The pragmatics of black–white conversations: Richard Wright’s representation of the African American experience

Abstract

Richard Wright represents the African American experience of white racism in his novel Native Son and autobiography Black Boy. In the two works, Wright delves into the psychic effects of white racism on young African Americans. From a pragmatic perspective, this article analyzes the conversations between whites and young African Americans in the two works, with the aim of exploring how the conversations can impact on how the young African Americans think about reality and about themselves in relation to whites, that is, how whites attempt to form black subjectivity through conversation. The conversational mechanisms of the formation of black subjectivity are investigated by building on research in pragmatics on conversational cooperation and interpersonal pragmatics. The article first examines the structural features of black-white conversations, and explains the conversational norms by using Grice’s theory of conversation as the explanatory framework. The analysis sheds light on the relative nature of Grice’s maxims and the inseparability of the informational and the relational aspects of conversation. The article examines the relationship dynamics of black-white conversations by drawing on studies in interpersonal pragmatics. From the stylistic feature of the use of address terms, the study delves into the interracial pragmatics of black–white conversations.