Discursive Approaches to Race and Racism

Abstract

SummaryIn the wake of what has been called the "discursive turn" or "linguistic turn" in the social sciences, research at the intersection of language and communication and race and racism shifted from being largely dominated by quantitative and experimental methods to include qualitative and particularly discursive approaches. While the term "discursive" potentially encompasses a wide range of modes of discourse analysis, discursive approaches share in common a focus on language use as social action, and as a constitutive feature of actions, events and situations, rather than as merely a passive means of describing or transmitting information about them.When applied to the study of race and racism, such approaches have examined ways in which language functions to construct, maintain and legitimate as well as subvert or resist racial and/or racist ideologies and social structures.Research in these areas has made use of a range of empirical materials, including "elite" texts and talk (media texts, parliamentary debates, academic texts, etc.), individual interviews, focus groups and group discussions, "naturally occurring" talk-in-interaction from conversational and institutional settings, and text-based online interactions. Although these different data types should not be seen as strictly mutually exclusive, each of them serves to foreground particular features of racial or racist discourse(s), thus facilitating or constraining particular sorts of discourse analytic findings. Thus, different data sources respectively tend to foreground ideological features of racial discourse(s) and their intersection with power and domination, 2 including examination of "new" racisms and the production and management of accusations and denials of racism; discursive processes involved in the construction and uses of racial subjectivities and identities; interactional processes through which prejudice and racism are constructed and contested; and the everyday interactional reproduction of systems of racial categories, independently of whether the talk in which they occur can or should be considered "racist".

Race and racism

“…However, analysing talk of racism is beset with difficulties because speakers generally do not make explicit issues of race, ethnicity, or prejudice (Augoustinos & Every, 2007a). Researchers then employ distinct discourse analytic techniques to examine prejudice, which implicate various positions on the relations between discourse and social phenomena (Whitehead, 2017). Broadly, one set of discourse analytic studies that are critical in their focus proceeds with a prior definition or conceptualisation of prejudice or racism.…”

The affective logic of race: A cultural psychological analysis of racial signifying practices

“…Ever since what has been called the “discursive turn” in the social sciences, sociopsychological research on race shifted from being largely dominated by quantitative and experimental methods to include qualitative and particularly discursive approaches (Whitehead, 2017). As pointed out by Whitehead (2017), discursive approaches to race generally share a focus on language as a vehicle for social practices and actions and on how it functions to construct, maintain, and legitimate (as well as subvert or resist) racial and/or racist ideologies and social structures. Accordingly, race has been often understood as the result of a set of discursive practices from which racial meanings are produced, thus resulting in the non-discursive fields (actions, explicit or implicit behaviors, etc.)…”

‘I have not witnessed it personally myself, but…’: Epistemics in managing talk on racism against immigrants in Ireland

“…However, analysing talk of racism is beset with difficulties because speakers generally do not make explicit issues of race, ethnicity, or prejudice (Augoustinos & Every, ). Researchers then employ distinct discourse analytic techniques to examine prejudice, which implicate various positions on the relations between discourse and social phenomena (Whitehead, ). Broadly, one set of discourse analytic studies that are critical in their focus proceeds with a prior definition or conceptualisation of prejudice or racism.…”