16 December 2020
Centering marginalized voices: A discourse analytic study of Ghanaian feminist blog
Mark Nartley
Even though one of the aims of critical discourse analysis is to demonstrate how social inequality, power abuse and discriminatory practices can be resisted, most studies have centered on the deconstruction of oppression and ideologically driven discrimination rather than the reconstruction of resistance. In this talk, I address this gap by examining the blogposts of Ghanaian feminists using Lazar’s (2007, 2014) feminist critical discourse analysis as an analytic framework. Specifically, I discuss three resistance strategies utilized in the blogposts to criticize systematic gendering of privilege and inequality, and to foreground the voice and agency of Ghanaian/African women: (1) critiquing patriarchy, traditional gender norms and gender oppression, (2) resisting gender stereotypes and rewriting demeaning gender narratives, (3) calling out sexist attitudes and applauding women who resist such behavior. I argue that these strategies contribute to a feminist political critique of gendered social practices and relations aimed at centering Ghanaian/African women’s voices and effecting social emancipation/transformation. The talk ends by highlighting how the emancipatory discourse promoted by the blogs can be enhanced as part of a continuous striving for social justice for Ghanaian/African women.
Mark Nartey holds The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of English. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in corpus-assisted discourse studies and in the theory and application of critical discourse analysis to political, media and other public discourses. His published work has drawn heavily on comparative and interdisciplinary research frameworks, with some exploring phenomena in Ghana, China, Australia and the UK. His recent papers have appeared in Corpora, Discourse & Communication, Critical Discourse Studies and Language and Intercultural Communication.
References
Lazar, M.M. (2007). Feminist critical discourse Analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis.” Critical Discourse Studies 4(2): 141-164.
Lazar, M.M. (2014). Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis Relevance for Current Gender and Language Research. In S. Ehrlich, M. Meyerhoff & J. Holmes (Eds.) The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2nd Edition (pp. 180-199). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.