A Phenomenology of the Racialized Tongue

Abstract

Using phenomenological descriptions, this essay explores the performative effects of disciplining our bodies to speak Standard American English as a second language and dialect. Theorizing the act of speaking as habituated embodiment in cultural matrices of power and hegemony, we foreground the sensuous materiality of the speaking body and interrogate how the enactive body works as a mnemonic device for normative ways of being. We contend the body is always more than a textual surface on which social meaning is discursively inscribed and reinforces the path toward a more phenomenologically materialist understanding of the body and embodiment in communication.