In talking race, university students sometimes report the speech of others, or themselves, to recreate what happened during an incident. Reported speech is used within narratives to vividly convey what was said, purportedly through the actor's own words or as evidence to support general claims. The speaker is not merely reporting speech but also assessing the problematic character of the actions perfrmed through others' w d s . Reported speech is r e l m t l y tied to assessment. Assessment ?weals the reporting speaker's positioning toward the reported speech. The reported speech used in talking race presents the other as ignorant, biased, racist, ridiculous, or honest. Afrzcan Americans discursively portray Whites as unwilling to admit racism, as stereotyping, mas duplicitous in intergroup relations. Whites, on the other hand,fmme Afrzcan Americans as exaggerating racism or as overemphasizing their ethnicity. Representing others' actions through invoking their words is a way of m'ticizing, challenging, or resisting such troublesome racialized events.

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This discourse analysis examines North American college students’ discursive constructions of racial boundaries, difference, and voluntary segregation on campus. Participants watched the documentary, Racism 101, at home with others and immediately afterwards tape-recorded their discussion about the video and related race matters. None of the participants disagreed with the existence of separateness on campus; they did, however, offer different accounts and positions. Some criticized such self-segregation while others justified it as understandable due to commonalities or differences. Still other individuals were ambivalent or avowed conflicting accounts, which seemed to reflect a dilemma, such as wanting more meaningful interracial contact but being unable to know how to achieve it. African Americans cited preserving group identity as a justification for boundaries. The findings fit with racial formation theory in that participants are partaking in different discourses so as to articulate, explore, or criticize different positions on interracial matters.

This investigation examines discursive uses of respect in talking about interracial contact. In discussing the documentary, Racism 101, the most frequently quoted portion by African-American and Latino participants was a segment on demanding respect from Whites. Our first study analyzes such discourse-reported speech-for what is made relevant from the original documentary segment. The participants' reported speech conveys little of the exact wording of the original, but does capture its spirit through using similar structural features: the repetition of `respect', a contrast between respect and liking, and addressing this to Whites. These uses of reported speech are participants' way of performing the power of another's words, in the sense of being able to articulate a compelling discursive position on an interracial problematic. Our second study employs focus-group interviews to further explore the meanings of respect for African-Americans. We examine narratives of disrespect during interracial contact in public places, such as during service encounters in stores. Participants' narratives told of being disrespected by being overly monitored, not receiving service, or being treated in a derogatory fashion, in short, the perception of being treated differently than Whites. Reported speech was used in these narratives to construct the White service worker's actions, how the narrator responded, what could have happened, or what in-group members say as an aggregate. Reported speech allows narrators to articulate the subtext to what is being said. Also, the evaluation of these incidents told of the emotional costs of being the recipient of disrespect.

During a contentious public hearing on a zoning change for Wal-Mart, participants at times moved to a metadiscursive level with utterances such as, "expect to be listened to," "I have a question," or reading quotes of Town Board members from the newspaper.Such metadiscursive references allow participants to attempt to structure, or depart, from the public hearing format. Metadiscursive references also work to criticize their opponents' speech or the process. Metadiscourse has the consequence of contextualizing the participation framework of the hearing as to topic, length of presentation, and mode of interaction. From a normative perspective, metadiscourse is used to reflect on the folk assumptions about communication as expressed by participants during the public hearing.