Codecloseting, Opacité, and the Racialized Politics of Linguistic Performativity
By Leland Royce Harper and K. Adele Okoli
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Siena Heights University
Associate Professor of French, The University of Central Arkansas
Published in Freedom: Volume 3
Keywords
Race; Multilingualism; Performativity; Codeswitching; Opacité.
Abstract
Linguistic identity is a socially constructed and performed phenomenon deeply entangled with intersectional formations of race, class, and gender. In contemporary North America, dominant groups impose rigid expectations about how particular bodies should sound, often reinforcing racial and linguistic hierarchies. This paper examines “codecloseting”—the strategic concealment or suppression of a linguistic repertoire due to societal expectations and racialized language ideologies. Using frameworks of codeswitching, belonging, and Glissant’s decolonial concept of the right to opacity, we analyze how multilingual Black interlocutors, including those from Kreyòl, General American English, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), West African English, and French speaking backgrounds, navigate social spaces wherein their linguistic identities do not conform to racialized expectations. When linguistic performance does not align with dominant perceptions of Blackness, speakers may be perceived as inauthentic, subject to scrutiny, or denied belonging within racial and linguistic communities. On the other hand, white speakers of languages or lexicons racialized as Black may be socially mediated as spectacular comedic figures, evoking surprise and laughter. We explore these parallel phenomena through case studies of public figures and everyday interactions, demonstrating how linguistic mismatches disrupt racial formations and contribute to aesthetic regimes that define Blackness and languages of African origin in restrictive ways. By interrogating the expressive limitations imposed by these regimes, as well as the strategies of subjects who subvert and refuse them, we argue for a broader, more nuanced understanding of Black linguistic diversity that resists essentialist notions of race and language.
Digital Object Identifier
DOI: https://DOI.org/10.65373/MOXT2380
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