Paper Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Virtue Signaling and the Linguistic Repertoire of Anti‐Blackness, or "I Would Have Voted for Obama for a Third Term"

Fri, April 22, 2:30 to 4:00pm PDT (2:30 to 4:00pm PDT), San Diego Convention Center, Exhibit Hall B

Abstract

Increasing commodification of progressive language in public discourse over the past four decades has resulted in users’ indexical alignment with anti‐racist politics becoming unmoored from expectations of legitimate action toward dismantling white supremacy. In this essay, we describe how this process is enacted through virtue signaling—highlighting one’s morality through the use of language and other signs that invoke progressive sociopolitical values—and the ways it mobilizes the linguistic repertoire of anti‐Blackness. Theorizing this behavior provides a framework to locate and confront the mechanisms that maintain white supremacy and the actors who align themselves with it.

Authors