UC Santa Barbara

Where does language come from, if not from bodies?

Bodies that step, strut, and snap.

Black bodies beaten blue.

Captive bodies stowed away.

Whirling bodies rolling in song.

Speaking bodies that carry on. and on. and on. and on…

Scholarship on the organization and production of linguistic meaning has neglected to explore fully the reality that speakers interact through bodies yoked both to the past and to each other. This thesis intervenes in this separation of language from bodies and their histories by centering the linguistic practices and experiences of Blackfemmes, who have been consistently marginalized as both researchers and subjects in sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological studies of race and gender. Working from an intersectional framework undergirded by Blackfemme-inist Theory, I insist that Blackfemme life and language be counted in the archive. Consequently, this thesis focuses on linguistic forms, metadiscourse, and metapragmatic commentary produced in interviews with Blackfemmes on experiences of education, language, and identity. Embodiment emerged centrally in these conversations with emphasis on physical aspects of Blackfemme Language on the one hand, and the sociohistorical-interpersonal contexts of misogynoir on the other. This thesis introduces two terms, materiodiscursivity and sightation, as interpretive frameworks to explicate linguistic practices and experiences of Blackfemme-ininity. Materiodiscursivity characterizes the way embodied linguistic performances (i.e. materializations) of identity orient speakers to others in multidimensional physical and ideological (i.e. discursive) space. It allows us to conceptualize how raciogendered identities emerge specifically at the nexus of the body and language. Sightation describes a distinctly Blackfemme greeting practice involving visual and verbal acknowledgement. It also refers to the necessity of centering Blackfemme voices in the politics of academic citation. By studying Blackfemme-ininity though the lens of raciogendered embodiment, this thesis presents an instructive case for the study of language and identity that should inform all such research moving forward.