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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 30:4 (2020) ► pp.485–508

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Confronting blackface

Stancetaking in the Dutch Black Pete debate

ORCiD logo with link | University of Jyväskylä
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 22 November 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18039.dho
Abstract
Recently, the Netherlands witnessed an agitated discussion over Black Pete, a blackface character associated with the Saint Nicholas festival. This paper analyzes a televised panel interview discussing a possible court ban of public Nicholas festivities, and demonstrates that participants not only disagree over the racist nature of the blackface character but also over the terms of the debate itself. Drawing on recent sociolinguistic work on stancetaking, it traces how panelists ‘laminate’ the interview’s participation framework by embedding their assessments of Black Pete in contrasting dialogical fields. Their stancetaking evokes opposing trajectories of earlier interactions and conjures up discursive complexes of identity/belonging that entail discrepant judgments over the acceptability of criticism. The extent to which a stance makes explicit the projected field’s phenomenal content, it is argued, reflects the relative (in)visibility of hegemonic we-ness.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Stancetaking beyond the local
  • 3.Negotiating constituency
  • 4.Subsequent metastancing
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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2025. The ‘Black Pete’ debate in Flemish newspapers: from conflict to moderation. Critical Discourse Studies 22:5 ► pp. 531 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Crisis and bias: Exploring ethnic prejudice among Chinese‐Dutch children before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Infant and Child Development 32:6 DOI logo
De Clerck, Amber & Kris Rutten
2022. Unpacking Cultural Logics: A Rhetorical Listening Analysis of the Public Black Pete Debate in Flanders. Critical Arts 36:1-2 ► pp. 53 ff. DOI logo
De Clerck, Amber & Kris Rutten
2024. RHETORICAL LISTENING AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL IN HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE BLACK PETE DEBATE IN FLANDERS. International Journal of Listening 38:3 ► pp. 216 ff. DOI logo
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Silva, Daniel N. & Jacob L. Mey
2021.  Introduction. In The Pragmatics of Adaptability [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 319], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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