Journal
DISCOURSE & SOCIETY
Volume 23, Issue 4, Pages 359-376Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0957926512441106
Keywords
Anti-racism; book group talk; common sense; discourse analysis; ethnomethodology; reported speech; the racist 'other'
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Funding
- Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/E508812/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- AHRC [AH/E508812/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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This article explores the rhetorical accomplishment by British book group members of anti-racist identities through their discussions of fictional texts in exploring themes of race and immigration. 'Common-sense anti-racism' is a social action or stance that is presented as self-evidently taken by speakers, yet explicitly flagged at the same time. Speakers in book group discussions routinely display enlightened, anti-racist views, principally by invoking the figure of the 'racist other' and their reported speech. Many of the examples of reported speech do not involve explicit markers of quotation or shifts in footing, meaning that the attribution of certain utterances to a racist 'other' relies on an assumption of shared values. The article questions why anti-racism tends to be packaged as an accountable matter in need of some impression management in the way that racism often is, and concludes that this is linked to the way in which it operates in contexts where anxieties around issues of race and racism continue to exist.
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