Black Lives Matter: Race Discourse and the Semiotics of History Reconstruction

Authors

  • Oksana Victorivna Borysovych Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Law School, Department of Foreign Languages
  • Tetyana Andriivna Chaiuk Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology
  • Kateryna Sergiivna Karpova Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7596/taksad.v9i3.2768

Keywords:

Black Lives Matter, racism, semiotics, message, communicative strategy, national narrative, critical discourse analysis

Abstract

The death of unarmed black male George Floyd, who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, May 25, 2020, has given momentum to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement whose activists rallied in different parts of the world to remove or deface monuments to historic figures associated with racism, slavery, and colonialism. These social practices of toppling statues have a discursive value and, since they are meant to communicate a message to the broader society, these actions are incorporated into a semiotic system. This study examines signs and, therefore, the system of representations involved in toppling statues performed by BLM activists and documented in photos. The research employs a critical approach to semiotics based on Roland Barthes’ (1964) semiotic model of levels of signification. However, for a comprehensive analytical understanding, the study also makes use of a multidisciplinary Critical Discourse Analysis CDA approach which provides a systematic method to examine and expose power relations, inequality, dominance, and oppression in social practices. Besides its general analytical framework, the integrated CDA approach combines Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional analytical approach, which presupposes examining text, discursive practice, and sociocultural practice, with Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001, 2017) Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA), which investigates ideology and racism within their socio-cultural and historic context. The analysis of the images reveals a common thematic structure and encoded messages produced in order to change the cultural and social norms of the USA national discourse generated and cultivated within a specific ideological and historical context. These social actions consist of signs that make up a coherent communicative system which provides BLM activists with instruments in the struggle over the memory of slavery, white supremacy and oppression of the past for the rights of the black minority in the present in a better society of racial equality, human rights, and liberation.

Author Biographies

Oksana Victorivna Borysovych, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Law School, Department of Foreign Languages

PhD in Philology,Assistant professor, 

Law School,

Department of Foreign Languages

Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor

Tetyana Andriivna Chaiuk, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology

Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology

Ph.D. in Philology, Assisstant Professor

Kateryna Sergiivna Karpova, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology

Department of English Philology and Cross-cultural Communication, Institute of Philology

Ph.D. in Philology,  Associate Professor

References

Albadry, W. (2020). Opinion: Let’s topple statues to decolonize. DW. Retrieved from: https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-lets-topple-statues-to-decolonize/a-53840540

Baptist, E. E. (2016). The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism. New York: Basic Books

Barthes, R (1977). Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press.

Barthes, R. (1964). Elements of Semiology. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. London, UK: Macmillan.

Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611-639. doi:10.2307/223459.

Berger, A. A. (2012). Media Analysis Techniques. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

Black lives Matter. (n.d.). About. Retrieved July 9, 2020, from https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

Bracelli, P. (2020). Black Lives Matter, what statues have been removed and why. Retrieved: from https://www.lifegate.com/black-lives-matter-statues

Carson, C. (1995). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press.

Chafe, W. H. (1980). Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom. Oxford University Press

Chalmers, D. (1981). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Durham: Duke University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv123x702

Chandler, D. (2017). Semiotics. New York: Routledge

Cheung, H. (2020). George Floyd death: Why US protests are so powerful this time. BBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52969905

De Saussure, F. (2011 [1916]). Course in General Linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (2017). Black Reconstruction in America: toward a history of the part of which Black folk played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315147413

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003002004

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.) Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 121-139). London: SAGE.

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997) Critical Discourse Analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 258-284). London: Sage.

Fanon, F. (2008 [1952]). Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press.

Fishman, D. A. (1999). ValuJet Flight 592: Crisis communication theory blended and extended. Communication Quarterly, 47(4), 345-375.

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Harper & Row.

Fowler, R., Hodge, R., Kress, G., & Trew, T. (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Fredrickson, G. M. (1982). White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History. Oxford University Press

Gamson, W. A. (1992). Talking politics. Cambridge University Press.

Grovier, K. (2020). Black Lives Matter protests: Why are statues so powerful? BBC. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200612-black-lives-matter-protests-why-are-statues-so-powerful

Hall, S. (1985). Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the poststructuralist debates. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2 (2), 91-114.

Hall, S. (1996). Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Routledge.

Hall, S. (1996). Cultural identity and cinematic representation. In H.A.Baker, M.Diawara, & R.H.Lindeborg (Eds.) Black British cultural studies: A reader (pp.210-222). University of Chicago Press Books.

Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (Vol. 2). London: SAGE.

Harris, F. C. (2015). The Next Civil Rights Movement? Dissent, 62(3), 34-40

Haynes, S. (2020). Monuments of Slave Traders, Genociders and Imperialists Are Becoming Flashpoints in Global Anti-Racism Protests. Time.com. Retrieved from: https://time.com/5850135/edward-colston-statue-slave-trader-protests/

Hodge, R., & Kress, G. (1988). Social semiotics. Cambridge: Polity.

Iconoclasm. (n.d.). in Lexico.com dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/definition/iconoclasm

Jhally, S. (1997). Stuart Hall - race, the floating signifier. [Video Transcript]. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-Hall-Race-the-Floating-Signifier-Transcript.pdf

Kertzer, D. I. (1988). Ritual, Politics, Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lederer, J. (2013). Anchor baby: A conceptual explanation for pejoration. Journal of Pragmatics, 57, 248-266.

Levy, P. B. (1992). Let Freedom Ring: A Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. New York: Praeger

Levy, P. B. (1998). The Civil Rights Movement. New York: Greenwood Press

Matthews, D. (2015). 9 reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel, why do we even celebrate Columbus Day? Retrieved from: https://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6957875/christopher-columbus-murderer-tyrant-scoundrel

McGregor, S. L. (2004). Critical Discourse Analysis - A Primer. Retrieved from https://www.kon.org/archives/forum/15-1/mcgregorcda.html

Mcilwain, C. (2007). Race, pigskin, and politics: A semiotic analysis of racial images in political advertising. Semiotica, p. 169-191. Doi: 10.1515/SEM.2007.075.

Meyer, M. (2001). Between theory, method and politics: positioning of the approaches to CDA. In: R. Wodak, & M. Meyer (Eds.) Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 14-31). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857028020.d4

New World Encyclopedia.org. (n. d.) Iconoclasm. Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Iconoclasm

Parkes, P. (2020). Who was Edward Colston and why is Bristol divided by his legacy? BBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-42404825

Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2001). Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetoric of Racism and Antisemitism. London, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203993712

Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2017). The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). In J.Flowerdew, & J.E.Richardson (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp.44-59). London: Routledge.

Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-historical approach. In R.Wodak, & M. Meyer (Eds.) Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp.87–121). London: Sage.

Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1988). Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. International social movement research, 1(1), 197-217.

Strauss, S., & Feiz, P. (2014). Discourse analysis: Putting our worlds into words. New York: Routledge.

Sugrue, T. J. (2009). Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House

Tharoor, I. (2020). The protests spark a growing battle over history. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/12/protests-statues-world-churchill/

Thornton, R. (1987). American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press

Traverso, E. (2020). Tearing Down Statues Doesn’t Erase History, It Makes Us See It More Clearly. Retrieved from https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/statues-removal-antiracism-columbus?

Utley, R. M., & Washburn, W. E. (2002). Indian Wars. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse & Society, 4 (2), 249-283.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Opinions and ideologies in the press. In A. Bell, & P. Garrett (Eds.) Paper Round Table on Media Discourse. Approaches to Media Discourse (pp. 21-63). Oxford: Blackwell.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1996). Discourse, Power and Access. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard, & M. Coulthard (Eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 84-104). London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2003). The discourse-knowledge interface. In G.Weiss, & R.Wodak (Eds.) Critical Discourse Analysis (pp.85-109). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wilson, J. J. (2013). Civil Rights Movement. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.

Wodak, R. (2009). The semiotics of racism: A critical discourse-historical analysis. Doi: 10.1075/z.148.29wo.

Wodak, R. (2013). Critical discourse analysis. Los Angeles: Sage.

X, M., & Farmer J. (1971 [1962]). Separation and Integration Dialogue. In A. Meier, E. Rudwick, & F.L. Broderick (Eds.) Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (pp.245-246). New York: MacMillan.

Yenne, B. (2006). Indian Wars: The Campaign for the American West. Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing.

Downloads

Published

2020-09-28

How to Cite

Borysovych, O. V., Chaiuk, T. A., & Karpova, K. S. (2020). Black Lives Matter: Race Discourse and the Semiotics of History Reconstruction. Journal of History Culture and Art Research, 9(3), 325-340. https://doi.org/10.7596/taksad.v9i3.2768