Narrator
The Matrix Podcast is a production of Social Science Matrix, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of California, Berkeley.
Julia Sizek
Hello, and welcome to the Matrix Podcast, coming to you from the Ethnic Studies Changemaker Studio, our recording partner on Berkeley’s campus. I’m Julia Sizek, your host.
Today, our guest is Gabriella Licata, a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures who has a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women and Sexuality. Her research investigates how standard language ideologies influence perceptions of language and people, and she recently published a paper about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and right-wing political speech.
Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Gabriella Licata
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Julia S.
So let’s just jump in by discussing the event that your paper is about, which is when Ted Yoho insulted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol on July 28 2020. What happened and who witnessed the event?
Gabriella L.
Sure. So this was highly publicized at the moment, and it hasn’t been spoken of much since then. But basically, a little backstory is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] had participated in a virtual town hall, I believe in her district, in her New York District. And she had mentioned that, you know, people are suffering due to the effects of the pandemic–there’s a lot of newfound urgent poverty issues that aren’t being addressed. People don’t have food, people don’t have their basic goods. And she mentioned that a person can, you know, if a person steals a loaf of bread or something like that, to feed their family, then that’s permissible, or that’s forgivable, because this is, you know, this is a new kind of a new experience for people and they don’t know what to do. They’re not being given resources by their government, they’re not being taken care of. And Republicans had a really strong reaction to that saying, you know, it’s, it’s okay to steal. And that’s, you know, that’s how they interpreted it. And, and so, when Ted Yoho saw Ocasio-Cortez walking up the steps of the Capitol, and he’s walking down, he called her out on that. And he said that she was disgusting, that she was a gendered slur, “an effing bitch.” He said, he spoke both of those, those slurs, he didn’t abbreviate them. And, you know, he said that she was crazy. And, and then continued on, and I believe they saw each other later on, and she called him out on what he had said to her, and said, you know, we’re going to talk about this later. And, and then it turned, and then it was, you know, heavily publicized because there was a reporter there named Mike Willis from the, from The Hill and, and immediately wrote about it, the event. And from there, it just kind of spiraled into– into kind of secondary reporting.
Julia S.
And obviously, one of the big pieces about this is this isn’t something that’s happening, sort of in a dark room where there’s no record of it, there’s a presumably objective reporter who is there at the same time that says, hey, this is not what should be happening. And I guess in tandem with that is what you can see in the backstory you’re telling, that it’s a real mix of the personal and the political, right, there’s both this gendered slur that’s directed at Ocasio Cortez. And then there’s also this sort of political aspect of this larger background about poverty programs in the US. And I guess one of the things that seems really troubling about this is that it is a personal attack that is sort of about a political problem. Can you sort of tell us a little more about that aspect of this?
Gabriella L.
Sure. I mean, progressive politics is not new. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they have very progressive and you know what the right would consider radical ideologies. But nobody speaks to them this way. So this uptick of progressive kind of hate and contempt from the right is really a response to the changing representation in Congress in politics. So when Obama won the presidency in 2008, there was such a strong reaction to his presence, because he is black. He’s a black American. And he’s not even that progressive, right? He’s not what we would consider a very progressive politician. But because we have some we have a black man in power. There’s these shifting dynamics in a really white world, so politics, US politics is traditionally very white, historically very white. And you have all these now, racialized women, gaining office, very political, very powerful political positions. And so you’re seeing the reactions in, in right wing media and right wing politics. And we know we can talk about this a little bit later with the Supreme Court nominee of Ketanji Brown Jackson, where you know, you have a very different line of questioning for her than you do for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, so we can talk about that in a bit. But yeah, this right wing politics is really operating. Its epistemology, its stance is, is that we live in a post racist, post misogynistic world, so we can call people out and not be racist, we can call people out and not be misogynistic because those systemically don’t exist anymore. Because, look, a brown woman is an office, a black woman is an office. So of course, we’re not racist, we’re not misogynistic. So it allows, you know, this permits them to issue these kinds of these gendered and racist attacks, with some kind of safety net on their end.
Julia S.
Yeah, I think that really points out to some of the broader implications of this research and also the value of scholarship in this arena, which is somewhat outside of your training in Romance Languages and Literature. So can you just tell us a little bit about why you decided to pursue this line of inquiry?
Gabriella L.
Sure. A lot of what I do is kind of rooted in language perception. So kind of attitude and experiments, and also looking at linguistics and what that’s what sociolinguistics means in education and language education. Everything that I do is really undergirded, or underpinned, by standard language ideologies, and understanding how they permit or or prohibit people from expressing themselves fully in public and private arenas, and the public-private distinction is not that clear anymore. But you know, in school, or in a political arena, how are people able to express themselves without being discriminated against? So all of my work is really looking at how standard language ideologies operate, and how they, how they racialize and how they marginalize groups. So I think that understanding that going back to colonial epistemologies, and how they’ve created these divisions in our society, and where they privilege some folks, and they erase others, that’s really what’s what has brought me into, to understanding or to kind of trying to deconstruct right wing discourse, and, and who the targets of that discourse are.
Julia S.
So I guess with that, let’s turn towards a specific example. And really look at what Ted Yoho does after this, you know, well documented case of him using slurs, because he has an apology that he gives shortly thereafter in Congress. Let’s listen to his apology.
[Audio Clip – Ted Yoho’s apology speech]
Congressman Ted Yoho
Mr. Speaker, I stand before you this morning to address the strife I injected into the already contentious Congress. I have worked with many members in this chamber over the past four terms, members on both sides of the aisle, and each of you know that I’m a man of my word. So let me take a moment to address this body. I rise to apologize for the abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York. It is true that we disagree on policies and visions for America. But that does not mean we should be disrespectful. Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I’m very cognizant of my language. The offensive name calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues, and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding. As my colleagues know, I’m passionate about those affected by poverty. My wife Carolyn and I started out together at the age of 19 with nothing. We did odd jobs. And we were on food stamps. I know the face of poverty, and for a time it was mine. That is why no people in this country can still with all its faults rise up and succeed and not be encouraged to break the law. I will commit to each of you that I will conduct myself from a place of passion and understanding that policy and political disagreement be vigorously debated with the knowledge that we approach the problems facing our nation with the betterment of the country in mind and the people we serve. I cannot apologize for my passion. Or for loving my God, my family, and my country, I yield back.
Julia S.
Alright, so that’s the whole apology. I guess one thing that’s sort of immediately noticeable is that there’s a lot of direction changing in this apology. So can you walk us through what’s happening and the different ways that he is avoiding apologizing in making his apology?
Gabriella L.
So right off the bat, he issues an apology. And not for what he said, but how he said it. So he’s really apologizing for tone. Right? I’m sorry, I was abrupt. But then he, I mean, if we skip to the very end, he conflates that abruptness with passion. And we can’t apologize for passion, because it’s just who we are, right? And he is associating passion with his country, with family with God. And those are very, you know, emotional topics for Americans, but especially Republicans, you know, he’s, he’s creating his political alignment, and maintaining that distinction of, you know, this is what I care about. And in that sense, he’s dividing his own values from AOC’s values, and saying, like, this is what I care about. And this is why I had to do this. So it’s almost like he was, you know, sent to do this, or he was, it was his duty. But he, you know, after the first apology, or whatever you want to call it, he, you know, talks about how, again, coming from this really, like post-racist post-misogynistic realm where systemic inequities don’t exist. So, if you’re poor, and you work hard, you’ll make it, right? So he gives his personal anecdote with his wife. And, you know, those are valuable stories, and their emotional stories, and he gets, he does become, in the, in the video, he becomes visibly emotional, and tears up and pauses, which is something we can also talk about, but he, you know, he’s kind of deflecting, and making it a very personal story, because those emotional experiences, will draw people in and bring and draw in their sympathies. So, you know, and if, depending on, you know, who side you’re on, or who you believe you will, that will make you emotional, and that will, you know, that would that’s called to people, so he deflects to personal experience. And then he also talks, you know, he kind of transcends and talks about bigger issues, like, you know, we’re here to work we have, you know, this and that going on, and, and, you know, it’s my duty to serve America, and gets kind of, you know, to its takes the conversation to like a global national position, which is, you know, just distracting. So a lot of the speech is mostly distraction.
Julia S.
Yeah, it’s really interesting, because you point to sort of two different scales of distraction, one where he turns to his own personal experience, sort of a really micro level, to his own emotional experience of living off of food stamps with his wife, and then, you know, in a very Republican way, pulling himself up on his bootstraps, and making it into Congress later. And then on the other side, this turned towards family values. And, you know, “I believe that my programs addressing the pandemic are better than these sorts of other programs.” And so there’s both this scalar way that he’s avoiding it, but I’m really interested in this tone question that you brought up, this question of what tone is he using? What tone is he apologizing for? And what tone is he using in the apology? This also gets this question of like, is he being emotional or is it performance? How do we evaluate his political speech as both an emotional speech and as a rational speech?
Gabriella L.
Right? Yeah. So I think when he’s apologized and he does this in later interviews, where he wishes that it had just gone down differently, and it’s like, does he? We don’t really know the intention. He offers various alternatives to how this could have played out, but he doesn’t apologize for calling her out. Which, I mean, he doesn’t have to; people are allowed to have opinions. But he also wishes it had played out differently while denying that he said anything bad. So, okay, so you know what I think in this House speech was an obligation. And he states that in an interview right after, I believe right after this House speech, he said he had a Hobson’s choice, which means he had to do it, or, and, you know, deal with it, or didn’t have to do it and still deal with it. So he didn’t, it was a very short speech. It was a little bit more than a minute. And he even walked away from the podium before he finished speaking. So he just said, “I yield back.” He’s already walking away. And it didn’t seem like he seemed annoyed. And I think that when we talk about emotion and why people, you know, express emotion, it seemed, I mean, I don’t, you know, we don’t really know the intention. It didn’t seem insincere. But we have to wonder why he, you know, why he teared up, I mean, talking about family, makes people emotional, talking about past experiences, but also just, I think, he seemed annoyed. And like, why am I here? Why am I doing this? You know, why am I on the spot? And so I think that, you know, and nobody reported that he was emotional, because, you know, he’s a man, he’s allowed to be emotional. And women will be called out for it. But, you know, the only reporting that came out of it was like, “Oh, he apologized.”
Julia S.
Which also, I guess this gets us to the question of like, was his apology successful? Who saw it as being a successful apology? Who didn’t? And did they sort of fall along the neat or relatively neat political lines that one would expect?
Gabriella L.
Definitely not. So immediately after Yoho spoke, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who’s a Democrat from Maryland, spoke in reaction. And he, he did really, I mean, again, you know, the politics are really similar on both sides in a way, where he talks about how we need to respect one another. And then he uses that to bring up Trump and talk about how Trump is disrespectful, and, but not really focusing on Yoho. So he, you know, he’s using that to kind of align himself with Democrats, you know, and their lack of support for former President Trump. And then he states that this was an appropriate apology. And that Ocasio-Cortez would accept this apology, speaks on her behalf without having spoken to her and accepts the apology on behalf of what seems to be Democrats. So that was, I found that to be very interesting, because there’s, there’s benefits to both men that are on both sides of the aisle not wanting to talk about this. Not wanting to deal with gender dynamics and misogyny in politics. It’s not just Republicans who are avoiding those conversations, it’s also Democrats, and I mean, anyone. You know, we see it with older women, too, in politics, not wanting to really talk about it, because it’s also a generational divide. Aside from political, so, so yeah, so Steny Hoyer then affirming the apology, you know, then kind of snowballs into a bunch of reporting, saying that this was an apology.
Julia S.
I think that it’s interesting, because it raises this question of more of, I guess, the side of how people’s identities affect whether or not they’re willing to accept the apology rather than sort of aligning it along political lines. But one thing, I think that is another interesting element of this apology, and maybe our modern media landscape more generally, is the fact that you get to apologize many times now. After you give your apology in Congress, you go in on your talk show and you give your own sort of reiteration of your apology or lack thereof. So I thought that maybe we could use this opportunity to listen to how Yoho recounts the event after it happened, and sort of redoes his mythology.
[Ted Yoho on the Story with Martha McCallum]
Martha McCallum
These stories are so totally different that the two of you are telling so it’s kind of hard to know, you know which version is the truth. But when you turned around and walked down the stairs, did you refer to her as a F-word B-word?
Yoho
No, I walked down the steps. I said this is just such frickin BS. But and that’s all I said. And then Reporter came up to me. “So what was that about?” I said, “No comment.” Did you say this? I said “no comment,” and I left.
Julia S.
So that was Ted Yoho on “The Story with Martha McCallum,” which is a Fox News show. What does he do in recounting this event?
Gabriella L.
Sure. So in recounting this event, he said, mind that, this is a nationally broadcast interview. And this is after AOC issued her speech in the House. And she had a slew of people supporting her speaking for like two to five minutes after which was heavily publicized. And so this interview is a response in part to that. And now having to address his reputation after AOC recounts the story in her own words, and she spoke for 10 minutes. And so, what he’s doing here is again, I mean, he’s, he’s fairly consistent in how he recounts the story, but he is now here more explicitly is replacing the gendered slur with something that can’t be directed at a person. So to call someone an “F-word, B-word” to quote McCallum, is, is what you call animate, right? It’s like an animated slur. So you can’t call an inanimate object, an “F-word, B-word,” but you can call an inanimate object “frickin’ BS.” And it’s unclear, you know, if he pronounced those words, but now he’s removing kind of the offensiveness of the words. And he’s also, you know, basically saying that’s all he said, and then he walked away. And so if he’s walking away, and the conversation ensues, then you know, who’s the antagonist now? It’s not him. So he’s removing himself a bit from any of the offenses.
Julia S.
Yeah, so we see, it’s sort of like, you know, back to this question of the personal versus the policy situation where he says, actually, the problem is the situation which is all “frickin’ BS,” rather than an individual person who, you know, I have ill feelings toward perhaps, some these ill feelings actually turn up in some accusations that get made against Ocasio-Cortez after the event. So let’s listen to a clip from this same Martha McCallum show about what they think she is doing with the press coverage from this.
Ted Yoho on “The Story with Martha McCallum”:
I guess, you see what’s going on now is, you know, she’s making hay out of this, she’s fundraising off of this, she’s out in front of the Capitol wearing her COVID Mask, playing that song “Boss [Bitch],” I’m not gonna say it, playing “Boss so and so,” making fun of this, but yet she’s on the [House] floor crying saying how bad this is. But yet she’s out there saying the same thing. And, you know, it’s disingenuous.
Julia S.
Yeah, so I think this also gets us back to this question of gender and how there are expectations for how women should act, and that she is not conforming to this.
Gabriella L.
I mean, part of the right wing reaction to AOC is that she’s very popular. And she reaches a young and broad audience, and they don’t like that. So she, you know, uses social media to her advantage. So, anytime that she complains about something, they just gaslight, like, “Oh, she’s doing this to fundraise, you know, she’s, she’s doing this just to make so-and-so upset.” You know, to be called an “F-word B-word” in public is humiliating, especially in a professional environment. But again, because they don’t think, because Yoho and his and his party alignment, you know, exist in this post-racist post-misogynistic realm, that’s not offensive, like, “I’m not– we’re not misogynistic. I have daughters and a wife, right? So I can’t be misogynistic.” So it’s, again, it’s a lot of gaslighting that this, you know, this is actually really important. So if she’s, if this is exploding [in popularity], and then that means there’s some ulterior motive that she has for fundraising or to gain popularity or to get followers.
Julia S.
Yeah, so the idea is that she is making money off of this event and therefore that her feelings would not be legitimate, or that it wouldn’t be inappropriate for him to say something to her like that.
Gabriella L.
Right. And I think what we see with populism and particularly the line of right-wing populism right now is that things have to be either/or. So sure, like AOC could be hurt and could be offended. And what he did was wrong, and she can also fundraise off of it, that those aren’t mutually exclusive ideas or events. And it’s not so much like, “hey, let’s make this intentional. So let’s do this so that we can make money.” But “hey, like, let’s have people understand, you know, why this is wrong.” And if that is, you know, used to fundraise. I mean, that’s politics, right? But it’s like this, these very, like severe lines are drawn between, like what is right and wrong, and that you can’t, you know, you have to ascribe to one idea or the other. And that’s really what right-wing populism is doing constantly is reiterating who, who is part of us and who is part of them. So who’s a member of our in-group and who’s outside? And so when you’re on the outside, when you’re in the out-group, everything you do is scrutinized. So it doesn’t matter. You know, I mean, she was scrutinized from the moment he spoke on the steps. So everything that she does, everything that AOC does thereafter is going to be scrutinized, and twisted, into something negative or pejorative.
Julia S.
Yeah. And what’s interesting, too, is that Ted Yoho really tries to deflect this scrutiny from him. So I guess let’s listen to our last clip from this Martha McCallum show, where he talks about how he, you know, has worked with many people and that he is not saying this slur against Ocasio-Cortez because she’s a woman or because she’s a woman of color.
[Clip from “The Story with Martha McCallum”]
Martha McCallum:
I want to get to the point that you just touched on because you said I have had similar conversations with other people about policy. Now, did you get heated in those conversations? Might any of those people have thought that you were out of line and your language with them? And were those people men? And were those people women? Do they cross the gender line?
Yoho:
Sure, I’ve had conversations with Ro Khanna, Terri Sewell, Luis Gutiérrez on several things. And we don’t always walk away agreeing, but we always wind up, it seems like afterwards, laughing about things. And, you know, we’re going to disagree on that. But we’re always amicable. And, you know, we’ve got so many–
MacCallum:
–So she really laying down the gender
Yoho:
–problems in this country.
MacCallum:
–card.
Yoho:
Yeah she is.
MacCallum:
So here’s the part of her speech which got a lot of attention. Let’s play that, because I want to get you to react to this.
Yoho:
Sure.
AOC:
Sure, this harm that Mr. Yoho, levied, tried to levy, against me, was not just an incident directed at me. But when you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters.
MacCallum: What do you think about that?
Yoho: You know, she’s entitled to her opinion, that has nothing to do with our conversation. It was strictly about her policies. And you know, I went to the Southwest border, the week after she left, I went into the same cell she was in where she said, children were being snatched away from their parents, and the detainees were made to drink out of the toilet, and she was cussing in front of the workers there. And when I found out, they said, “This is the drinking fountain, this is this,” you know, and so this has been a history of what she’s doing. And it’s identity politics, and I don’t play that.
Julia S.
So that is, I mean, sort of this amazingly rich text, right, we have this sort of part, let’s maybe start with the part at the beginning, which is this question about gender and whether he can work across the aisle and whether that can mean that his attacks are meaningless.
Gabriella:
Right, so I mean, again, if you’re assuming that you’re if there’s this underlying assumption that you’re not a misogynist than it, then that’s the argument that they make, and they don’t have these deep discussions about, you know, how women of color and or or how women are racialized in politics and the history of like dehumanization of women of color. So, you know, perhaps the conversations I mean, AOC is controversial. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. But you know, so was Bernie Sanders, and we just, he doesn’t receive that kind of treatment. And you know, he has a long history in politics. AOC is young and, and, you know, very proudly Latinx and and she talks about these issues very readily. But for some reason, you know, perhaps the other conversations that Yoho has had with others with other politicians, who he’s racializing in these in this conversation. And, you know, in you he’s using identity politics to his advantage here. Perhaps they didn’t have contact. I mean, they didn’t have controversial conversations. I mean, we don’t know. Whatever. I mean, whatever would call would, would entice someone to call some to yell at on the steps on the Capitol Hill at someone. They didn’t do that for him. So something was particular about this conversation.
And, you know, this is always the kind of scientific academic argument, how can you prove that this person is misogynistic? And I was asked this by a reviewer of the paper, I was asked this when I presented this paper at conferences, how can you really tell us that he’s misogynistic? And if you use the gendered slur, effing bitch, that’s misogynistic. But if you deny using it, then you know, you’ve been it’s just you yelling about policy. Right? So the fact that he just denies the slur itself frees him from having to address any issues of misogyny or gender. And, you know, they also the way that both Yoho and McCallum talk about gender is like, “What’s the gender line?” You know, it’s obviously they don’t, they don’t really know how to talk about gender in a constructive way, or what it means, you know, performatively so it, McCallum also sets it up so that he can succeed in that conversation, deflect to, to, you know, AOC downfalls and you know, what the right considers her– considers to be polemic. And just go into her history. And her and, you know, other issues that she’s brought up that they don’t agree with.
Julia S.
Right. And I think it also points to this sort of division between I can make one misogynist comment. But that doesn’t make me into a misogynist. And this has been sort of a big question, I think, among people talking about feminism and political speech, like, how do you draw this line right between labeling a person misogynist, and having one misogynist comment, when really it’s sort of it’s like, more like a spectrum in which you are becoming more misogynist, as you make more misogynist comments. You can’t like get a free pass. Right?
Gabriella L.
And it’s, you know, we can also draw parallels from these, these conversations we’re having on race. And, like, what, what is– what does a racist person look like? Or what do they act like? And that, you know, that racism from the right wing perspective, is like blatant, you know, violent harm. Where we know that it’s much more than that. We know that it’s, you know, racism is we interweaved into our, into the, you know, our daily systems. And so as misogyny, it’s not any different, but they, you know, coming from the stance of not seeing these as systemic problems, they just don’t need to be addressed in these right wing conversations. They’re looking at misogyny as something really blatant. And, you know, McCallum sets Yoho up, I mean, the right wing, Fox News, in particular, but others as well, they have, they play a huge part in perpetuating these, these reiterations. Or this, this kind of avoidance of dealing actually with, with racism and misogyny because she’s very hard on him at first, and then she starts to agree with him. And this is how this is how it works at Fox News. They say that they’re hard hitting. That’s like their slogan, and they do hit hard at first, so that the person can redeem themselves, and then they can just kind of snowball into agreement. And that’s what she does in this interview. So she, you know, questions him pretty heavily in the beginning. Did you say this? Did you say it? These stories don’t make sense? They don’t line up, and then she just abandons that. So you know, he was more pushing. I’m sure he could get him to be more inconsistent about the matter. But that’s part of the scheme.
Julia S.
And I think one of the points that you bring up is this question as well of how right wing media outlets including Fox News, how they police women’s speech, and how they sort of produce the realm of what’s appropriate language, and what’s inappropriate language. So can you sort of walk us through what some of the gendered norms for speaking in the political sphere are?
Gabriella L.
Sure. So, again, it’s hard to you have to kind of speak intersectionally about this because not everyone is going to be scrutinized the same way. But you know, there– if you’re on the left, you’re going to be criticized by the by the right no matter what if you’re a woman, if I mean anyone but but if you’re a woman and you’re a woman of color, or you, you will undergo like processes of racialization, gendered racialization, in those right wing conversations.
So AOC, for example, is constantly criticized or she was more so in the beginning of her tenure, and this was probably used to discredit her. But as you know, “oh, she speaks Spanish why she’s speaking Spanish?” Oh, “she pronounces her name with a Spanish accent. Why is she doing that?” It’s frightening, because what it’s (AOC’s actions) doing is threatening white public space. Like, “No. In politics or in the media, we don’t have accents.” So anybody that comes arrives with a slightly different phonetic, you know, interpretation or, or different appearance, like, “Oh, they’re threatening this, this white order.”
But we know that, you know, black people and brown people can ascribe to whiteness, they can, you know, there are black Republicans. And so, okay, why aren’t they being criticized because they’re not, they’re not kind of stepping out of line. They’re kind of you, they’re using what we consider appropriate, standardized English and that in that context, which is, you know, a very colonial idea. This is all reminiscent of colonialism, of who’s civilized, of who speaks appropriately, who speaks well, who’s articulate.
So the moment you have somebody racialized show up, speaking standardized English, it’s still an issue. We saw Obama being you know, Oh, “he’s so articulate, oh look how well he speaks.” It’s like, why, why wouldn’t he? He went, you know, he’s a Harvard lawyer. And then you have the same just recently with Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Oh, she’s so articulate.” Well, of course, she’s articulate.
But then you have, you know, criticisms of AOC sounding like a child. There’s a lot of infantilization of her voice. But then when Amy Coney Barrett was, you know, for her hearings, you have the left doing that, saying she sounds like a little girl. But the right is not saying anything. So you know, if this is a lot of it is just political alignment. But if you’re on the wrong side, you know, people will come after you. So with AOC, in particular, because like when she’s ascribing, or when you know, when she, quote, unquote, sounds white, she’s criticized, when she sounds, you know, like a Latina, she’s criticized. So standardized English or appropriate forms of speaking will never save her. Because she’s just, she’s always going to be racialized by the right and scrutinized because she’s a progressive woman of color. And, you know, we saw similar occurrences with Hillary Clinton, more, I think, for her appearance, and her stature. And so it seems like you know, language serves often as a proxy to attack other other -isms or other identity markers, and language is a safe place to attack because it’s not protected by civil rights. It’s not, it’s not considered a civil right for a person to speak their language or just to have an accent or, you know, that’s different from everyone else. So it’s easy to attack language, because it’s not something we consider part of identity in many, many regards.
Julia S.
Yeah, it’s like, in the ways that because language is not sort of a protected class, in the same way that you can’t discriminate against someone for their gender in theory. You can attack someone for their language in a way that it seems almost untethered from their identity, even though obviously, they’re intimately related. And this, I think, is part of this question of code switching. And we have a clip from Tucker Carlson and Mark Stein on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where they talk exactly about sort of this question of code switching and criticize AOC
Tucker Carlson:
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez started sporting a new accent while speaking at Al Sharpton’s extremely tax exempt conference last week. Watch.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
“The fights been long. Yeah, this is what organizing looks like. This is what building power looks like. I’m proud to be a bartender. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.” (spoken in Bronx-like accent)
Julia S.
Right. So just listening to that one short clip we can sort of guess how Tucker Carlson and Mark Stein might respond to it, what are some of the sort of markers that they are picking up on, or they’re seeing as being a problem for the way that she’s speaking?
Gabriella L.
Right. So for one, it’s the audience. So they’re, you know, they’re gonna criticize her language use, but then they’re also criticizing who’s there. So, oh, you know, she’s insincere. She’s at this, you know, at this predominantly black, she’s speaking to a predominantly black and brown audience with, you know, this invented accent. I mean, I don’t know–AOC is from the Bronx, and she did grow up in an environment where she can probably access different registers, different forms of speaking, depending on who she’s with. You know, some people even you know, said maybe it was a bit exaggerated, and maybe it was, I don’t know, but she’s also part of that community. And so the way that Tucker Carlson and Stein set it up is that you can’t, or that Carlson really sets it up, is that you can’t have more– you have to have one kind of identity, and you need to be consistent, right? And if you’re not, then you’re insincere.
And that is just, again, divorcing language from people. And, you know, the field of linguistics generally is very guilty of doing that as well. Language is embodied all the time humans produce it. And, and you can’t analyze language production away from its speakers. So to say that, you know, “she’s sporting this accent, like, what is she doing,” is to assume that, that isn’t part of her identity, or her history, as you know, Puerto Rican American in New York. And there’s always going to be that kind of, I mean, Obama experienced the same. So he, you know, when he, and there’s been a lot of parodies about it, when he was with a black, more black audience, you know, he he used more African American Vernacular English, and, and a different, you know, different register, and was criticized just the same. So what it does, ultimately is assume that monolingualism is the norm. And everyone is multilingual. So everyone changes registers, everyone has different forms of speaking, depending on who they’re with. And, and so it’s the same, it’s, it’s is the dominant rejection of multilingualism as normal, which, I mean, multilingualism is the norm, but it’s the rejected norm, from I mean, in, in US generally, but in right wing politics, especially, which is, you know, very, you know, very monolingual standardized English supporting, however, even people on the right, you know, they’re not, they’re also not ascribing to a very monolingual standardized English.
So when someone who is racialized is veering away from that, they’re (right wing media) automatically tying in all these aspects of identity, skin color, background religion, with the fact that they’re producing something that’s marked.
And I think one of the great things that you bring up in this point is that it’s not only a criticism of AOC, and how she is speaking, but it’s also a criticism of the audience, right, and of the sort of entire situation that she’s in that she could have something in common with his audience that maybe some of the Republicans wouldn’t be able to have in common with the audience because there are aspects of having a shared background growing up in the Bronx that some of the Republicans may not have. One of the strategies that they then use in this same interview is to really, I would say, switch gears and to make this into a point of comparison about Democrats sort of practicing in authentic language in general. So let’s listen to that next clip.
Tucker Carlson:
Ocasio-Cortez says she’s from the Bronx and she’s always spoken that way. She says it was code switching and the normal day to day voice is the fake one. But she’s not the first Democrat to discover a long lost accent was speaking before an African American audience. [laughs] You’ll remember–watch.
Hillary Clinton:
I don’t feel no way tired. I’m come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. (Southern American English accent)
Tucker Carlson:
Mark, if you patronized an audience that much would you feel shame?
Mark Stein:
Well, look in fairness, I’d say Alexandria is–Hillary’s terrible at it. Absolutely terrible. Alexandria, if you’re gonna do it, you have to do it—I speak as a foreigner. So I can’t tell the difference between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and William F. Buckley Jr. All your Americans sound the same. Hillary can’t do it. And actually, I think that gets to the heart of it. Alexandria can get away with it in a way that Hillary can’t. Because I think for Hillary and Joe Biden when he was doing “they’re gonna put y’all back in chains.” I think those those people are saying, “I want to be something other than white, take my whiteness away from me.” I’m Indian, like Elizabeth Warren, I’m Hispanic, like Beto O’Rourke, or I’m just whoever I’m standing in front of at the moment, like Hillary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whatever you say about her, is doing it with a much lighter touch.
Julia S.
Yeah, so I think I mean, one of the really fascinating and potentially very disturbing things about this clip is it’s actually a moment where Fox News is almost acknowledging intersectionality, right? They are saying like, there is something about identity that is actually really important to, you know, the successfulness of code-switching and how it’s received. And also, obviously, these clips are from different eras and different times and political speaking, which should not go unnoticed here. So what do you think they’re getting at? And what can we learn from this second clip?
Gabriella L.
Well, now there’s suddenly I mean, for one, this is something that Fox News does. I have a few clips here, something I’m developing into a paper, but they invite someone who they consider to be ‘foreign’ on the program to comment on these issues. You know, so we’re going to bring on someone British, he’s ‘foreign’ enough for us, to have some authority on this subject. So now they’re flipping a switch, they’re saying, Okay, actually, it’s okay to code switch, if you look for if you look different enough, or if you act, or if your identity is different enough. So what seems like oh, like, okay, what are they doing here? This sounds interesting, is actually just re re like reiterating these divisionary lines, or these biological identity lines, right? If you’re white, and you can’t have more than one identity, if you’re Latina, sure, we’re still going to criticize you for it, though, right? So it’s like this constant back and forth that’s just very confusing. Like, what are you trying to do with this discourse? And what they’re trying to do is say, like, well, she’s , you know, she’s foreign enough. She’s different enough. She’s other enough to get away with it. AOC, that is.
Hillary–I don’t, I don’t really know her. I don’t know where she’s from. I can’t remember. Maybe, I mean, I don’t think she grew up in the South, but maybe she did. But obviously, her accent was exaggerated. But if it maybe what if she were from the south, and she actually did have that accent, most of politics is having to adjust your speech. If you grew up in a very, if you grew up kind of speaking a variety of English or any variety that is not super standardized, like, I would have to adjust. Being from California, I have a lot of uptalk. I have, I can have a very California accent at times that people think is dumb, right? Like I’ve been told that like, “Oh, you, you’re using ‘like’ too much.” Sure, I’d have to modify all that if I went into politics. So if I were with an audience of, you know, young Californians, would I be criticized for speaking like them? And who would know if it were sincere or not? Right? So it’s this constant, like, let’s draw the lines of who’s considered sincere, who’s authentic and who’s not. But then those lines are also then used later to, you know, to marginalize. So what they are doing here is clever and most people can’t perceive that. But it’s and that’s how you get people drawn in. And that’s how you get them disgusted and upset at the presence of, you know, inauthenticity in their political arena.
Julia S.
Yeah, and maybe with that we can sort of turn towards the ends of these forms of right wing political discourse, because we’ve listened to a lot of Fox News clips. What is the intent; how do these get their listeners to be on their side? We’ve deconstructed a lot of it, shown the techniques that they’re using, but what are they trying to produce in their audience?
Gabriella L.
Sure. And this is typical of populism in general, but it seems to be very, very good tactic of right wing populism here, right in the US right now, especially in a post-Trump era, or hopefully post-, where they want you to feel disgusted. And so there’s a book called Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai, and disgust is what this author considers the most extreme ugly feeling. So if you’re disgusted, you will have a strong, very strong reaction to whatever it is disgusting you, and you will want to get rid of it. So we see that ugly emotion with Yoho in his encounter with AOC. And that diatribe on the steps, were like, “Oh, you’re so disgusting.” And he called her disgusting, that I have to do this, I have to call you out publicly.
And you see this with Fox News all the time. These like, “oh, how, like, how horrible this person is.” Representative Ilhan Omar gets also a lot of slack from Tucker Carlson and other pundits, you know, for ‘hating America’. And she only hates America, according to them, because she’s not from here. So you know, or that she doesn’t really belong here. So anything, any criticism is just pure hatred. And, you know, people latch on to those like that, that when that affect is drawn out of them, it’s very strong.
This is why there’s such a strong following of Trump. And this new kind of wave of right wing populism is because people are disgusted. And it’s all, you know, again, against this backdrop of what a backdrop of what they think America is, and what it should be. Which is, again, just as if America started in 1776, you know, the United States, that’s when it was born, as like, as a, like, nothing existed before then, right? So if that’s your kind of baseline, then anything that threatens that order is, is very threatening, and very indicative of, you know, what, how public order is starting to change. And so the high number or the rising number of racialized people in Congress, in these positions of power is just a constant threat to that white public order. And people have very strong sentiments about their country. And so they just latch on to that kind of rhetoric because it’s also sensationalism, right? And we have to remember that Fox News and all news media is in profit making, you know, profit making media ecology that is looking to sensationalize and make money. Where you see kind of less of that sensationalist kind of rhetoric in those kinds of public radio that isn’t necessarily trying to make money. So Fox News does a very good job of drawing people in by ascribing to their emotions.
Julia S.
Yeah. And I think what that does is it really helps us understand sort of like the broader political landscape, right? It’s not just this one instance of Yoho calling Ocasio Cortez an “effing bitch” on the Capitol steps, right? It’s about this broader media ecology that enables that. So thank you so much for coming on and telling us about this broader media landscape.
Gabriella L.
Thank you so much for having me.
Narrator
Thank you for listening. To learn more about Social Science Matrix, please visit https://matrix.berkeley.edu.