The paper deals with cognitive interview, a method for pre-testing survey questions that is used in pilot testing to develop new measures and/or adapt ones in foreign languages. The aim is to explore the usefulness of the method by looking at two questionnaires measuring anti-Roma prejudice. The first, the Stereotype Content Model, contains questions that are dominantly used to test two dimensions of social perceptions of various groups: warmth and competence. The second, Interventions for Reducing Prejudice against Stigmatized Minorities consists (...) of the items most frequently used in contact research to measure attitudes, social distance, anxiety, trust and behavioural intentions towards outgroups. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were held on both questionnaires to verbally evaluate participants’ understanding and/or interpretation of the draft questions. The first round was attended by university students, while the second round was done with high school students, as they are the target group for planned interventions based on the contact paradigm. The paper explains the problems/difficulties the participants had answering some of the questions and our attempts at improving the questionnaires. The problems can be grouped around six issues: The first two deal with the strategies participants used to answer our questions – whom exactly did they have in mind when answering the questionnaires and whose viewpoint did they represent in their answers. The next four problems are around nuances in the formulations of our questions and generally have to do with how the participants interpreted our questions – they concern assumptions that distinct items were logically interconnected, the period of time and locality referred to in our questions, translation and transferability of meanings from one language to another and double negation. (shrink)

In this article we present a qualitative analysis of empirical findings from an international project on intergroup attitudes and contact in five Central European countries specifically concerning language use. The project concentrated on the interplay of intergroup contact and perception between the members of national groups in the borderlands between the Czech Republic and Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. The open statements analysed here about the contact situations and the ensuing evaluation of the Others were collected as part of an (...) online questionnaire. After a short theoretical introduction we reveal the intertwined nature of construing language use: first in each specific borderland, then in the triads speaking together either in the native language of one of the groups or with each speaking their own native languages. Finally we highlight several effects we have observed as a result of being able to compare the situation in more than one neighbourhood, for instance, the effect of the different statuses of the languages involved, or the connection between the language used in contact and a feeling of proximity. (shrink)

Respondents from Austria and the Czech Republic noted down their experiences with people from their neighbouring country and their attitudes to their own country and the neighbouring nation on feeling thermometers. The quantitative content analysis and qualitative critical discourse-inspired analysis of the open statements focused on the role of language in the construction of Czech-Austrian relations. Using qualitative analysis we enquired as to which themes were intertwined with the topic of language, and as to the ways in which the participants (...) perceived themselves, the Others, behind the border, and the relations between the two sides. We looked not only into what participants said but also how they said it. Using statistical analysis we tested the link between language-related topics in the descriptions of intergroup contact and the evaluation of the neighbouring nation as a whole. Throughout the article we compare the findings obtained by the two kinds of analysis and comment on agreement as well as on the advantages of both approaches. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the relations between cross-border mobility, national categorization and intergroup relations in a changing Europe. It focuses on young adults commuting on a regular basis between the city of Bratislava and the city of Vienna. Our study draws on the social identity perspective, however, we consider social identity as a discourse of belonging, similarity and difference, which is continually negotiated within a given social context. Semi-structured qualitative interviews, focus groups and drawings of the border area were (...) used as research instruments. We have identified different types of experience in various subgroups of participants framed by age at the time of arrival in Austria; different mobility motivations and goals; interaction setting; the political and economic situation in Slovakia at the time of arrival to Austria linked to perceived status differences. On the individual level, the motivation to integrate or its lack seems to be a crucial element in the ingroup construction and perception of intergroup relations. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present empirical findings about language use and attitudes in intergroup contact from one of the European borderlands along the former Iron Curtain more than twenty years after it fell. The data was collected as part of an international research project Intergroup attitudes and intergroup contact in five Central European countries, which concentrates on the interplay of intergroup contact and perceptions between members of neighbouring nations in the border regions of the Czech Republic and (...) each of the neighbouring states—Slovakia, Poland, Austria and Germany. The main data collection method used is an online questionnaire with different attitude and evaluation scales, as well as a feeling thermometer of emotional relations and open statements. In this text I use thematic and basic critical discursive analysis only on the open statements from the Czech and German borderlands about the situations of contact and the following evaluation of the Others. I show how the linguistic competence and also the interest in the language of the Other are distributed very unevenly; the implicit norm almost always being that the Czechs should speak German. Of course, this situation has in some cases strong emotional consequences. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with monumental art in Slovakia before and after the fall of Communism in 1989. Generally, art in public spaces is important, because it influences the knowledge and feelings the people who use this space have about the past and the present, and thus influences the shared social construction of who we are as a social group. In this article we concentrate on the period of Communism and the formal and iconographic aspects that were essential to art (...) at that time. We also look at the political use of art—the ways in which explicit and implicit meanings and ideas were communicated through art to the general public. We touch also on the present situation regarding the perception of “Communist art”. In the final section we discuss the state of affairs of the last twenty years of chaotic freedom in the post-socialist era. On the one hand, since there is no real cultural politics or conception for artworks in public spaces at the level of the state many artworks simply disappear, often without public discussion, and on the other hand, some actors use their political power to build monuments that promote their private political views. (shrink)

This paper is partly a theoretical and analytical exploration of different ways to do research about stereotypes and prejudice, and partly a confessional tale of my journey. It is a journey that has been about looking for a meaningful and useful way of approaching empirical material collected in different research projects over more than 15 years, in an attempt to say something about how ordinary social actors talk (and possibly think) about prejudice and stereotypes. There is an immense volume of (...) social psychological writing on this topic, and from that I discuss in detail several new(ish) discursive, critical and constructional approaches and the (im)possibility of applying them to my empirical material. (shrink)

Freedom of Religion, Institution of Conscientious Objection and Political Practice in Post-Communist Slovakia1 The example of Slovakia is used to show how one of the post-socialist countries failed in fulfilling the demanding task of securing freedom of religious belief and, at the same time, securing all other human rights. An analysis of the methods used for changing the policies of pluralism and neutrality of the state into a policy of discrimination was carried out, followed by an analysis of a mechanism (...) used for guaranteeing freedom of conscience of the members of the Catholic Church. The treaty violates the prohibition of discrimination against women, because it makes it more difficult for them to have access to some health care services. Our hypothesis states that the hurriedly introduced right to conscientious objection is misused in this context as a means of regulating the politics of reproduction. In general, the re-Catholisation of the Slovak Republic follows two aims—to help in the fight for votes in the elections, and to improve demographic development in the Slovak Republic, through hindering free access to abortions. (shrink)