This study examines how Latina/o students perceive and frame experiences of prejudice against them in the classroom through narratives told in informal interviews in Spanish. This project started as an inquiry about these students’ general perceptions and experiences in their Advanced Spanish-language classes and how these compared to their experiences in other classes on campus. Narratives are essential to understanding how speakers perceive and evaluate the experiences narrated and how they position themselves in relation to their group as well as to outsiders. The results show that, in most cases, when recounting narratives of discrimination or situations that can be considered instances of prejudice, students were hesitant to recognize that they were the subjects of discrimination or to qualify the story as an occurrence of racism. Different strategies were used to avoid this recognition, including assigning others the role of recognizing the situation as discriminatory and also using narrative evaluations or introductions to justify or mitigate the reasons that motivated these incidents. Discourses of prejudice and racism denial have been broadly documented, yet most studies focus on those who deny being racist themselves or being part of a racist group. This study shows how the underrepresented group might incorporate these discourses of denial and also how their discourses support or, at least, do not challenge the ideologies of majority groups about race, language, and immigration.
In the United States, ‘Latinas’ is an ethnic category that includes a very diverse population. Since second- and third-generation Latinxs tend to be Englishdominant speakers, it is common to see publications in English that target this group. This study analyses how one of these publications, a beauty magazine for Latinas, uses different linguistic devices in their interviews and beauty advice columns to create a racially/ethnically homogeneous image of this community. My analysis focuses on this publication’s articles about hair, with particular attention to metaphors, the use of Spanish, and the indexicality of the term Latina itself. It shows that while characteristics of, and stereotypes about, Latinas are praised and celebrated, the advice offered contains instructions to regulate the Latina body to conform to beauty norms that are more valued in the United States, those associated with White women. Also, my analysis shows how this publication establishes different levels of Latinidad (Latinity) in which being too Latina represents traditional and primitive values that seem to be part of these Latinas’ imagined community’s heritage but not their own. I argue that these advice articles are intended to discursively create a Latina body acceptable to mainstream America; that while attempting to create a homogeneous image of Latinas, the publication paints a picture of tolerance toward Latinas that many of them do not experience; and that the articles do not take into account racial, social, ethnic and sexual differences among Latinas. I show how instead this publication seeks to regulate the Latina body and establish which Latinas’ social and cultural practices are acceptable for White America, so that they do not disrupt the predominant social order.
Metaphors about love in online dating advertisements might seem to be an easy and inconsequential way to express people’s romantic expectations. Using Critical Metaphor Analysis methodology, this paper takes a closer look at a sample of love metaphors used by Spanish-speaking heterosexual ad posters, to show how they use the metaphors to create a discourse of traditional romance in a modern medium, the online dating world. These metaphors are powerful tools for conveying traditional ideologies about romance and relationships. Additionally, they provide ad posters with a useful rhetorical tool for portraying themselves as ideal romantic partners, ‘regular’ and/or ‘normal’ heterosexuals, who play according to the regulatory norms of their gender, allowing them to ‘sell’ themselves as better candidates for romance.
Gender performativity theory considers that gender is not a natural consequence of people’s bodies, but a series of repeated acts regulated by social constraints that one performs to create a natural, usually heterosexual, being. Through the analysis of the conceptual metaphor
The construction of gender and race are constantly negotiated by community members, and both categories affect the way speakers see themselves and others. By analysing a Latina student’s narrative, this study explores how she articulates through the use of several indexical processes, not only her own identity but also her friend’s, in order to explain how their classmates perceive them. In this narrative, the speaker explains how different levels of femininity, ‘girly American’ versus ‘girly Latina’, affect the way Latinas are perceived and, in some cases, treated in discriminatory ways. This analysis finds that her articulation of different levels of femininity, and her arguments about how different stereotypes associated with Latinas may cause discrimination, shows how the construction of gender and race are interrelated and fluid, and how there are certain performances of gender more acceptable than others even within the heterosexual norm. This analysis shows how language practices are fundamental to create and circulate ideologies about gender and ethnicity, and how essential it is to understand these practices in order to recognise and challenge the discrimination faced by minority groups in the United States, especially women of colour.
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