Alisha Drummer WMST 2010 October 9, 2012 The Metalanguage of Race Assignment 1.

Higginbotham says that race constitutes a "double-voiced discourse." What does this mean? What are two ways race can be and is used as a double-voiced discourse? A double-voiced discourse is a situation where the same words can mean different things to different speakers who use those words in different contexts. In the text, race is described as arbitrary and illusionary and at the same time natural and fixed. I think this statement exemplify a double voiced discourse because one can argue that race is an abstract term that fits into the intersecting hierarchies along with gender, class, and sexuality and it cannot be singled out. Yet at the same time, one can argue that the differences between races can be noticed through differing physical characteristics. Another example of how race is used as a double-voiced discourse in the text is when the word womanhood needed to be reevaluated due to the courts viewing a white lady and black woman as two very different people receiving very different treatment. 2. Race "impregnates" language, creating a type of metalanguage. What is a metalanguage? Give and explain two examples of words or phrases to illuminate this concept. Metalanguage is when language is used to describe language. An example that stood out to me was the following statement: Indeed the very process of borrowing and blending (from black intellectuals, white feminist scholars, white male philosophers, and linguists) speaks to the tradition of syncretism that has characterized the Afro-American experience. This statement about the experience of AfricanAmerican women is impregnated with details from groups other than African-American women. Their experience is described by words form others. Another phrase that illuminates how race impregnates language is how it continually expressed overt and covert analogic relationships. When race is involved, it changes the simple word hair to have two distinctions, good hair and bad hair.