Date Available
4-24-2017
Year of Publication
2017
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Linguistic Theory and Typology (MALTT)
Document Type
Master's Thesis
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Linguistics
First Advisor
Dr. Kevin McGowan
Abstract
This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks to aid in the demarcation of socially salient groups whose application of racialized adjectives to racialized images is near instantaneous, or at least less questioned. As we view growing social movements which revolve around the significant marks unconscious assumptions leave on American society, revealing how and where these lexical assignments arise and thrive allows us to interrogate the forces which build and reify such biases. Future research should attempt to address the harmful semiotics these lexical choices sustain.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2017.134
Recommended Citation
Wright, Kelly E., "The Reflection and Reification of Racialized Language in Popular Media" (2017). Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics. 18.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/18
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Law and Psychology Commons, Law and Race Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Political Economy Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Semantics and Pragmatics Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Social Media Commons, Social Welfare Law Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons
