Our Black Skin is the Problem. Our Skin is the Target. We could be doing nothing, yet They will say We do Everything: Distancing and Solidarity via Metaphors and Metonymy in a Critical Discourse Analysis of #blacklivesmatter Twitter Discourse

Abstract

This MA thesis investigates the way metaphors and metonymy were used to create distancing and solidarity in Twitter discourse of the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The hashtag was born as a response to on-going police brutality in the United States where civilians, particularly African-Americans, are targeted. The death of Michael Brown, a black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, greatly contributed to the social media movement of #blacklivesmatter. Police brutality has been recognised as a harmful and dangerous tradition of the American society by several human rights' organisations. #blacklivesmatter became a powerful social media movement fighting for equal rights.

The roots of the problem can be traced back to colonialism and the way African-Americans were enslaved for centuries and even today mistreated. Negative stereotypes continue to haunt present-day black Americans and the exaggerated aggression of particularly black males in persistent. This was also seen in the case of Ferguson shooting which resulted in Brown's death after he was shot by a white police officer on duty that night. The negative stereotypes can be further tied to a wider discussion on group relations in the United States where whiteness is seen as a norm and blackness, respectively, not.

This study was conducted as a Critical Discourse Analysis, CDA, study focusing particularly on metaphors and metonymy (Johnson & Lakoff [1980] 2003) in discourse, especially political discourse. This was tied to Discourse Historical Approach, or DHA, and discursive strategies (Reisigl & Wodak 2001) which reveal the positive self and negative other which are used when showing solidarity or creating distance. The data of the study was collected from the social media site Twitter from August 2014 and February 2015 to have a point of comparison and to expand the amount of data. Based on the analysis, metaphors and metonymy were commonly used tools of discourse. They functioned for social media users as a way to criticise the surrounding society with metaphors, for example by referring to the state as a dangerous person via personification, and to construct an identity of positive self and to criticise negative other. Thus they are powerful and significant ways to drive social awareness and advance a political movement online. A further study with a wider time frame is recommended for analysing online discourse of #blacklivesmatter in more detail.