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# On membership categorization: ‘us’, ‘them’ and ‘doing violence’ in political discourse

## Details

**Authors** Leudar et al.

**Year** 2004

**Publisher** Discourse & Society

**Discipline** Sociology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926504041019) 
10.1177/0957926504041019

## In authors' words

### Abstract

This article concerns the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001. We use Membership Categorization Analysis to establish how the key figures involved in the conflict represented these events and the participants in them. We analyse public addresses made soon after the attacks by the US President George W. Bush, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda. Each speaker distinguished ‘us’ from ‘them’ and formulated this distinction so as to justify past violent actions and to prepare grounds for future ones. Bush and Blair both distinguished ‘us’ from ‘them’ in social, political and moral terms, whereas bin Laden did so in religious terms. The categorizations were not done in isolation from each other, but were instead networked. We discuss the relation between membership categorizations, presentations of happenings and violent actions, prior and subsequent and we extend our concept of a ‘dialogical network’.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

How does the identification of outgroups and ingroups in political discourse affect the meaning of the speech and the subsequently formed mental models?

### What they found (results)

Just as a lack of awareness (metacognition) about the distinctions one makes can lead to unintentional marginalization of groups, the act of distinction making can also be used to purposefully marginalize others.This can happen subtly and explicitly. Creating marginalization can come from an awareness of one’s own Distinction-making or that of others. It requires one to take a Perspective other than their own to determine the in and out group distinction for one’s self or for others. This is the basis for manipulation, agendas, and conflict.

## Commentary

### In short

The elemental patterns of Distinctions (identity-other) are powerful on their own, but as this paper demonstrates, combining the patterns together can be essential to ensuring that one doesn’t use their newfound metacognition for manipulating others or themselves.

### In more detail

Let’s look at these ideas in a real-world context. After the September 11th attacks, Leudar et al 2004 reviewed the speeches made immediately afterwards by President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. They analyzed the language and content of those speeches that showed that each leader quickly made “us” vs “them” Distinctions, to justify violent actions against the “other” group. For example, the first five lines of US President George W. Bush’s statement after the 9/11 terrorist attacks make some critical distinctions:

President Bush uses the pronoun “our” in his first sentence, which implies that there must also be a “them” to his “our.” For every identity implies an other. Furthermore, in his use of “our”, he refers to the victims he lists, and to the nation as a whole. His use of “our way of life” and “our very freedom” resonate with ideals that are important to Americans, that make up large portions of their identity. Leuder et al argue that President Bush’s implicit and explicit characterization of the “other” makes it possible to expand the construct of the enemy beyond merely terrorists to include more parts and a wider range of other things, such as people and ways of living.

They then related the 9/11 example to the concept of member categorization and the three ways to construct and change member categories. The first is through “changing the predicates normatively bound to a category (personal characteristics, dispositions to act in a particular way etc.)” The second is “by respecifying the incumbency of the category.” And the third is through “changing a collection into which the category is allocated.” They stressed that these three processes are not independent of each other, and doing one may require the adjustment of the others. Finally, they found that the creation of membership categories was related to action, and in concert with a particular purpose. Just as a lack of awareness (metacognition) about the distinctions one makes can lead to unintentional marginalization of groups, the act of distinction making can also be used to purposefully marginalize others.This can happen subtly and explicitly. Creating marginalization can come from an awareness of one’s own Distinction-making or that of others. It requires one to take a Perspective other than their own to determine the in and out group distinction for one’s self or for others. This is the basis for manipulation, agendas, and conflict. Thus, the elemental patterns of Distinctions (identity-other) are powerful on their own, but as this paper

**Patterns it shows** D

**How to cite this** Leudar et al. (2004). On membership categorization: ‘us’, ‘them’ and ‘doing violence’ in political discourse. Discourse & Society.