Becoming BAME: social identities and racialised terminology in the UK

Abstract

This article examines the politics of racialised terminology through the first sociolinguistic, cultural analysis of the acronym BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) in the UK. Using a mixed methods approach, we present an analysis of how this collective term of ethnic difference is used across parliamentary discourse, news articles, and social media spaces, identifying a rise in the term since 2014, but also evidence of a decline since 2022, together with qualitative interpretations of the mechanisms underpinning discursive (re)constructions of the UK’s Black and Asian communities. More specifically, our analysis situates language as a site of identity struggle where racially minoritised communities can be fixed and administered but also strive for social change. We propose that BAME is a race-making discursive practice where a hierarchical and lateral arrangement between institutions and publics co-exists, since it is a term that is both imposed and aligned with. BAME, as a form of racial categorisation, is thus implicated in the ambivalence of racialised discourse.