The linguistic construction of identity in transnational relocation narratives Examining discursive practices in expatriate blogs Linda Martina Walz Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds York St John University School of Languages and Linguistics April 2018 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Linda Martina Walz to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. i Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people for the support they have given me throughout my research process.
Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof Helen Sauntson and Dr Andrew Merrison, for their support, feedback and advice, as well as for their confidence in me and my project. They have made me feel welcome and appreciated from the start. I am grateful to York St John University for the scholarship that has enabled me to study for a PhD in the UK, as well as to the members of the research unit LIdIA for providing such a friendly and inspiring research environment. My special thanks go to Prof Chris Hall for his support in the course of my annual progress report meetings and his feedback on my work, to Dr Beverly Geesin for reading my finished thesis and discussing it with me in a mock viva, as well as to Dr Clare Cunningham and Dr Chisato Danjo for sharing many writing sessions and conversations.
Throughout my doctoral studies, I was given many opportunities to broaden my academic experience. I thank Dr Rachel Wicaksono for enabling me to be involved in teaching and assessment on several modules and for the generous support I received for co-organising and hosting the international postgraduate conference ConSOLE. I am further grateful for numerous very productive and fully funded writing retreats provided both by the research unit LIdIA and the Academic Development Directorate. Also, I am thankful to researchers in my field for interesting conversations and helpful feedback on my work in the course of conferences.
Working on my thesis would have been an isolating experience without the friendship of a community of fellow research students in the Graduate Centre to share the ups and downs of the process. There are too many to name them all, but particularly ‘the usual suspects’: Tracy Donachie, Winojith Sanjeewa, Dr Lauren Stephenson, Dr Esmie Smith, Linda Marshall Griffiths, Dr Vicky Crawley, Joyce Wambura, Charlotte Haines Lyon, El Stannage, Thilini Wijeratne, Parvaz Ahmad, Jihong Guo, Rob O’Connor, Andy Pendle, Emma Anderson, Duminda Rajasinghe, Margaret Zabiszak, and Dr Cath Heinemeyer. ii It is difficult to find adequate words to thank the people who are always there for me. I am grateful to my partner, Mike Saxton, for his unwavering belief in me, his willingness to listen and the love and strength he is giving me, and equally to my parents Hans and Esther and my sister Claudia for their love and support, no matter what.
It means so much. Last but not least, I would like to thank participants for allowing me to explore their blogs. It is the sharing of stories such as theirs that has inspired and shaped my research. iii Abstract This research examines the linguistic construction of identity in personal narratives of transnational relocation to England in expatriate blogs.
These constitute a form of transition during which individuals engage with who they are. Adopting a sociocultural linguistic approach to identity, the analysis draws on the frameworks of tactics of intersubjectivity (ToI) and membership categorisation analysis (MCA) to show how identity is constructed along the relational dimensions of likeness, realness and power, and how individuals engage in category negotiations throughout their first year abroad. Most commonly, individuals create similarity and difference with regard to both their country of origin and of residence, as well as to other expatriates with whom they share joint foreignness. Less frequently yet more prominently, they authenticate identity, which involves sharing personal experience, displaying expertise, as well as positioning themselves as able to provide unadorned accounts of life abroad and as finding fulfilment through relocation.
However, they also denaturalise identity through expressions of rupture, challenges and being out of place. Issues of power revolve around individuals’ process of obtaining necessary documents and of legitimising their blogging. Category negotiation extends from the initial challenge of not yet having moved whilst already sharing relocation narratives, as well as experiencing liminality, to adopting category membership as expatriates, exploring its predicates and challenging non-members’ assumptions. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge in two ways: empirically by exploring linguistic identity construction in online transnational relocation narratives, which is relevant for an understanding of how individuals discursively engage with transition more generally, and methodologically and theoretically by employing and critiquing two diverse approaches which to the researcher’s knowledge have not been combined in research on linguistic identity construction.
Ultimately, this thesis contributes towards the consideration of how identity and transition can be theorised and investigated using linguistic frameworks. iv Table of contents PART I SETTING THE SCENE .1 Transnational relocation and the expatriate blogosphere .2 Aims and contribution of this thesis.3 Categorisation in migration: a critical discussion of terminology .4 Structure of this thesis .1 Current approaches to identity in linguistics .3 Tactics of intersubjectivity (ToI) .4 Membership categorisation analysis (MCA) .5 Positioning this research. 39 Chapter 3 Narrative and transition .2 Blogs as online narratives. 58 Chapter 4 Expatriate blogs .1 Approaching expatriate blogs .2 Sample selection and ethical considerations .3 Overview of data.
82 PART II TACTICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY. 88 Chapter 5 Exploring dimensions of identity construction .1 Tactics of intersubjectivity (ToI) .2 Coding procedure and considerations .3 Power, likeness and realness: an overview. 94 Chapter 6 Power: authorisation and illegitimation.1 Obtaining legal status: authorisation .2 Anticipating legitimacy: irrealis authorisation .2 Encountering obstacles: illegitimation. 104 v Chapter 7 Likeness: adequation and distinction .1 Creating difference to origin .2 Creating difference to England .1 Creating similarity to origin .2 Creating similarity to England .3 Creating similarity through joint foreignness .3 Interrelation of adequation and distinction.
138 Chapter 8 Realness: authentication and denaturalisation .1 Sharing experiences as they are gained .3 Providing deep insights and unadorned accounts .4 Finding personal fulfilment .2 Doubts, challenges and lacking normality .3 Alternative reality and being out of place .3 From denaturalisation to authentication. 172 PART III MEMBERSHIP CATEGORISATION. 177 Chapter 9 Exploring category negotiations .1 Category fit, category change and the transnational relocation device 177 9.2 Coding procedure and considerations. 190 Chapter 10 Category negotiations of transnational relocation .1 Towards becoming an expatriate .1 The new beginner .1 Building up predicates of an expatriate.2 Challenging other people’s assumptions of a category .3 The invisible expat .4 Returning to normality.
235 Part IV IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN EXPATRIATE BLOGS. 242 Chapter 11 Discussion and conclusion .1 Identity construction in expatriate blogs. 255 Appendix Consent forms. 266 List of tables Table 2-1.
Complementarity of ToI and MCA. Contextualising information on participants. Analysed data per blog. 85 List of figures Figure 4-1.
Nationality of expatriate bloggers in England (N=381). Gender distribution of expatriate bloggers in England (N=381). ToI, based on Bucholtz and Hall (2004a, 2004b). Number of instances coded for ToI.
Negotiating category fit. Negotiating category change. Category negotiations over time in expatriate blogs. 194 vii Abbreviations CA conversation analysis CMC computer-mediated communication GIF graphics interchange format MCA membership categorisation analysis ToI tactics of intersubjectivity UK United Kingdom US United States Transcription conventions All data are rendered verbatim, including spacing, typos, bold and italics, but are normalised for paragraphing.
Hyperlinks are underlined and details provided in square brackets. Post titles are bold and indicated in the discussion. Identifying information is glossed in square brackets. viii PART I SETTING THE SCENE Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Transnational relocation and the expatriate blogosphere A person’s life consists of phases of greater and lesser stability.
There are moments when an individual feels that circumstances in their life are changing, that they are undergoing a transition from one state of being to another. Such moments of perceived instability, when things are shifting and changing, are particularly interesting from a linguistic point of view. Individuals may feel that the changes in their life impact upon who they are as a person, and they may attempt to make sense of this experience through narrative. Telling stories about themselves and their daily life opens up a space in which individuals can position themselves and explore who they are, not just for the sake of others but crucially also for themselves.
Identity is thereby not merely expressed, but constructed through language (De Fina 2016). Of course, identity is constantly under construction, yet an engagement with matters of identity may be especially prevalent at certain times. A particular experience that can impact on an individual’s sense of who they are as a person is moving to another country. They may conceptualise this as the beginning of a new stage in life and a new phase in their personal development.
Whilst moving abroad is not something that everybody experiences, it is certainly becoming more common. The number of international migrants has increased greatly in recent decades and is likely to rise further in future years (International Organization for Migration 2010: 3). In 2017, there were nearly 258 million international migrants worldwide, amounting to 3.4% of the world population (United Nations DESA 2017). From a more local perspective, 588,000 individuals immigrated to the United Kingdom (henceforth UK) in 2016.
The main reasons for immigration were work (47%), study (23%) and joining others (14%) (Office for National Statistics 2017). International migration is hence increasingly common and pursued for a variety of reasons. 1 There exist a wealth of resources that cater to the needs of individuals choosing to move abroad, many of which are available online. For instance, various websites provide information and advice regarding relocation as well as life in the new country, ranging from logistic and financial to sociocultural matters.
Beyond such a factual approach, personal aspects of life abroad have great currency: emphasis is placed on individuals sharing their own experiences, and there are a variety of channels that enable them to do so. Several websites regularly feature interviews with so-called and self-identified ‘expatriates’ about their life abroad, and some collected stories are published in book form (Peterson Fenn 2011; Harling 2012; Gindre and Richert 2016). Moreover, a variety of ways of engaging with others and building a community are available. For instance, InterNations is a social networking site for individuals who have moved abroad, which has the declared motto of “connecting global minds” and which in different cities worldwide enables local communities to form and meet regularly (InterNations 2017b).
Online communities further emerge in forums, email lists and through blogging. It is the environment of ‘expatriate blogging’ as a site of identity construction which is the focus of the present research. Online directories list a multitude of blogs about living abroad which are grouped according to country of residence. They typically provide a brief description and a link to the website, which enables interested readers to identify blogs on moving to and living in a certain country.
These blogs form the expatriate ‘blogosphere’. Blogosphere is a term coined by Brad L. Graham in 1999 to refer to the network of blogs available online (Myers 2010: 24). The expatriate blogosphere is thus a collection of blogs on living abroad with various interlinked connections to each other.
Expatriate is adopted in the present research because it is the term participants use themselves; terminology pertaining to migration is critically discussed in Section 1.