Indexing whiteness: practices of categorization and racialization of social relations among Maroons in French Guiana
-
Isabelle Léglise
,
Clémence Léobal
Abstract
This article investigates racial/ethnic categorizations designating the majority in a minority language and their uses and meanings in everyday interactions to grasp the dynamics of racialization from the perspective of minoritized people. The investigation focuses on the varieties of the language called Businenge(e) Tongo locally or Eastern Maroon Creoles spoken by Maroon populations living in French Guiana and Suriname. We first examine the different terms used to refer to whiteness, such as bakaa, wetiman and poyte, from a historical perspective using historical documents before examining their uses in contemporary conversations. The analysis in the final part focuses on interactions at the hospital of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. The paper combines two approaches: the sociology of social relations and social approaches to language rooted in ethnography. The distinction between the three terms allows considering race as indexing power relations. Naming whiteness is thus a way of providing a critical perspective on the social order.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Raciolinguistic perspective on labor in the Americas
- Língua e raça no Brasil colonial
- Indexing whiteness: practices of categorization and racialization of social relations among Maroons in French Guiana
- Language, race and work in the Caribbean: a Bakhtinian approach
- Decommodifying Spanish-English bilingualism: aggrieved whiteness and the discursive contestation of language as human capital
- ¿Habilidad o identidad?: tensiones entre las ideologías neoliberales y las raciolingüísticas en el trabajo de los y las jóvenes bilingües de origen latino en EEUU
- International students and their raciolinguistic sensemaking of aural employability in Canadian universities
- Discussion
- Varia
- Positioning English as the international language during the Interamerican scientific integration: the role of multilingualism in defining the scope of a scientific journal in the mid-20th century
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Raciolinguistic perspective on labor in the Americas
- Língua e raça no Brasil colonial
- Indexing whiteness: practices of categorization and racialization of social relations among Maroons in French Guiana
- Language, race and work in the Caribbean: a Bakhtinian approach
- Decommodifying Spanish-English bilingualism: aggrieved whiteness and the discursive contestation of language as human capital
- ¿Habilidad o identidad?: tensiones entre las ideologías neoliberales y las raciolingüísticas en el trabajo de los y las jóvenes bilingües de origen latino en EEUU
- International students and their raciolinguistic sensemaking of aural employability in Canadian universities
- Discussion
- Varia
- Positioning English as the international language during the Interamerican scientific integration: the role of multilingualism in defining the scope of a scientific journal in the mid-20th century
