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Part of
Influencer Discourse: Affective relations and identities
Edited by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Alexandra Georgakopoulou
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 349] 2024
► pp. 148–174

Chapter 6
Cancel Culture and influencers

The Hilaria Baldwin case

| University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The cancelation of Hilaria Baldwin, amid accusations of deception (regarding claims that she was a Spanish woman and Spanish was her native language) and Cultural Appropriation (CAPP), was a complex case, involving language ideologies, authenticity, and the racialization undergone by the Spanish language and related identities in the US, exacerbated by Cancel Culture (CC). While CC has been widely discussed in non-academic literature, recent academic scholarship on the topic largely takes a macro approach. This chapter provides a less frequent examination of cancelation processes at the micro level, analyzing user-generated posts in related YouTube videos. Drawing on discursive pragmatics and Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies, it argues that Hilaria Baldwin’s case is deeply connected to perceptions of Spanish/Latino/Hispanic identity in the US. Despite dissent on CAPP, Hilaria’s dishonesty about her background triggered her cancelation, reenforcing claims about the fundamental link between perceived immoral behavior and cancelation events as well as the high expectations regarding authenticity in influencers’ self-presentation.
Keywords: lifestyle, influencer, cultural appropriation, Latino/a, racialization of Spanish, cancel culture
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background to Hilaria Baldwin’s cancelation
  • 3.Understanding CC
    • 3.1A discursive pragmatic approach to CC and cancelation
      • 3.1.1Macro level
      • 3.1.2Meso level
      • 3.1.3Micro level
  • 4.Triggers of Hilaria’s cancelation
    • 4.1Cultural Appropriation (CAPP): Issues of race/racialization of identities and language
    • 4.2Lying and authenticity
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Data sampling and selection
    • 5.2Theoretical framework and procedure of analysis
  • 6.Results and discussion
    • 6.1Corpus-assisted analysis: Quantitative analysis
    • 6.2Qualitative analysis
      • 6.2.1Cultural exploitation or cultural exchange?
      • 6.2.2Reasons for cancelation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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