Stereotypes and chronotopes: The peasant and the cosmopolitan in narratives about migration. (16th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Creese, Angela; Blackledge, Adrian
• Is Part Of: Journal of sociolinguistics. Volume 24:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 419
• Page End: 440
• Publication Date: 2019-12-16
• Subjects: chronotope -- identity -- migration -- narrative -- stereotype; Sociolinguistics -- Periodicals; 306.4405
• DOI: 10.1111/josl.12376
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1360-6441

Abstract

Abstract: Stereotypes are chronotopic (Bakhtin, 1994) in the sense that they make good use of character types in time and space to utter identifiable speech forms and make evident other semiotic displays. This paper argues for sociolinguistics to expand its interpretation of the chronotope to encompass the relationship between "character" and "author" in identity texts. It suggests that conflating author and character in identity scholarship, as is the case in much sociolinguistic research, risks losing an opportunity to understand how people author characters in their narratives to project sets of values and beliefs. Using linguistic ethnography, we report on two migrant women and their interactions among colleagues to illustrate their authoring of two characters, namely the peasant and the cosmopolitan. We show how these specific women mobilize these characters in narrative production to refute harmful traditions and ethnolinguistic stereotypes in favour of cosmopolitan identities which draw on broader geographical and social scales associated with the city. Abstract : 成见是具有时空性的表达，是从时间和空间中抽取不同特征来呈现当下可辨识的话语形式，同时为其它符号展示阐明意义。本文旨在拓展社会语言学中对时空体这一概念的阐述，以此涵盖身份认同文本中"角色"和"创作者"之间的关系分析。 本文指出，如大多数社会语言学研究所示，在身份认同学术讨论中，对创作者和角色进行异文合并，使得我们失去了理解人们如何在此类叙述中投射特定价值和观念的机会。 通过使用语言人种志研究方法，我们对两位女性移民与其同事之间的话语互动进行分析报告，重点说明她们在互动中如何创作两个角色：农民和世界主义者。我们展示这两位特定的女性如何在叙述过程中流动化她们的上述角色，如何通过反驳有害的传统认识和人种志语言偏见，来彰显她们的世界主义者身份认同，她们来自与城市紧密连接的、更广泛的地理性社会性规模的身份认同。