"You are one of us."

Abstract

Digitalization has caused the consumption of television via broadband internet to increase, giving media-service providers, such as Netflix and therefore Netflix original TV series, such as Orange Is the New Black (2013), the opportunity to grow and become a part of everyday life. While previous research on Orange Is the New Black emphasizes race, which mostly relates to biology, as a means to create a divide and shape interactions, the concept of ethnicity, referring to the origin and communication of the individual in relation to the formation of groups, has not been explored. The ethnic diversity among inmates in the TV series, as well as the unique environment of a prison, which acts as a pressure cooker, magnifying features which are present in society, make Orange Is the New Black an interesting platform for further research. This study was conducted by the means of a critical discourse analysis: the discourse used by the inmates to describe group formation was analysed. Literature and analysis of discourse within the series led to the construction of certain categories, specifically physical traits, expected behaviour, stereotypes and membership display. These categories all describe the discourse used in intergroup and intragroup interactions in relation to ethnicity and group formation. This study found that because stereotypes are often negative and painful, the inmates in Orange Is the New Black more often used them to describe the outgroup than the ingroup formation and adopt other discourse strategies to describe the ingroup formation in order to protect self-image.