Language, Power, and Transracial Identity: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Florence Olajide’s Coconut

Abstract

This study critically investigates the intersections of language, power, and transracial identity in Florence Olajide’s Coconut (2021) through the theoretical lenses of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. Applying a qualitative research approach, the study employs Fairclough’s 3D model as a methodological tool of Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the memoir's textual, discursive, and social practices. The study highlights how linguistic choices, narrative structures and institutional discourses shape, reproduce, and challenge predetermined racial ideologies within the context of transracial fostering in postcolonial Britain. By relating the memoir within the discourses of cultural contexts, the study illustrates how language functions as a tool of hegemonic control and operates the counter-hegemonic narrative that challenges the agencies and power dynamics. Ultimately, the study focuses on hybridity as the emergence of a third space in which identity is transracialized due to experiences of cultural dislocation and identity fragmentation. The study contributes to existing studies of Critical Discourse Analysis, postcolonial narratives, and transracial studies by aligning with the post-2020 work of Coconut (2021), which serves as a powerful direction for ideological reproduction.