Hate Speech in Herman Melville's Moby Dick: A Setback to Multiculturalism.

Abstract

This study sets out to examine the repercussion of hate speech on the progress and promotion of multiculturalism. It seeks to show the extent to which bigoted language affects the mixing and mingling of people from different cultures in different parts of the world. The study thus asserts that the use of foul language by a person or group of people towards another person or other persons greatly hampers the advancement of multiculturalism. This, as hate speech has contributed in fuelling and encouraging discrimination, segregation, marginalization, otherness, and subaltern. It has equally helped in widening the gap between the centre and the margin. The research further showed that hateful language has led to the disintegration and disjoin of communities, nations, and families, which is an adverse effect to multiculturalism and globalization. This study thus proves that if hate speech is not mitigated or eradicated, it will be a major drawback to the furtherance of multiculturalism, as it will be practically almost impossible to embrace the customs and traditions of the people we injure through the use of hate speech. The postcolonial studies theory has been used as the theoretical framework for the analysis of the work under study. This theory will help us to establish the relationship between the perpetrators of hate speech and their victims, and how their interaction can adversely affect the development of multiculturalism. The study will benefit from tenets of postcolonial theory such as centre margin, otherness, subaltern, mimicry, identity, race, resistance, hybridity, hegemony, and migration.

Key words: Hate speech, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Multiculturalism, Postcolonial Theory