge within the context of modern Greece, which targets unwarranted pro-Western attitudes. Overall, the analyses conducted highlight the reiteration of the cultural ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk and outline the grounds for a convergence of ethnographic arguments about the symbolic uses of stereotypes with social psychological arguments about their interactional uses.

In this article we illustrate how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic authority within systemic family therapy training. Adult education principles and postmodern imperatives have challenged trainers’ and trainees’ asymmetries regarding knowledge (epistemics) and power (deontics), normatively implicated by the institutional training setting. Up-to-date, we lack insight into how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic rights in naturally occurring dialog within training. Drawing from discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we present an analysis of eight transcribed, videotaped training seminars from a systemic family therapy training program, featuring three trainers and eleven trainees. Our analysis highlights the dilemmatic ways in which participants resist and affirm the normatively implicated trainers’ deontic and epistemic authority. Trainers are shown as mitigating directives and trainees as resisting them, with both displaying (not)kno...

Online excessive gaming has been associated with negative player identity constructions depicting an abnormal life-style. Up-to-date, there is limited insight into player identity management talk about excessive online gaming. To address this gap, drawing from discursive and rhetorical psychology, we investigated naturally occurring talk of 134 players of World of Warcraft (WoW) -a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)- from three publicly available websites and of five players from one focus group. The analysis illuminated participants’ dilemmatic and contradictory ways of constructing the player identity, while displaying immersion in the game. Participants invoke identity constructions like ‘nolifer’, ‘hardcore’ or ‘clean’ player, which they disavow or assign to themselves and to each other depending on the conversational context, while attending to concerns about (ab)normalcy. The study’s findings highlight a dynamic process of player identity construction in t...

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and ...

In the wake of Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on ‘the Greek crisis’, published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a ‘culturalist’ explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally...

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and ...

ABSTRACT Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnography, this article explores ways in which explicit and/or implicit assumptions about the West and Western self are implicated, in their conversational mobilization, to ...

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and ...

abstract In the wake of Billig's thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on 'the Greek crisis', published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a 'culturalist' explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally, while at the same time, manages its own accountability and (reaffirms ms its Occidental credentials.

Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnography, this paper explores ways in which explicit and / or implicit assumptions about the West and western self are implicated, in their conversational mobilization, to accountability management. The data analysed come from a study in Western Thrace (Greece), which included interviews and focus group with majority Greek educators about the Muslim minority historically residing in the region. The analysis presented employs tools from critical discursive social psychology. Building upon discourse analytic treatments within social psychology on the mobilization of national categories and accountability management in talk, it is argued that the banal indexicalisation of national categories in talk opens the space for a critical interrogation of the banal indexicalisation of an occidentalist cultural imagery that posits a hierarchical distinction between cultures of the West and the Rest.