Book dossier

The everyday language of white racism

by Jane H. Hill

"In The Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane H. Hill explores the myth that White racism is fading in the western world. Instead she reveals it to be a pervasive and highly adaptive cultural system, one that has endured in various forms for hundreds of years. Hill's incisive analysis of everyday talk and text shows how language that purports to be anti-racist is framed almost entirely by a folk theory of racism, one that continues to contain overt and covert racist discourses, slurs, and epithets. This prominent linguist offers a penetrating summary of critical theories of racism and introduces the concept of "linguistic appropriation," as a new theoretical dimension to the study of language contact and linguistic borrowing. Hill draws on her internationally acclaimed work on "Mock Spanish," and delves into two important new case studies of public debates around racist slurs, providing a fresh and incisive analysis of the relationship between language, race, and culture."--Jacket.