Discourse, intersectionality, critique: theory, methods and practice

ABSTRACT

For the past thirty years, Critical Discourse Studies has been consolidating as a form of linguistically-oriented, critical social research which is characterized by a deep interest in actual social issues and forms of inequality, such as racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism, both in terms of the asymmetries between participants in discourse events and their unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed. In parallel, since its coinage in Kimberlé Crenshaw's African American feminist critique of race and sex discrimination, intersectionality has been increasingly taken up on a global scale by scholars and practitioners alike, becoming a major feminist way of conceptualizing the relation between several forms of discrimination and oppression, to be analysed as simultaneous and multiplicative experiences. This Special Issue aims to enquire into the potential convergence between the critical discursive and intersectional approaches as theory, method and practice for the exploration of the crossroads of inequalities and oppression. This may contribute to the development of a critical research framework that enables the acknowledgment of the profound ways in which discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed sociocultural categorizations interact and produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations. These, in turn, can be analysed in terms of the mutual and intertwined processes of resistance and transformation that arise out of them. Bringing together diverse contributions with a shared critical discursive and intersectional outlook, this Special Issue hopes to offer new theoretical and methodological insights for thinking through diversity in the light of present and future dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and inequality. The six contributions operationalize the intersectional approach as theory, method and/or practice and incorporate it with a CDS perspective, providing a flavour of what a critical and intersectional discursive engagement with different and dynamic identity and power configurations on a global scale can achieve.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• critical discourse studies
• gender studies
• language and gender
• mixed methods

1. Introduction

For the past 30 years, Critical Discourse Studies (henceforth, CDS) has been consolidating as a form of linguistically-oriented, critical social research which is characterized by a deep interest in actual social issues and forms of inequality, such as racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism (see Reisigl, 2018). Since its inception, CDS has taken an interest in the ways in which ‘linguistic forms are used in various expressions and manipulations of power’ (Weiss & Wodak, 2003, p. 15), both in terms of the asymmetries between participants in discourse events and their unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed.

Having gained global traction as a theory and method, CDS is now making its way through the late capitalist, neo-colonial, informational, post-industrial twenty-first century. The one we live in is a ‘superdiverse’ world, where complex and multidimensional social categories and processes, collective meanings, and overlapping personal and group identities unfold across different scales (Vertovec, 2007, 2023). It is also a world where diversity is still a synonym for vulnerability and inequality, and is too often met with stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination, if not open hostility and antagonism.

In the face of increasing diversification and social complexity, CDS is called on to delve into complex and thorny questions of self and other, difference and diversity, in a context of unequal global power relations. There is an urgent need for a broader and more fruitful critical discursive focus on the lived experiences of subordinated and/or less-represented social actors, who ‘continue to see transforming social institutions as necessary’ (Hill Collins, 2018, p. 25), including indigenous peoples, Latinx, LGBTQ people, differently-abled people, religious and ethnic minorities, and stateless people, among others.

It may be about time for CDS, as both a research movement and an established community of practice, to embark on a process of renewing self-consciousness. This also entails addressing a long-standing criticism related to the universalization and overgeneralization of a vast set of concepts, theory, values and methods borrowed from white male thinkers (from Marx to Gramsci, from Habermas to Foucault) and further developed in the specific academic, cultural, and socio-historical configurations of a limited number of European countries (the U.K., the Netherlands and Austria, in particular). When observed from a global perspective, CDS seems to have a taste for cultural imperialism, binary thinking and dichotomies (Shi-xu, 2014), which has prompted theorizations of discourse and society that draw on southern and/or postcolonial epistemologies in response (see de Melo Resende, 2021; Milani & Lazar, 2017).

The way forward is to take advantage of the plasticity of CDS as one of its foundational characteristics. CDS is used to the combination of approaches, topics and fields of study which come from different schools of thought and a wide range of disciplines. This is partially derived from the theoretically diverse origins of the ‘founders’ of the approach, but can also be regarded as a by-product of the problem-orientedness and analytical interest towards complex social issues that characterize CDS. As a matter of fact, ‘it is rare to find a researcher who uses only one approach without the influence of, or the borrowing of terminology or concepts from, another’ (Catalano & Waugh, 2020, p. 162f).

We should not be surprised that CDS’ very own disciplinary eclecticism has the potential to decenter and pluralize its theory, methods and practice, allowing for multivocality and diversity to emerge further in its trademark exploration of inequality and discrimination. In this respect, the intersectional approach provides both an ontology and a hands-on framework for the critical discursive analysis of the different systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege.

Since its coinage in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) African American feminist critique of race and sex discrimination in the US legal system, intersectionality has been increasingly taken up on a global scale by scholars and practitioners alike, coming to represent one of the most successful ‘buzzwords’ in the history of feminist theory (Davis, 2008). According to Leslie McCall (2005, p. 1771), intersectionality is ‘the most important contribution that women’s studies has made so far’. Certainly, it has the great merit of putting complexity centre-stage in an unapologetic way, conceptualizing lived experiences as ultimately intersectional in nature because human beings cannot literally or metaphorically be divided by their different personal identities and background – and neither can the different forms of unique oppression affecting them. Thanks to this refreshing and productive premise, intersectionality has travelled globally, becoming a major feminist way of conceptualizing the relation between several forms of discrimination and oppression, to be analysed as simultaneous and multiplicative experiences.

This Special Issue aims to enquire into the potential convergence between the critical discursive and intersectional approaches as theory, method and practice for the exploration of the crossroads of inequalities and oppression. This may contribute to the development of a critical research framework that enables the acknowledgment of the profound ways in which discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed sociocultural categorizations interact and produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations. These, in turn, can be analysed in terms of the mutual and intertwined processes of resistance and transformation that arise out of them (Lykke, 2010). The exploration of this academic synergy unavoidably starts from gender as a socio-cultural variable and epistemic lens, for two main reasons.

On the one hand, intersectionality is based on an acknowledgement of the profound centrality of gender to all facets of social life. The approach is grounded in feminist thought and is, by nature, a critique of the gendered and sexualized social dynamics of inequality we live by. It is a critical feminist investigation of how gender interacts with other social identities, such as race and class, and in complementarity with other forms of dominance, such as racism and classism. More broadly, the approach aims to shed light on the insidious, internalized and oppressive nature of gender as one of the social constructs that shape the contours of life experiences and opportunities in a unique way.

On the other hand, CDS is one of the approaches that have protagonized ‘the discursive turn’ in studies on language and gender. This ‘discursive turn’ has been characterized by the progressive creation of a space where ‘gender as a monolith’ could be critically discussed and deconstructed, moving beyond mainstream and heteronormative ideological constructs. CDS has increasingly taken onboard a profound awareness of gender and sexual diversity in its episteme, operationalized in a critical enquiry that does not assume the uniformity of any category nor make sweeping dichotomized generalizations.

This increasingly nuanced understanding of language, gender, and sexuality, paired with growing curiosity and a sophisticated use of transdisciplinary approaches, have together paved the way for the exploration of the synergy between CDS and the intersectional approach in this Special Issue. Having language and gender as a starting point, the following sections will touch upon a number of interrelated issues, including how we conceptualize identities in relation to power and inequality in different social contexts, the role of transdisciplinarity in the investigation of complex social phenomena, institutions and practices, as well as the role of critical praxis and self-reflexivity in the analysis of discursively constructed sociocultural categorizations and their related unjust social relations.

After an overview of the evolution of the critical discursive approach to gender and sexuality in recent decades in Section 2, in Section 3 this introduction presents the intersectional approach and its potential to enrich the CDS perspective. This potential of intersectionality to enrich CDS as a theory, method and practice is further explored in the six papers included in this Special Issue, briefly introduced in Section 4.

2. Discourse and gender: a critique of complexity

Embedded in the multilayered processes of social critique taking place starting from the late 1960s, the interplay between language and gender has been intensely scrutinized from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The field of linguistics has witnessed the development of ‘different, and often competing, theoretical and political assumptions about the way discourse, ideology and gender identity should be conceived and understood’ (Speer, 2005, p. 1). Gender-oriented linguistic research has advanced in parallel with developments in feminist theory and political practice, highly influenced by the waves of women’s rights movements, with a focus on language as both a reflection and a building block of a gendered society.

Sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have attempted to explore the nature and extent of the role played by gender in our linguistic practices. On the quest to define the existence and features of women’s speech, early sociolinguists including Labov (1966, 1972) and Trudgill (1972) noted that women were more prestige-conscious and aware of their linguistic choices in comparison to men, ranging from phonology to lexis and grammar. Theorized as a ‘woman’s register’ (Lakoff, 1975) or ‘genderlect’ (Tannen, 1990), women’s linguistic choices were supposed to reflect their ‘natural’ differences from men as well as some distinctive ‘feminine features’, including a more defensive and conservative personality, a greater tendency towards solidarity and nurture, as well as heightened class awareness and ambitions for upward mobility.

Later linguistic approaches started to shift the focus from the biological sex of individual speakers (and related, monolithic speech styles) to the vast and diverse range of changeable sociolinguistic practices, interactions and performances. From a community of practice perspective, language is conceptualized as a core instrument for constructing and claiming our gender identity(ies) and for managing social relations in the context of a gendered society (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003). This shift from an essentialist to a constructionist view of gender has contributed to the dismantling of many hasty generalizations on language, gender and society at large.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the ‘discursive turn’ further contributed to this profound change in studies on language and gender: ‘conceptualizing gender as discourse offered a radical critique not only of biological determinism but also of the sex/gender distinction’ (Weatherall, 2002, p. 81). Unsurprisingly, CDS have come to represent a vantage point to explore the notion of gender as something that we discursively ‘do’ in a given socio-cultural and socio-political context (Butler, 2004), not only conveying individual social identities, but also constitutive of broader systems of power, knowledge and belief. In fact, the trademark CDS interest in the social and material consequences of discourses has fostered the exploration of gender-based asymmetries in people’s participation in and degrees of control of discursive events across different social contexts.

For example, the (re-)production of gender stereotyping and sexism across global media has represented a natural application of a gender-focused critical discursive approach. CDS scholars have engaged in critical examinations of how stereotypical representations of gender are mainstreamed in a variety of general media contexts, such as business media discourse (Koller, 2004) or the media coverage of 9/11 (Litosseliti, 2006). Studies focusing on the narratives implicit in more narrowly focused media genres cosmetic (Ringrow, 2016) or matrimonial (Sharma, 2018) advertising, have been shedding light on how heteronormative, stereotypical and traditional ideas of femininity are constructed and perpetuated through discourse, and how the gendered social importance given to female appearance and bridal femininity is capitalized upon. In this respect, critical discursive approaches have been contributing to unveiling how ‘patriarchy is an ideological system that interacts in complex ways with, say, corporatist and consumerist ideologies’ (Lazar, 2005, p. 1), including defining the desirable attributes of and appropriate behaviour for women.

Ever since Goffman’s publication of Gender Advertisements (1979), there has been a growing critical awareness of how gendered social orders are (re-)produced by means of visual affordances. Reflections about size, posture, touch, and gaze, among others, are still relevant to how gender is ‘done’ and communicated in the evolving visual landscape. More recently, David Machin, Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Tommaso M. Milani have been calling for a ‘multimodal turn’ in the field of gender-oriented CDS in their edited Special Issue of Language and Gender (Machin et al., 2016). In the same vein, the section dedicated to ‘Semiotic and multimodal approaches’ in the Routledge Handbook of Language Gender and Sexuality (Angouri & Baxter, 2021), explores semiotic representations and performances of gender and sexuality in a range of contexts, from magazines to TV commercials, from ELT books to mobile games.

Digital visual images, in particular, have a staggering ability to make ‘social identities, processes, practices, experiences, institutions and relations’ visible (Rose, 2014, p. 13), especially in light of the advent of heavily visual social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Tik-Tok. While digital media represent a social arena for a vast range of multimodal (self)constructions of identities in all their diversity, recent studies have also explored how non-conforming self-representations on social media (Ghaffari, 2022), or even the mere digital visibility of journalists, sportswomen or female political leaders (Esposito, 2022), tend to result in the emergence of a virulent discursive backlash of hate, misogyny and sexism, with a huge potential for self-censorship and digital abandonment.

The ‘discursive turn’ in studies on language and gender has been characterized by the progressive creation of a space where ‘gender as a monolith’ could be critically discussed and deconstructed, moving beyond mainstream and heteronormative ideological constructs. Starting from a socio-critical acknowledgement of the existence of a vast plurality of femininities and masculinities, CDS scholars have engaged in a process of exploration and reconceptualization of the different ways in which discursive practice (re)produces categories of sexual identity as well as female/male, heterosexual/homosexual binaries. Interdisciplinary studies grounded in Queer Studies and CDS have explored the discursive constructions of women and men in all their diversity, engaging in complex discussions on sexual ideologies, practices and identities as interrelated issues, explored within ‘broader interrogations of normative authority and regulatory power’ (Leap, 2015). Applied to CDS, queer theory promotes ‘a politics of subversion’ (Baker, 2008, p. 187), which is able to examine and deconstruct the overt and covert structures and symbolisms of all forms of sexual normativity: rather than conceiving of identities and relationships as fixed and reproduced as ‘normal/not normal’ binary oppositions in society (with homosexuality relegated to the status of a ‘not normal’ minority identity), gender and sexual identities in queer theory are conceptualized as fluid, multiple and mutually dependent, as well as unstable and subject to reversal. The queer theory toolbox enables us to ‘navigate’ normativities, as in the 2019 Special Issue of Language and Society edited by Kira Hall, Erez Levon and Tommaso M. Milani (Hall et al., 2019), and fosters the exploration of the role of normativity and antinormativity in language, gender, and sexuality research, including the emerging phenomena of homonormativity, homonationalism and pinkwashing, among others (Milani & Levon, 2019).

A critical discursive approach has been applied to the representation of homosexuality and the proliferation of homophobic and heteronormative discourse in different contexts, including mainstream media and political discourse (see for example Baker, 2004). In a more recent contribution on parliamentary debates in the UK, Love and Baker (2015) reflect on the progressive substitution of explicit homophobic speech with more implicit or indirect manifestations of homophobia in the past two decades. Love and Baker’s reflections point CDS scholars in the right direction, towards an in-depth, careful, and critical form of analysis of a vast range of more subtle and/or internalized discourses of gender-based discrimination that can be more difficult to identify and challenge.

In parallel, a critical discursive focus on more explicit phenomena, like the emergence and circulation of the so-called ‘anti-gender discourse’, has contributed to unveiling a range of dangerous processes of political mobilization and power management across the EU. As illustrated by Rodrigo Borba (2022), anti-genderism has established itself as a register (with ‘gender ideology’ being its most powerful shibboleth), challenging the enfranchisement of women, queer, trans, and nonbinary people. Several CDS studies have been delving into the inner workings of this social phenomenon, exploring how church hierarchs and right-wing populist politicians and media fuel cultural and ideological conflict along the intertwined lines of homophobia, misogyny, and racism (see for example Żuk and Żuk (2019) on Poland or Rodríguez and Piedrahita-Bustamante (2022) on Spain).

The growing awareness of gender and sexual diversity entails not assuming the uniformity of any category nor making sweeping dichotomized generalizations. The more recent focus on digital media data has opened new and thrilling frontiers for the exploration of non-normative discursive identity construction and self-identification, and greatly enriched current perspectives on the heterogeneity of the LGBTQI + community (Webster, 2019). Along the same lines, the focus on online dating communities and/or dating apps sheds light on the specific identities valorized and regarded as more or less desirable by members of the LGBTQI + community. According to Milani (2013), this allows us to better understand which dominant forms of social categorization are (re)produced, contested and overturned in expressions of same-sex desire.

One of the most structured and systematic integrations of a gender perspective in CDS is represented by Michelle Lazar’s theorization of a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA). In her work, Lazar reflects on the ways in which gendered ideological assumptions are ‘constantly re-enacted and circulated through discourse as commonsensical and natural’ (2005, p. 1). By means of a feminist critical analysis, it becomes possible to shed light on the multifaceted, both overt and subtle, discursive ways that sustain and perpetrate gender-based dominance and unequal social arrangements, while at the same time promoting and reproducing a heteropatriarchal view of life. One of the most relevant features of the approach, which also represents Lazar’s main argument for the need for the explicit ‘feminist’ label (2007, p. 143), is having social transformation as a core objective.

The following two main aspects, in my opinion, are at the very heart of FCDA’s emancipatory project, as two interconnected phases of deconstruction and reconstruction. Firstly, a feminist and critical analysis, by definition, cannot remain descriptive and neutral in the process of uncovering the range of pervasive social processes and mechanisms that perpetuate gender-based inequality, manipulation and discrimination. As such, it entails a high degree of self-reflexivity upon one’s own positionality, academic practices and bias, to be regarded as a cross-cutting principle governing good practice in feminist scholarship, CDS and intersectionality alike (further explored in the next section).

Secondly, FCDA is ‘feminist analytical activism’ (Lazar, 2014, p. 184) that should be aimed at representing a challenge and threat to a status quo characterized by a hierarchical and asymmetrical social order. Since the approach avoids any conceptualization of discursive units as fixed and unchangeable (but as actually serving different functions in particular situated contexts), this entails that it is actually possible to engage in a process of ‘feminist political imagination’ (Bell, 1999) and that tends towards the realization of a society in which ‘gender does not predetermine or mediate our relationships with others and our sense of who we are or might become’ (Lazar, 2005, p. 6). For example, FCDA’s effort to make the feminist perspective in discourse research more explicit would also be targeted at decreasing the dominance and grip of white heterosexual men as the pioneers of discourse-related studies and provide more diversity in CDS research.

FCDA is also representative of an increasing emphasis on examining gender alongside all other relevant social identity variables ‘which may have been ‘backgrounded’ in much earlier Second Wave work’, given its overwhelming focus on ‘white, middle-class, heterosexual women in Western contexts’. In contrast, and closer to Third Wave feminism, FCDA argues for the analysis of diversity in terms of gender identities, including differences amongst groups of women and amongst groups of men (Mills & Mullany, 2011, p. 15).

Breaking ground for future developments, in the late 90s Ruth Wodak was already reflecting on the impossibility of isolating ‘the variable of sex/gender from other sociological and situational factors’ (1997, p. 2). In the past two decades, it has become increasingly evident that factors other than gender, such as social stratification, ethnicity, or regional/national affiliation, generate unique intersections, specific power dynamics and related patterns of inequality, discrimination and vulnerability. Gender is progressively seen as a category which ‘intersects with and is shot through by other categories of social identity, such as sexuality, ethnicity, social position and geography’ (Lazar, 2005, p. 1). These reflections have paved the way for the exploration of the potential of intersectionality as a method and tool for the critical discursive interrogation of the complex and interrelated systems and processes that define the social, that will be further elaborated in the next section.

3. The intersectional approach: a critical discursive potential

The development of the intersectional approach is usually regarded as a reflection of a ‘postmodern turn’ in social sciences, ‘an attempt to trace and account for a supposed fragmentation of identities within political movements of the late twentieth century’ (Grabham et al., 2009, p. 1). More specifically, its roots lie in the broader critique of essentialism that emerged in feminist theory in the late 1980s, in the attempt to deal with the acknowledgement of differences among women as ‘one of the most central theoretical and normative concerns within feminist scholarship’ (Davis, 2008, p. 70). This very ability to address and synthesize inclusion and diversity as a present and pressing concern of feminist thinking is, according to Davis (2008, p. 72), the ‘secret of success’ of intersectionality: the approach would be both able to ‘problematize the theoretical hegemony of gender and the exclusions of white Western feminism’, and to ‘provide a platform for feminist theory as a shared enterprise’.

Intersectionality emerged in the United States as a critique of whiteness as ‘part of the essence of womanhood which feminism represented’ (Conaghan, 2009, p. 3), too often overlooking Black women’s unique life experiences, interests and concerns as they were falling between the cracks of different discourses on gender and race. Critical race and feminist legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw used the term ‘intersectionality’ to locate a point of crossing while mapping the inequality and discrimination faced by African American women, such as the racism embedded in many women’s movements and the patriarchal politics of many anti-racism organizations. For Crenshaw, only the analysis of the intersections of different markers of identity such as gender, race and class, and the related social positions occupied by individuals, could support the analysis of structures of power and therefore ‘work in explaining how interlocking systems of oppression produce social location for us all’ (Hill Collins, 1995, p. 491).

In a subsequent article, Crenshaw (1991) further developed the concept by focusing on the relationship between intersectionality and identity politics and by applying it to the context of violence against Black women, seen as both structurally and politically different from that against White women. Their multiple forms of identity made Black women the victims of multiple forms of oppression, more vulnerable to rape, domestic violence and economic dependency, and more invisible to existing support systems. Never meant to be an abstract notion, the most immediate application of intersectionality was to indicate the limits and flaws of legal and policy interventions to tackle gender-based violence, discrimination and inequality in the United States.

More than three decades later, the intersectional lens has now been adopted in a wide range of disciplinary contexts, in social science research but also in the field of international human rights and women’s organizations, always ‘drawing critical attention away from static conceptualizations of social life and experience’ (Grabham et al., 2009, p. 2). However, there appear to be numerous debates about the framework’s key concepts, including discussions of how best to conceptualize intersections themselves and how to methodologically implement intersectional analyses. And yet, precisely the approach’s ‘vagueness and open-endedness’ (Davis, 2008, p. 69) has been perceived as a key factor in its success: it can be useful for ‘understanding and analysing any social practice, any individual or group experience, any structural arrangement, and any cultural configuration’ (Davis, 2008, p. 72).

In mapping its ‘definitional dilemmas’, Patricia Hill Collins (2015) lists three main applications of intersectionality. Firstly, it can be seen as an overarching theory or knowledge project, whose changing contours grow from and respond to the social formations of complex power relations and social inequalities. Secondly, it is an analytical strategy and a methodological framework for investigating complex social phenomena, institutions and practices, in order to examine how they might perpetuate social inequality. Finally, as scholarship and practice are recursively linked, intersectionality is a form of critical praxis that can inform social justice initiatives to bring about social change.

At this stage, readers may already recognize some similarities between the intersectional and critical discursive approaches, as CDS has also struggled with delimitations and definitions and has been labelled alternatively as a theoretical field of study, as a methodological framework and as a recursive critical praxis. But this is not the only reason why CDS and the intersectional approach can be regarded as compatible perspectives. There are several aspects of intersectionality that could resonate with and enrich CDS, three of which I will now discuss.

The first aspect of intersectionality that is particularly relevant for CDS scholars and practitioners is its feminist insistence on preliminary engagement in a self-reflective and honest assessment of one’s own positionality as a researcher. A researcher should ask themselves questions about their own social positions, values, assumptions, interests and experiences and how these can shape the research process, as well as putting the research into context. Throughout the process, one’s own social location can be employed as an analytic resource rather than just an identity marker. In this respect, according to Manuel (2006), it is not coincidental that intersectionality found receptive spaces at the very same time that the racial, gender, and class composition of academia was diversifying, allowing a much broader range of voices and experiences to emerge. Black women in U.S. academia, for example, ‘had a great stake in elucidating the social locations that made them more vulnerable to discrimination, isolation, and inequality’ (Manuel 2016: 179), and were able to combine both an insider’s and an outsider’s views. In turn, this allowed them to advance a stronger ‘intellectual acknowledgement of the power relationships that made their experiences and voices marginal’ (ibid.), both in academia and in society at large.

This aspect of intersectionality clearly resonates with CDA’s commitment to an emancipatory agenda, and being self-referential about a priori assumptions, motivations and value systems in conducting linguistics research. However, engaging in intersectional self-reflexivity does not simply require one to acknowledge one’s own intersecting marginalized and privileged identities. Being rooted in feminist and anti-racist activism, it also has the potential to move to the level of self-implication, expanding our accountability and creating possibilities for coalitional activism targeted towards broad-based social change.

A second aspect through which the intersectional approach can enhance CDS is by further enriching its trademark focus on the discursive construction of identities. According to Levon (2015), one of the boldest and most distinctive aspects of the intersectional framework is that social identity is regarded as formed by multiple intersecting factors, where each factor is conceptualized as crucially dependent for its meaning on its relationship to the other factors with which it intersects. In turn, this forces us to go beyond an analysis of interacting categories and to look at mutually constitutive, intersecting ones. From a social construction perspective, intersectional identities are not conceptualized as fixed or static, but they are dynamic and emerge in specific social, historical, and interactional configurations. This process of change is ‘generally influenced by a variety of factors, including the respective importance of markers of individual identity and the conditions under which they are manifested’ (Donaldson & Jedwab, 2003, p. 2).

The intersectional approach does not simply focus on how individuals may choose to define themselves, but also on the salience of identities under varying circumstances (Donaldson & Jedwab, 2003). As a critical social research framework, the intersectional approach is primarily a means for centering power and oppression in the exploration of identities. It is grounded in a profound acknowledgement that power, privilege, oppression, and discrimination impact the sense of self as well as life experiences and expectations. This intersectional identification and explanation of ‘which differences make a difference’ and ‘carry a significance’ (Tomlinson, 2013, p. 1012) supports the critical discursive focus on the multiple facets of the complex, two-way relationship between identity and power.

A highly related, third key aspect of the intersectional approach is the heightened familiarity it encourages with complexity and the development of conceptual tools to investigate it. From the outset, intersectionality provided a framework for triangulating gender, race and class as three foundational categories of inequality, intertwined and mutually constitutive in women’s identities, experiences and struggles for empowerment. Intersectionality today is often used in a broader sense considering the intersections between various other categories, including ‘first language spoken, visible minority status, age, immigrant status, disability status, religious affiliation, region of residence, sexual orientation, family type, and marital status’ (Manuel, 2006, p. 181).

Also, the approach offers a platform to investigate the complex intersections of identity both from a vertical and a horizontal perspective (Manuel, 2006), that is, being able to capture both between-group as well as within-group differences. As a landmark feminist anthology in Black Women’s Studies puts it, ‘all the women are white, all the Blacks are men – but some of us are brave’ (Hull et al., 1982). Approaching identity with a silo mindset too often results in a higher degree of visibility for the most powerful members of marginalized groups (White women and Black men), universalizing their particular experiences as representatives of the group as a whole. The intersectional perspective comes to CDS scholars’ aid, as the horizontal dimension is often overlooked within the trademark ‘Us vs Them’ CDS perspective, together with the more or less collaborative relationships between intersectionally different, marginalized subjects (see also Lazar, in this Special Issue).

In parallel to its potential to capture both intercategorical and intracategorical complexity, intersectionality was also developed as an anticategorical framework (McCall, 2005). The latter is a much deeper level of critique adopted by some feminist scholars, premised on the belief that social life is too complex and fluid to use fixed categories. This intersectional deconstruction of binary oppositions and of normalizing and homogenizing categories complements postcolonial, diasporic and queer approaches in the search of alternatives to the static conceptualization of identities. As a result, ‘bisexual, transgendered, queer, and gay have been added to the original divide between the gay and straight sexuality groups, and the social groups that constitute the category of race are widely believed to be fundamentally indefinable because of multiracialism’ (McCall, 2005, p. 1778). This anticategorical interpretation of the intersectional approach can support the growing number of CDS scholars that have engaged in a critique of the discursive practices of the (re)production of categories of sexual identity as well as female/male, heterosexual/homosexual binaries (see, for example, Lazar’s and Webster’s contributions in this Special Issue).

The three aspects broadly described above only hint at the many existing theorizations and applications of intersectionality. Engaging in continuous critical reflection, including keeping a strong focus on identity and power at both horizontal and vertical axes as well as the awareness of one’s own positionality, emerge as transversal and essential conditions in order to make good use of the approach. The emphasis on critique and self-reflexivity in intersectionality has become even more important since the concept has travelled well beyond its starting point. This popularity has also raised some concerns in the African-American feminist community, who are witnessing intersectionality being growingly mainstreamed and appropriated by European feminism and see the potential danger of whitewashing (Davis, 2020; Roig, 2018; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Although the approach was initially developed to target specific gendered and racialized patterns of inequality and discrimination in the U.S. American context, these social phenomena are not limited to the other side of the Atlantic. We should be wary of European applications of the intersectional approach emptied of its transformative vision. Yet, integrating a depowered version of intersectionality in European scholarship can only further contribute to upholding structural inequalities, reinscribing white supremacy and ableism both within feminist organizations and outside them.

Some intersectionality scholars have also been warning against the adoption of an ‘additive’ perspective to the intersectional dimensions of oppression, where inequalities are conceived as being simply stacked on top of each other, able to be added to and subtracted from at will, rather than being viewed as mutually constitutive. The danger of the additive model is that it remains on the experiential level of analysis and does not take into account how our shared cultural ideas are shaped as intersections with one another (for example, how our ideas of gender are racialized and ideas of race are gendered), and that these intersecting ideas structure access to resources and material, political, and interpersonal power. Using intersectional tools is meant to compel scholars to go beyond silo-thinking and can help in ‘asking the other question’: ‘When I see something that looks racist, I ask, ‘Where is the patriarchy in this?’ When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, ‘Where is the heterosexism in this?’ When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, ‘Where are the class interests in this?’ (Matsuda, 1991, p. 1189). Additive intersectionality ‘ultimately refuses meaningful engagement with structures of inequality other than a totalizing concept of gender which centers the interests of white and otherwise privileged women’ (Christoffersen & Emejulu, 2022, p. 16), one example being the exclusion of transgender women by many Western feminist movements.

A reflection on the intersectional approach vis-à-vis CDS fosters the acknowledgement of the need for both approaches to stay critical if we are to keep the potential for investigating different crossroads of oppression in their multiple processes of recontextualization and diverse applications. If the critical potential of intersectionality is safeguarded, CDS scholars may explore new ways to strengthen and make more concrete the immanent critique and prognostic ideal that is often associated with the critical approach to discourse analysis. Since ‘diversity of experience also speaks to the politics of hope’ (French and Swain, 2006, p. 394), intersectionality can represent a theory and practice for those wishing to fully develop CDS’ ability to shed light on diversity and social inequalities in ways that may facilitate social change.

By focusing on present-time diversity with an intersectional outlook, CDS can find new lifeblood to keep applying and advancing its unique research enterprise on discourse and society, maintaining a heightened consciousness of the need to expose and challenge current social orders and their structural inequalities. An intersectional CDS can investigate discrimination and inequality ‘at the level of the home, the workplace, the state or the international community’, tracing the complex material effects of a number of macro and micro processes, including ‘the operation of global capital, […] international relations, monetary policies, domestic social policies’, but also our ‘employment relationship or the family’ (Grabham et al., 2009, p. 3). Transversal to its many applications and interpretations, the critical nature of intersectionality as social theory provides a vantage viewpoint on current social problems caused by (neo-)colonialism, racism, sexism, and nationalism as interconnected in their utmost complexity: in turn, this has a transformative impact on the significance of present ideas and actions for the possibilities for social change (Hill Collins, 2018).

4. This special issue: theory, methods and practice

Investigating contemporary social intersections calls for an approach that is able to address ‘the ways in which different social histories, interpersonal motivations, and local ideological expectations shape the imbrication of categories of experience in real-world empirical encounters’ (Levon, 2015, p. 298). The articles in this Special Issue operationalize the intersectional approach as theory, method and/or practice and incorporate it with a CDS perspective, providing a flavour of what a critical and intersectional discursive engagement with different and dynamic identity and power configurations on a global scale can achieve.

Eleonora Esposito and Angela Zottola critically investigate social media and international news discourses around the 2019 docking of Sea-Watch 3 in Lampedusa, Italy, and its captain Carola Rackete. Both social and international news media played a crucial role in fuelling a heated debate around the nature and legitimacy of Captain Rackete’s gesture: while social media freely allowed the proliferation of misogynous and racist content, traditional media chose sensationalism over sobriety in telling the story of a German female dreadlocked captain taking African migrants across the Mediterranean to a safe shore. Esposito and Zottola’s critical and intersectional approach uncovers a gendered and racialized pattern of discursive hostility, at the intersection with right-wing populist discourses of Italian sovereignty and European anti-immigrationism. Their analysis show how misogyny and racism are highly intertwined in the attempt to silence women’s voices and agency on crucial themes like migration, and how incitement to (misogynous and racialized) violence and hatred are highly instrumental in the discursive creation of the ‘Fortress Europe’ of present times.

Nancy Henaku examines data on gendered representations in Hip-life, the Ghanaian version of American Hip-hop music, in order to highlight how the local-global intra-action and intersubjectivities complicate understandings of African gendered identities. By exploring the theoretical possibilities of engaging Africa in feminist CDA, Henaku’s paper highlights how Africa’s complex contexts have the capacity to recalibrate Western analytical categories, including power and intersectionality themselves. Henaku reminds us of the importance of self-reflexivity and the need for critical consideration of the affordances and limits of current CDS theoretical and analytical categories and the implications they have for examining non-Western discourses. In doing so, she makes a case for the epistemic significance of Global Southern standpoints for complex theorizations of late modern culture. Recursively moving from theory to practice, her intrasectional feminist CDA of misogynous discourses in Ghanian Hip-life illustrates the approach’s potential for examining transcultural practices in postcolonial (African) contexts and the contemporary globalized world at large.

Maria Caterina La Barbera, Laura Cassain and Paloma Caravantes González provide a discursive analysis of how intersectionality is included in public policies. Analysing the implementation of an intersectionality-informed plan by Madrid City Council, they show how the discursive construction of intersectionality within an institutional structure deeply affects its interpretation and implementation. Using critical discourse analysis to analyse qualitative interview data allows them to explore the positionality of policy-implementing actors, the theoretical and practical knowledge these actors rely on, and the multiple interpretations they display when constructing the meaning of intersectionality. Results shows the specific challenges generated by the discursive construction of intersectionality through either the frames of gender or diversity, both limiting intersectionality’s transformative potential. Grounded in immanent critique, the detection of obstacles in the article is instrumental to the identification of opportunities for the implementation of intersectionality-informed policies within the available frames, concepts, and structures of equality policy-making in Spain and beyond.

Combining critical discourse studies and critical intersectionality studies, Michelle Lazar’s work introduces the notion of ‘intersectionalisation’ as a reflexive meta-discursive strategy employed for particular sociopolitical ends. The form of ‘intersectionalisation’ analysed in this paper is the reflexive mobilization of intersectional identities for the purpose of building an LGBTQ social movement in the illiberal geopolitical space of Singapore. Lazar’s critical study of Pink Dot’s social movement discourse reflects the complex circuits of power between an authoritarian government, a largely conservative mainstream, and historically marginalized LGBTQ citizens engaged in an on-going struggle over power, liberty and belonging. Stemming from this Singaporean case-study are a series of highly-relevant theoretical and methodological implications, critically discussing the relevance of the intersectional approach for CDS, towards a heightened attention to the complexity of power relations within specific historical and political contexts.

Tommaso M. Milani, Simon Bauer, Kerstin von Brömssen and Andrea Spehar analyse how gender equality is presented, discussed and negotiated in relation to ethnicity and nationality in Sweden. In particular, they critically focus on civic orientation programs for newly arrived migrants as the starting point for a reflection on the ambivalent intersections of gender, ethnicity and nationalism in the country. Results show that gender equality is discursively constructed and presented as an inherently Swedish value to be learnt and internalized by migrants, especially those originating from a supposedly monolithic and gender-unequal ‘Arab world’. By means of a sophisticated, critical and intersectional mixed-methods approach, they are able to shed light on the institutionalization of a dominant femo-nationalist discourse in Sweden, informing both mainstream media and educational practices in the country.

Lexi Webster discusses the intersecting power structures and lateral power struggles between potentially competing social groups, with a specific focus on the socio-legal recognition of transgender identities across Western contexts. According to Webster, the current antagonism towards plural perspectives on transgender recognition, from both legislative and social positions, is the result of the absence of plurality, tolerance and criticality in the debate. Offering a primarily theoretical contribution, Webster reflects on the need for CDS to embed a critical relativist and intersectional perspective, if it is to evolve and maintain relevance. This will allow CDS to meaningfully analyse discourse and champion social change even when it comes to complex debates like the current one on transgender identities.

Bringing together diverse contributions with a shared critical discursive and intersectional outlook, this Special Issue hopes to offer new theoretical and methodological insights for thinking through diversity in the light of present and future dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and inequality. Taken together, the contributions in this Special Issue have only scratched the surface of the many potential applications of an intersectional, critical discursive approach. It is hoped that more scholarly efforts will join the exploration of further intersections and power dynamics, social contexts and ways of change.

Acknowledgement

I gratefully acknowledge the Authors participating in this Special Issue for taking the time to provide comments and suggestions that significantly improved this Introduction. ‘We rise by lifting others’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eleonora Esposito

Eleonora Esposito is a Researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra (Spain) and a Seconded National Expert to the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) of the European Commission. With an MA in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies and a PhD in Critical Discourse Studies, Eleonora has been investigating the complex intersections between language, identity, and the digitalized society, in different global contexts, encompassing the EU, the Anglophone Caribbean and the Middle East. A Marie Skłodowska-Curie Alumna, Eleonora was Principal Investigator of WONT-HATE (2019-2021), a project where she explored the motives, forms, and impacts of online violence against women in EU politics. Her recent publications include an edited Special Issue of the Journal of Language, Aggression and Conflict entitled Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence (2021); and a monograph entitled Politics, Ethnicity and the Postcolonial Nation: A Critical Analysis of Political Discourse in the Caribbean (John Benjamins, 2021).