Racialised Voices of Maghrebi-French Women in Films

Making Race (in)Visible and (in)Audible

Authors

  • Gaëlle Planchenault Simon Fraser University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.18490

Keywords:

media discourse, racialised performance, covert racialisation, discrimination to social accents and race, intersectionality, Maghrebi-French women in films

Abstract

Performances in the media (Bell and Gibson 2011; Bucholtz and Lopez 2011) are rich multimodal resources, which enable the analyst to look into the social practice of language ideologies and highlight discursive strategies that contribute to unequal power relations in society. This article examines the overt and covert racialisation of Maghrebi-French female voices in French films. After analysing the discursive patterns associated with migrant women of first and second generations (mothers and daughters), it brings to the forefront the processes by which their voices are marked, arguing that they perpetuate discriminatory discourses of gender and race. It finally considers the dynamics between the erasure/racialisation of ethnic voices in films and politics of recognition in society (Fraser 2001).

Author Biography

  • Gaëlle Planchenault, Simon Fraser University

    Gaëlle Planchenault is an associate professor in French Linguistics and Culture at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her research examines linguistic practices in films, the ideologies that underpin them, as well as their roles in sustaining prejudices towards ethnic and minority groups. She has published in international journals in English (Multilingua, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Journal of Politeness Research, Quarterly Review of Film and Video) and in French (Glottopol, Semen, Mots: Les langages du politique). Her book, Voices in the Media: Performing French Linguistic Otherness
    (2015, Bloomsbury) focuses on the performances of social, ethnic and gendered voices in French and American films.

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Published

2020-10-24

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Planchenault, G. (2020). Racialised Voices of Maghrebi-French Women in Films: Making Race (in)Visible and (in)Audible. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 4(2), 197–222. https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.18490