Abstract
This qualitative study aims to investigate the effects of hate speech acts of powerful agencies, which are used to establish and maintain power relations by influencing the psyche of minorities or weaker groups to assign them a subordinate position. In the light of Judith Butler’s notions presented in her famous book Excitable Speech (1997) it is found that such acts are used as a lin­guistic weapon in the process of social domination. Hate Speech acts have an injurious effect on the psyche of the weak which prompts them to obey the commands of the speakers, the powerful. For this purpose, relevant excerpts were taken through purposive sampling technique from Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), which depicts the tragic conditions of a black family living in a race conscious society of America. They are considered inferior to the white at social, moral, economic and political levels. The analysis of the selected texts is done at both micro and macro levels. At the micro level, the lexical semantic features of the utterances are studied and at the macro level, the socio-political environment in which the black characters are victimized and then psychologically subjectified is discussed. It is seen that the feeling of being ugly has multiple and terrible influences on the mind and body of the subjects. The selected episodes from the novel are the manifestations of their wounded psyche in the white-dominated America. They unconsciously think themselves as agents of darkness, sin, crime, wickedness, immorality and evil. The findings of the study also reveal a taxonomy of newly emerging hate speech acts which may prove useful to analyze the communicative patterns of race-driven societies.
Highlights
Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), sociologists such as Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and psycho-linguists such as Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) believe that the human psyche is always influenced by the surrounding environment
This qualitative study aims to investigate the effects of hate speech acts of powerful agencies, which are used to establish and maintain power relations by influencing the psyche of minorities or weaker groups to assign them a subordinate position
Hate Speech acts have an injurious effect on the psyche of the weak which prompts them to obey the commands of the speakers, the powerful
Summary
Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), sociologists such as Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and psycho-linguists such as Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) believe that the human psyche is always influenced by the surrounding environment. Seduction in Two Languages, Felman (2003), acknowledges that after Judith Butler’s interest in performatory aspects of language, the theory of speech acts has been considered very important in understanding different social, political and psychological issues, such as gender discrimination, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, cultural diversity and post-colonial identity crisis. Her notions about subject formulation enjoy a central position in her debates on performatory aspects of language She believes that subjects are formed when in specific conditions the external constitutive inside or “the temporal side of identity” as well as “constitutive outside” works on them There are events of rape, atrocities, verbal and physical abuse, identity crisis, victimization, hopelessness and exploitation in almost all the novels produced by Morrison (Note 2) According to her to call someone “nigger” for example, means to inflict mental torture on her/his psyche whereby the hate speech is acted successfully. Coupland critiques the “pejorative” and “racist” overtones of the term ‘niggers’ which “solidifies and naturalizes our represented worlds” (Jaspers, Verschueren, & Östman, 2010, p. 242)
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