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⏸️ STOP REDIRECT & STAY ON PAGENAMING AS POWER: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OFRACIAL IDEOLOGY, GENDER, AND LINGUISTIC AUTHORITY INKATE CHOPIN’S “DÉSIRÉE’S BABY”
Abstract
Abstract
This paper applies Norman Fairclough’s (1989, 1995, 2003) three-dimensional Critical DiscourseAnalysis (CDA) framework to Kate Chopin’s short story “Désirée’s Baby” (1893) to examine how racialauthority is constructed, naturalized, and performed through language. While previous studies haveexplored the story’s themes of race, gender, and irony, no study has systematically analysed the linguisticmicro-architecture through which Armand Aubigny’s speech acts constitute racial power. Drawingadditionally on Teun van Dijk’s (1993, 2008) ideological square, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) concept ofintersectionality, J. L. Austin’s (1962) and John Searle’s (1969) speech act theory and Judith Butler’s(1997) performativity framework, this study argues that Armand’s discourse pattern characterized bydeclarative assertions, imperative syntax, agentless constructions, and the studied absence of questionsfunctions as a technology of racial expulsion. By contrast, Désirée’s counter-discourse is structuredentirely through interrogatives, body-evidence appeals, and appeals to relational authority, all of whichthe text systematically denies a hearing. The study introduces three novel analytical arguments notpreviously advanced in studies on Chopin: that the fire scene enacts a Foucauldian destruction of counterdiscursive archives; that Armand’s naming of Désirée constitutes an ontological performative that bringsher into social existence only to subsequently annihilate it; and that the bayou functions as a racializedspatial discourse that materializes the ideological boundary between legible and illegible subjects. Theclosing letter, which reverses racial attribution, is read as a Faircloughian moment of discursive disruptionthat retroactively exposes the arbitrary construction of the racial-patriarchal discourse system the storyhad spent its length enacting. This analysis contributes to the emerging field of literary CDA bydemonstrating that grammatical and syntactic analysis of canonical texts produces ideological findingsunavailable through thematic or character-based reading alone. The analysis reveals that Chopinconstructs silence not as absence but as active ideological labour that simultaneously produces and policesracial meaning.
This paper applies Norman Fairclough’s (1989, 1995, 2003) three-dimensional Critical DiscourseAnalysis (CDA) framework to Kate Chopin’s short story “Désirée’s Baby” (1893) to examine how racialauthority is constructed, naturalized, and performed through language. While previous studies haveexplored the story’s themes of race, gender, and irony, no study has systematically analysed the linguisticmicro-architecture through which Armand Aubigny’s speech acts constitute racial power. Drawingadditionally on Teun van Dijk’s (1993, 2008) ideological square, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) concept ofintersectionality, J. L. Austin’s (1962) and John Searle’s (1969) speech act theory and Judith Butler’s(1997) performativity framework, this study argues that Armand’s discourse pattern characterized bydeclarative assertions, imperative syntax, agentless constructions, and the studied absence of questionsfunctions as a technology of racial expulsion. By contrast, Désirée’s counter-discourse is structuredentirely through interrogatives, body-evidence appeals, and appeals to relational authority, all of whichthe text systematically denies a hearing. The study introduces three novel analytical arguments notpreviously advanced in studies on Chopin: that the fire scene enacts a Foucauldian destruction of counterdiscursive archives; that Armand’s naming of Désirée constitutes an ontological performative that bringsher into social existence only to subsequently annihilate it; and that the bayou functions as a racializedspatial discourse that materializes the ideological boundary between legible and illegible subjects. Theclosing letter, which reverses racial attribution, is read as a Faircloughian moment of discursive disruptionthat retroactively exposes the arbitrary construction of the racial-patriarchal discourse system the storyhad spent its length enacting. This analysis contributes to the emerging field of literary CDA bydemonstrating that grammatical and syntactic analysis of canonical texts produces ideological findingsunavailable through thematic or character-based reading alone. The analysis reveals that Chopinconstructs silence not as absence but as active ideological labour that simultaneously produces and policesracial meaning.