Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Wielding Space and Time in Migrant Narratives: Personal and Professional Identities in Discourse

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Negotiating Identities in Nordic Migrant Narratives

Abstract

The chapter examines how spatial and temporal dimensions drive a migrant narrative forward in the storyteller’s presentation of self in conversational discourse. While the literature abounds with accounts of the construction of personal identities, less work is done on how the personal and professional intersect in migrant narratives. We analyze a focus group conversation involving an African doctor and the authors, with our focal participant having come to Scandinavia as a refugee from a war-torn country when she was quite young. The analysis illustrates the complexities of identities and context created by the narrator’s wielding of time and space in her migration narrative in which we witness the emergence of a personal empowered identity that, contrary to expectations, enhances her identity as a medical doctor. Through the use of various linguistic resources at the micro level of interaction, the narrator indexes macro level ideologies and cultural values, thus pointing to the interplay of the subtle layering of hierarchical scales in interactional discourse. Considering space and time as semiotic resources for the speaker enriches the study of identity construction in narratives with a focus on agency, positioning, and categorization, and how identities emerge in interaction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ahearn, Laura M. 2001. Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109–137. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Al Zidjaly, Najma. 2009. Agency as an interactive achievement. Language in Society 38 (2): 177–200. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404509090320.

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baynham, Mike. 2011. Stance, positioning, and alignment in narratives of professional experience. Language in Society 40 (1): 63–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404510000898.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baynham, Mike. 2015. Narrative and space/time. In Handbook of narrative analysis, eds. Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 117–139. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.

  • Baynham, Mike and De Anna Fina, eds. 2005. Dislocation/relocations: Narratives of displacement. Manchester: St. Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benwell, Bethan and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2006. Discourse and identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blommaert, Jan. 2015. Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. The Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 105–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck. 2005. Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication 25 (3): 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2005.05.002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blommaert, Jan, and Anna De Fina. 2017. Chronotopic identities: On the spacetime orientation of who we are. In Diversity and superdiversity: Sociocultural linguistic perspectives, eds. Anna De Fina, Didem Ikizoglu, and Jeremy Wegner, 1–15. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7 (4–5): 585–614. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Canagarajah, Suresh. 2013. Agency and power in intercultural communication: Negotiating English in translocal spaces. Language and Intercultural Communication 13 (2): 202–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2013.770867.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chung, Nicole, and Mensah Demary, eds. 2020. A map is only one story. Twenty writers on immigration, family, and the meaning of home. New York: Catapult.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creese, Angela, and Adrian Blackledge. 2020. Stereotypes and chronotopes: The peasant and the cosmopolitan in narratives about migration. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24: 419–440. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Fina, Anna 2003. Identity in narrative. A study of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Fina, Anna. 2009. Narratives in interview—The case of accounts: For an interactional approach to narrative genres. Narrative Inquiry 19(2): 233–258. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19.2.03def.

  • De Fina, Anna. 2015. Narrative and identities. In Handbook of narrative analysis, eds. Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 351–368. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.ch18.

  • De Fina, Anna. 2019. Insights and challenges of chronotopic analysis for sociolinguistics. In Chronotopic identity work: Sociolinguistic analyses of cultural and linguistic phenomena in time and space, eds. Sjaak Kroon and Jos Swanenberg. Multilingual Matters.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Fina, Anna and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, eds. 2015. Handbook of narrative analysis. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Fina, Anna and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2020. Rethinking narrative: Tellers, tales and identities in contemporary worlds. In The Cambridge handbook of discourse studies, eds. Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 91–114. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108348195.006.

  • De Fina, Anna, Giuseppe Paternostro and Marcello Amoruso. 2020. Odysseus the traveler: Appropriation of a chronotope in a community of practice. Language & Communication 70: 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2019.01.001.

  • Deppermann, Arnulf. 2015. Positioning. In Handbook of narrative analysis, eds. Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 369–387. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.ch19.

  • Elliot, Michelle L., and Aaron Bonsall. 2018. Building stories: Exploring participant experiences and research relationships. Narrative Inquiry 28 (2): 330–345. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17069.ell.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Golden, Anne, and Elizabeth Lanza. 2012. Narratives on literacy: Adult migrants’ identity construction in interaction. In Literacy practices in transition: Perspectives from the Nordic countries, eds. Anne Pitkänen-Huhta and Lars Holm, 27–54. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

    Google Scholar 

  • Golden, Anne, and Elizabeth Lanza. 2013. Metaphors of culture: Identity construction in migrants’ narrative discourse. Intercultural Pragmatics 10 (2): 295–314. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2013-0013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Golden, Anne and Elizabeth Lanza. 2019. Language learning and literacy: The multilingual subject in narratives of older immigrant refugee women. In Reconceptualizing connections between language, literacy and learning, eds. Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, Anne Golden, Lars Holm, Helle Pia Laursen and Anne Pitkänen-Huhta, 253–276. New York: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26994-4_13.

  • Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gyberg, Fanny, Ann Frisén, Moin Syed, Maria Wängqvist, and Ylva Svensson. 2018. “Another kind of Swede”: Swedish youth’s ethnic identity narratives. Emerging Adulthood 6 (1): 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696817690087.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009. Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kramsch, Claire J. 2009. The multilingual subject: What foreign language learners say about their experience and why it matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kramsch, Claire. 2018. Trans-spatial utopias. Applied Linguistics 39 (1): 108–115. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx057.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kroon, Sjaak and Jos Swanenberg, eds. 2019. Chronotopic identity work: Sociolinguistic analyses of cultural and linguistic phenomena in time and space. Multilingual Matters.

    Google Scholar 

  • Labov, William. 1972. Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lanza, Elizabeth. 2012. Empowering a migrant identity: Agency in narratives of a work experience in Norway. Sociolinguistic Studies 6 (2): 285–307. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v6i2.285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lanza, Elizabeth. 2020. Digital storytelling: Multilingual parents’ blogs and vlogs as narratives of family language policy. In Språkreiser. Festskrift til Anne Golden på 70-årsdagen 14. juli 2020, eds. Lars A. Kulbrandstad and Guri Bordal Steien, 177–192. Oslo: Novus Forlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Hakyoon. 2020. Telling stories and sharing cultures for constructing identity and solidarity: A case of informal communication at a workplace. Narrative Inquiry 30 (1): 80–103. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.18046.lee.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Doreen. 2005. For space. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Elizabeth R. 2010. Agency in the making: Adult immigrants’ accounts of language learning and work. TESOL Quarterly 44 (3): 465–487.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moodley, Roy and William West, eds. 2005. Integrating traditional healing practices into counseling and psychotherapy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norton, Bonny. 2013. Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, Elinor and Lisa Kapps. 2001. Living narrative. Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennycook, Alastair. 2018. Posthumanist applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 39 (4): 445–461. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amw016.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riessman, Catherine K. 1993. Narrative analysis. Newbury Park: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røyneland, Unn and Elizabeth Lanza. 2020. Dialect diversity and migration: Disturbances and dilemmas, perspectives from Norway. In Handbook of the changing world language map, eds. Stanley D. Brunn and Roland Kehrein, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_223-1.

  • Slay, Holly S., and Delmonize A. Smith. 2011. Professional identity construction: Using narrative to understand the negotiation of professional and stigmatized cultural identities. Human Relations 64(1): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726710384290.

  • Stevens, Phillip. 2006. Witch doctor. In Encyclopedia of anthropology, ed. H. James Birx. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412952453.n932.

  • Sullivan, Daniel, Roman Palitsky, and Harrison Schmitt. 2020. The spatialization and temporalization of environmental suffering. Narrative Inquiry 30 (2): 271–293. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.18054.sul.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan (MultiLing), University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Elizabeth Lanza & Anne Golden

Authors
  1. Elizabeth Lanza
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Anne Golden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anne Golden .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Pia Lane

  2. Department of Teacher Education, NLA University College, Oslo, Norway

    Bjørghild Kjelsvik

  3. Department of Languages and Literature Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway, Kongsberg, Norway

    Annika Bøstein Myhr

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Lanza, E., Golden, A. (2022). Wielding Space and Time in Migrant Narratives: Personal and Professional Identities in Discourse. In: Lane, P., Kjelsvik, B., Myhr, A.B. (eds) Negotiating Identities in Nordic Migrant Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89109-1_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89109-1_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89108-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89109-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation