Permission to Speak the Discourse of Difference: A Case Study

Difference and Political Legitimacy: Speakers' Construction of “Citizen” and “Refugee” Personae in Talk about Hurricane Katrina

“…This perspective serves as a theoretical foundation for research on many different forms of naturally occurring speech, in both oral (Carbaugh, 2005;Huspek & Kendall, 1991;Katriel, 1986;Katriel & Philipsen, 1981) and written forms (Coutu 2000(Coutu , 2008. In cases where written or broadcast mass-mediated texts provide a great deal-or in some cases all-of the experience of a given event for members of a speech community, the study of the media texts that constituted the event provides important insights into the linguistic and social construction of that event (Philipsen, 2000).…”

“…A number of scholars have previously identified distinctive ways of speaking in American discourse that place great importance on the inner ''self'' and its expression through talk (Carbaugh, 2005;Philipsen, 1992). Scholars have also detailed American ways of speaking about the symbol ''citizen'' (Carbaugh, 2005;Philipsen, 2000) that point to its salience in American public talk, and to the need for further investigation into uses of the citizen persona. Leighter (2007) notes that both Philipsen and Carbaugh demonstrate that ''the symbol 'citizen', when it is used to refer to persons in public communicative contexts, is inextricably bound to particular modes of communicative conduct.…”

“…Rules of speaking are, in essence, analytical constructs built by the observer-analyst to explain the patterns of speaking in a given speech community, the ''prescriptions for how to act '' (Philipsen, 1992, p. 8) in certain circumstances. One such rule of speaking in American public settings, identified by Philipsen (2000), also pertains to the citizen persona: ''The author(s) of difference may not subject the subjects of difference to a speech act that reinforces an image of political illegitimacy of those who are so subjugated '' (p. 229). This rule was observed in a social drama that unfolded when a university president made a public joke suggesting that a Mexican American student had entered the U.S. illegally across the border.…”

“…As scholars of the ethnography of communication and speech codes theory (Carbaugh, 2005;Leighter, 2007;Philipsen, 2000) have noted, the citizen persona in American public discourse is associated with very specific types of communicative conduct. Indeed, as Carbaugh points out, ''The action of speaking in public is an essential part of being a citizen '' (2005, p. 90).…”

“…Thus, when individual speakers identify themselves as speaking as citizens in a public setting, this indicates that something deeply cultural is taking place. There are also, as Philipsen (2000) has illustrated, a number of prescriptive and proscriptive rules that govern the speech of citizens in a public forum when speakers engage in the discourse of difference, naming or labeling racial or ethnic differences between participants.…”