1media/cables.jpg2016-12-11T17:37:54-08:001980-19999plain2016-12-17T15:03:29-08:00During this time, we begin to see the use of terms which show progress towards including people of colour in discourses pertaining to American women. The term black is the seventh most frequent on the list of Terms with a count of 83. The Trends graph shows this word maintaining a relatively consistent frequency throughout the corpus as well. Contexts shows connections between black and words related to culture, education, familial relationships and Olympic sporting events amongst other topics, demonstrating a wide variety of contexts in which the black female body was being situated and recognized in the NYT through these particular decades.
Contexts also shows interesting information surrounding the term equal which, though often related to women’s rights and abortion rights, is in some instances connected to the rights of “homosexuals, blacks, Jews, children [and] the aged,” or concerned with women’s rights in Muslim countries. There is also a strong increase in language relating to queer identities (though the term queer is not present itself), including homosexual*(6 times), gay*(10), and lesbian*(30). Perhaps the inclusion of so many terms related to identity that were previously left out of NYT’s articles, demonstrates growth beyond the parochial, essentialist discourses plaguing many feminist theorists of the second wave. Instead, we see signs of movement towards an intersectional understanding of feminist issues, and the third wave of feminism.
