"BALD IS NOT A RACE": THE EMERGENCE OF RACE, RACIALISATION, RACISM IN INTERACTION

Abstract

In this thesis, I demonstrate the relevance of the white listening/perceiving subject in evaluating microaggressions and linguistic ideologies that occur between interlocutors of diverse racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds. I focus on chat messages sent by a group of Assistant Language Teachers in Japan who are part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, and analyse the interactional emergences of race and racism by the white listening/perceiving subject, as well as the interlocutors’ subsequent negotiations and contestations of racialisations made by the white listening/perceiving subject. This study thus focuses on the centrality of the white listening/perceiving subject in the discursive construction of racialised identities, highlighting the need for future studies to further investigate interactional instances of microaggressions.