"I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm anti-Islam". Islamophobia as a members' accomplishment in political debate on talk radio

• Authors: Jonathan Clifton
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Since 9/11, Islamophobia has been gaining the attention of scholars, and, increasingly, it is perceived to be an integral part of the emerging zeitgeist of the 21st century. However, the term itself is much debated and little consensus exists as to what it means. Using data drawn from political debate on talk radio between Nick Griffin, Chairman of the British National Party, and Abdul, a Muslim from Manchester and membership categorisation analysis as a methodology, this paper aims to reveal the category-work by which Islamophobia is achieved as a members’ accomplishment. Findings indicate that two versions of Islamophobia are talked into being. On the one hand, Griffin “does” Islamophobia through the operation of an adversarial standard relational pair Islam/West which operates within a membership categorisation device “worlds”, and so he achieves exclusion through cultural incompatibility. On the other hand, Abdul uses the membership categorisation device “race” within which the adversarial standard relational pair Muslim/Asian-White British is operative, and so he ascribes overt racist attitudes to Islamophobes.

Keywords

EN

Islamophobia; new racism; racism; membership categorisation analysis; standard relational pairs

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Journal: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 19-40

Dates

published

2014-06-01

received

2014-02-24

revised

2014-04-15

accepted

2014-05-23

online

2014-06-01

Contributors

author

Jonathan Clifton

• Universite de Valenciennes, Rue des Cent Tetes, 59 300 Valenciennes, France

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/lpp-2014-0002