Paper short abstract:

This study will bring together sociological models of racialisation and current research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, specifically the recent raciolinguistics approach, to study discussions of discrimination, race, and “upward social mobility” in the “New African Diaspora”.

Paper long abstract:

This proposed study will bring together sociological models of racialisation and current research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, specifically as it has evolved in the recent raciolinguistics approach (Alim et al. 2020, Lo 2020, Alim et al. 2016), to study discussions of discrimination, race, and “upward social mobility” within the Nigerian and wider West African immigrant communities in Germany. I will combine a raciolinguistic perspective (specifically the emergence of terms for racialised groups) with a sociological model of racialisation (as a counterstrategy to racism) to study racialisation as a two-way process by which racism is simultaneously constituted and resisted. Therefore, I will study the lexical-semantic categorisation of the “white Others” in the language use and practices of members of the “New African Diaspora” in Germany and show how this racial categorisation is deployed as a strategic response to racism. The “New African Diaspora” describes the people from sub-Saharan Africa who have migrated since 1990 to seek security and self-actualisation in the West (Okpewho and Nzegwu 2009). In terms of methodology, I will combine quantitative methods (e.g., lexical and collocational statistics) and qualitative approaches (e.g., interactional analysis of longer passages of discourse) to study ideas about race and racialisation in this group. As noted by Garner (2010: 32), as a tool, racialisation makes ‘race’ relevant to a particular situation or context and thus requires an examination of the precise circumstances in which this occurs: who the ‘agents’ are; who the actors are. In other words, who does what and how?