ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the categories of a model for analysis that has proven especially useful in the study of discourses of racism. When ‘functionalized’, social actors are categorized in terms of their occupation or social activity, such as ‘immigrant’, ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘community leader’. When social actors are classified, their identity is defined through how a given society or institution normally differentiates between classes of people. Relational identification represents social actors in terms of their personal or kinship relations, as in ‘aunt’, ‘brother’, and ‘a mother of four’. Physical identification represents social actors in terms of their physical characteristics, providing them with a unique identity. Aggregation is another important social actor category. The chapter discusses the visual application of social actor analysis, which demonstrates that representational strategies are also used in images that accompany media texts.
