Structuring Racist Ideologies in Stephen Crane’s “A Dark Brown Dog”: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of how racist ideologies are constructed and re-constructed in Crane’s “A Dark Brown Dog” using the CDA framework. Benefitting from the approaching between literature and linguistics (Maingueneau, 2010), it focuses on the linguistic analysis of the (re)construction of whiteness and blackness based on the assumption that racism is: a social, a discursive, and an ideological construct. This tri-dimensional construct is treated within a theoretical triangulation ranging from cognition, society, and discourse (Van Dijk, 1992, 1995, and 2006). Based on the view of discourse as a process of coding and decoding of meaning, the text of this story is explored at various levels of language use. These levels are tackled under three sections: a) the contextual analysis focuses on the study of how the setting and the participants are depicted; b) the textual analysis deals with the way narration contributes to the (re)production of racism (Van Dijk, 1993b); and c) the analysis of the evolution of racial identity is devoted to the study of how racist ideologies evolve across generations. The results showed that: first, the representation of the characters highlights the binary structure of the southern American society marked by the inferiority of the blacks and the superiority of the whites. These societal features are detected through the depiction of the context. Second, the way actions and events are narrated reflects the unequal distribution of power between blacks and whites. The existing asymmetry of power is traced in the duality of punishment and obedience. This social status quo is maintained by a binary system of ideologies (white superiority vs. black inferiority). Third, it is proved that racist ideologies and race relations evolve across generations depending on: the amalgamations happening at the family level, the evolution of society, and the evolution of its legislations.

Keywords: Literary discourse, racism, ideologies, whiteness, blackness, and slavery.