The discursive construction of Black British women graduates' in-groups and out-groups: A corpus-informed intersectional analysis

Pennant, April-Louise ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1963-7832 and Handford, Mike ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4224-3663 2025. The discursive construction of Black British women graduates' in-groups and out-groups: A corpus-informed intersectional analysis. Corpora

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Abstract

‘Black’ as a racial identity is marked by diverse peoples in many settings who each have differing intersecting identities, status and lived experiences. Despite this, Black voices are often marginalised in predominantly white societies like Britain (Mowowatt et al, 2013); such marginalisation is often compounded for Black women (Crenshaw, 1989). To interpret the nuanced ways which Black British women discursively construct social identities within their educational experiences, this paper develops a novel theoretical framework of intracategorical intersectionality (McCall, 2005), etic and emic approaches (Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012), and ingroup/ out-group theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). By employing bottom-up corpus-assisted discourse analysis, we propose that Black British women graduates construct complex social identities in two main ways: ‘diversity within Blackness as a racial category’, and ‘differences in terms of gendered experiences’. The analysis also unearths a pattern of in-group selfevaluation that is predicated on perceived views of the out-group towards the in-group. The study thus contributes to discourse-analytical intersectional studies and to emic understandings of Black women’s voices in the context of their educational experiences and journeys, while also making a theoretical contribution to in-group and out-group theory.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
ISSN:	1749-5032
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 March 2024
Date of Acceptance:	14 February 2024
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2025 12:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/166736

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