An interactional analysis of Muslim women resisting discourses of othering through humour: an autoethnographic reflection of a critical micro-analytic approach

Abstract

This paper considers the application of a micro-analytic approach to critically explore how a Muslim women’s Sister’s Circle (SC), based at a British university, interactionally resists discourses of Islamophobia and othering through humour. I reflect on how I navigated methodological tensions during my PhD, specifically around context in Conversation Analysis (CA; Schegloff, 1997), and explore the benefits of synthesising CA with other critical approaches. Through applying an EM/CA informed discourse analytic approach, this paper showcases how the SC employs humour as a tool for subversion to discursively ‘undo’ othering and reject victimhood. Humour serves as a tool to reverse a social order that otherwise positions Muslims as ‘other’. In summation, this paper argues that applying a synthesised micro-analytic approach enriches the analysis and discussion of implications, demonstrating the benefits of applying such an approach to the study of how (racially) minoritized communities (re)produce and respond to their respective realities.