Anti-racist Text and Talk: A Critical Discourse Studies Approach to Black Feminism

Philip P.  Limerick

doi:10.31849/reila.v3i2.6797

Philip P. Limerick Centre College, Danville, KY. USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31849/reila.v3i2.6797

Keywords: Critical Discourse Studies, Black Feminism, anti-racism, discourse analysis, pragmatics

Abstract

While racist discourse has received much attention in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), there is a dearth of scholarship on the anti-racist text and talk. A critical observation is that the anti-racist movement, and hence, discourse, often exclude women. With the goal of contributing to this gap in the CDS literature, the current analysis examines Black women's discourses concerning anti-Black racism in general and Black Feminism in particular. Four YouTube videos that feature both conference talks and news programs surrounding the topic of Black Feminism are analysed for recurring themes using thematic analysis and discourse structures from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that the primary themes that emerged are the inclusion of Black women, Police brutality and unaccountability, and Black Feminism Defined, with various subthemes. In addition, the discourse structures examined are lexical choice, presupposition, pronominal choice, and the use of tag questions, among others. This study serves to further our understanding of the linguistic manifestation of ideologies through discourse concerning anti-racism and Black Feminism.

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Author Biography

Philip P. Limerick, Centre College, Danville, KY. USA

Philip P. Limerick is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Spanish program at Centre College, USA. His primary research interests are language variation and change, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, and pragmatics, and his current projects involve the analysis of structural variation in Spanish spoken in Georgia as well as the critical analysis of discourse and (anti-)racism in Latin America and the U.S.

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