The discursive strategies used by Langston Hughes in the construction of whiteness and blackness

Abstract

This article seeks to identify the main discursive strategies employed by Langston Hughes in constructing entities, people’s images and entire social reality in his poetic discourse. More specifically, this article examines how the discursive strategies contribute to the construction of whiteness and blackness. Data was generated from sixty purposively selected Hughes’ poems, which were analysed using thematic analysis and Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis. Van Dijk’s CDA was selected as a theoretical framework in this study as it draws knowledge from several fields, including sociology, psychology, politics and economics, which contribute to deepening the insights of this study. The analysis of data revealed that Hughes constantly constructs whiteness and blackness through four discursive strategies, which are actor description, resource description, self-identity descriptions and norm and value descriptions. The findings also show that these strategies contribute to the construction of whiteness and blackness by means of highlighting the positive-self and negative other-representations as well as the power relations between Whites and Blacks. It is hoped that this study deepens the understanding of Hughes’ poetic discourse and adds novel insights into whiteness and blackness in the American context.