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Conversational agreement and racial formation processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2009

VALENTINA PAGLIAI
VALENTINA PAGLIAI*
Affiliation:
Remarque Institute at New York University, 52 Washington Square South, Third Floor, New York, NY 10012, [email protected]
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Abstract

Recent scholarship on the working of racial formation processes underscores the intersection between discursive and structural components in the emergence of “race,” and the agency of individuals at the local and global level in articulating its meaning. This article offers a link toward understanding how racial formation processes operate in face-to-face interaction, by highlighting how people do racialization. Based on fieldwork in Italy, it explores how conversationalists deploy agreement to co-construct a racialized image of immigrants to Italy. It is argued that this deployment leads to reinforcement of the racist stances expressed in the conversation itself, and possibly beyond it. In addition, the repeated occurrence of agreement during the co-construction of utterances produces a spiral effect around racializing discourse, a progressive deepening of the racialization itself. At the same time, agreement leads to a decrease of personal responsibility for the statements made, which come to be co-constructed among conversationalists. (Agreement, racialization, immigration, Italy)

Type
Research Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 38 , Issue 5 , November 2009 , pp. 549 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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