دراسة خطاب نقدي لسيادة البيض في أفلام هوليود مختارة

RP-A Critical Discourse Study of White Supremacy in Selected Hollywood Films.pdf

The current study is a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of white supremacy in selected Hollywood films. The objective of this study is to explore the discursive strategies and linguistic features through which white supremacist ideologies are constructed and normalized. Likewise, it seeks to examine the construction of the “self” and the “other” in these films to uncover the underlying ideological assumptions perpetuated by filmmakers. The study endeavors to answer the following questions: (a) How is white supremacy linguistically constructed in selected Hollywood films? (b) What discursive strategy do Hollywood films employ to normalize white supremacist ideologies? (c) What ideological assumptions about white supremacy are constructed and reinforced in Hollywood films? And (d) What are the most and the least strategies of racial power in the dialogues of white and Black characters in selected Hollywood films?. The researcher uses an eclectic model for the analysis, consisting of Fairclough’s (2001) three dimensional model of analysis, Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) for grammar analysis (transitivity), van Leeuwen’s social categories (2008) and Van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square. Additionally, a qualitative approach supported by frequecies and percentages is employed to analyze nine scenes from three selected films. Based on the findings, the study concludes that Hollywood films employ micro and meso structures, such as transitivity, activation, passivation, overwording, categorization, direct and indirect intertextuality to construct the “self” as rational, central, and superior white characters, and the “other” as marginalized, passive, or subordinate Black characters. Ideologically speaking, the producers showcase the conflicting polarization between the white “self” and the Black “other” through the latter’s struggles against systemic racial dominance. Further, Hollywood films advance a clear racial agenda, that is, they disseminate a persuasive discourse that normalizes and reinforces white supremacist ideologies. Furthermore, to legitimize these racial hierarchies socially, Hollywood films tend to align with ideological positions that construct whiteness as natural, central, and superior.