Toward a Methodology of Critical Race Discourse Analysis

• In Event: Critical Race Theory: Methodological and Pedagogical Tools for Critical Race Theorists and Beyond

Abstract

On-campus fights between Black and Latina/o students at Thomas Jefferson High School during the spring of 2005 captured significant media attention in the immediate and even into 2007. With memories of those evening news reports and morning newspapers still in mind, the authors asked the following research question: how does the mainstream Los Angeles print media frame relations between Black and Latina/o students at South Central high schools? This inquiry allowed them to combine the theoretical lenses of CRT and LatCrit with that of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The resultant critical race discourse analysis generates another methodological tool that “interpret[s] the perspectives and voices of the narratives that remain unacknowledged, invalidated, and distorted” (Malagón, Perez Huber, & Vélez, 2009, p. 7) in mainstream written text.

The theoretical considerations of CRT view the events at Jefferson in a way that demands a contextualized understanding of the historical events, structures, and processes that underlie on-campus conflict, and rejects any oversimplified characterizations of the Black and Latina/o students at the center of the analysis. The L.A. Times articles frame Latina/o and Black youth with discursive practices that this paper identifies and evaluates. LatCrit, like CRT, is an analytical lens that affords the ability to make these assessments, while offering liberatory contestations where one-dimensional, deficit representations of students might prevail. Where CRT and LatCrit do consider framing, CDA adds a more extended meditation on framing and theoretical techniques for identifying such frames, especially in terms of the printed word. Teo (2000) states that “[d]iscourse, especially the sort that we encounter everyday, in an almost routine and hence unremarkable way, can change our perceptions and attitudes regarding people, places and events and therefore becomes a potentially powerful site for the dominance of minds” (p. 9). CDA enables the authors to uncover otherwise “common sense” frames and question their unequal underpinnings. Because “racism manifests itself discursively” (Wodak & Reisigl, 2003, p. 372), the authors interrogate the framing present in the L.A. Times by applying a critical race discourse analysis methodology.

Fourteen L.A. Times articles related to the on-campus fights at Jefferson High published between 2005 and 2007 constitute the materials under review. The authors first coded the articles using pre-established codes based on a literature review of Black-Latina/o historical relations in South Central Los Angeles. They also allowed themes to emerge from the articles themselves, thus resulting in a more grounded theory coding process. This paper reports a series of major themes evident in the L.A. Times. Some of these include the prevalence of violence within the story headlines and leads; the overuse of the word “Mexican”; and the characterization of Jefferson as an unsafe school in an unsafe community. The ultimate significance of this scholarship lies in the authors’ conclusion that critical race discourse analysis is a methodology worth exploring beyond this particular case, as this paper offers one distinct yet applicable example of the ways majoritarian frames can be identified, interrogated, and ultimately dismantled.

Authors

• Lluliana Alonso, University of California - Los Angeles

• Michaela J. López Mares-Tamayo, University of California - Los Angeles