Black Womanhood

Raciolinguistic Intersections of Gender, Sexuality & Social Status in the Aftermaths of Colonization

Bibliographic Data

ID9684792
AuthorsAris Moreno Clemons (0000-0001-9606-9333, corresponding author), Jessica A Grieser (0000-0003-1777-5243)
Year2023
Volume152
Issue3
Pages115-129
Publication date2023-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDaedalus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-5266 • E-ISSN: 1548-6192
PublisherMIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/daed_a_02021
OpenAlexW4386262102
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited16

In this essay, we highlight the colonial invention of oppositional and binary categories as a dominant form of social sorting and meaning-making in our society. We understand language as a tool for the construction, maintenance, and analysis of these categories. Through language, these categorizations often render those who sit at the margins illegible. We center the Black woman as the prototypical “other,” her condition being interpreted neither by conventions of race nor gender, and take Black womanhood as the point of departure for a description of the necessary intersecting and variable analyses of social life. We call for an exploration of social life that considers the raciolinguistic intersections of gender, sexuality, and social class as part and parcel of overarching social formations. In this way, we can advocate for a shift in linguistics and in all social sciences that accounts for the mutability of category. We argue that a raciolinguistic perspective allows for a more nuanced investigation of the compounding intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social status that often function to erase Black womanhood

Human sexuality · Meaning (existential · Race (biology · Social constructionism · Social science · Social status · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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Open DOIOpen Access