Language and Race: Constructing the Self and Imagining the Other in the United States and Beyond

“No, no, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk! You don't say "affirmative" or some crap like that. You say "no problemo.” […] And if you want to shine them on, it's “hasta la vista, baby.”

In this famous exchange from the 1991 blockbuster, Terminator 2, the young hero of the film was teaching his cyborg friend (Arnold Schwarzenegger) how to speak like a “real person.” These famous lines epitomize what has become the rather common conversational practice of interspersing English with Spanish (or Spanish-sounding words). In a similar fashion, the rising celebrity of hip-hop culture among US urban youth contributed to popularize linguistic practices that were once considered to be a prerogative of the African American speech community. Standard American English has gradually incorporated lexical items and expressions traditionally belonging to linguistic minorities. But what is the semiotic and cultural logic underlying these habits? What are the implications of these conversational practices for the reproduction of certain cultural representations of historically Spanish-speaking populations in the United States? How does the appropriation of African American English into vernacular English by white, upper-middle-class American teenagers partake in the production of certain forms of youth identities? How can we interpret these forms of cultural mimicry and appropriation? How does language operate as an index of distance, solidarity, and power among social groups? How do social actors use language to craft a racialized representation of individual and collective “selves” in colonial and postcolonial contexts? This course explores the varied and sometimes surprising interconnections between language and race. The aim will be to show how language is a primary locus for the production of stereotypes, the performance of identity, the presentation of the self, and the reproduction (or the challenge) of social inequalities. We will scrutinize the role of linguistic ideologies in the colonial encounter, explore the interplay between language and the construction of hegemonic power, and examine the connection between communicative practices and the reproduction of racial discourse and racial stereotypes. Moving away from the idea that racism is a phenomenon of the past or a prerogative of conservatives and uneducated others, this course constitutes a reading (and, hopefully, an experiential) journey through the interplay between language and race.