Positioning in Somali narratives in the Saldanha bay municipality area on the west coast of South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is interested in discourses of displacement in which migrants articulate the experience ofseeking improved life chances in a community considerably removed from their place of origin. Notonly physical and environmental distance, but also distance related to cultural, linguistic andreligious differences distinguish the (im)migrants from the local indigenous population, which isalready a culturally and linguistically diverse community. This study investigates how histories ofdisplacement and experiences of alienation or integration may be discursively managed among agroup of young Somali males aged between 15 and 35 who entered South Africa in their late teensor early twenties.Specifically, this thesis considers how young Somali men who relocated to a rural Western Capetown and make a living through trading, present themselves in English-language narratives elicitedduring informal interviews. The study was conducted in Vredenburg, the administrative centre andeconomic hub of the Saldanha Bay Municipal area on the West Coast of South Africa. The data forthe study was collected by means of audio recorded interviews. To supplement this data and gainmore perspective on the situatedness of the discourses, the researcher further relied on field notes aswell as additional informal conversations with the participants. The data was collected over a periodof five months in 2007.To analyse the data, the researcher draws on the theoretical frameworks of Labov's structuralanalysis of narratives and Wodak and Reisigl's (2001) discourse-historical approach, and Bamberg's(1997) narrative constructivist perspective. The research aims to determine (i) how the narratorsconstruct themselves in their narratives, and (ii) how speakers position themselves towards thecontent of their narratives, and towards their actual and imagined audiences.This study shows that displacement brings about new contexts characterised by uncertainty, conflictand inequalities, and this influences the way narrators orient themselves. The Somali narrators, ininterviews conducted in English with a community outsider, position themselves as displaced andmarginalised. During their narratives, the participants used several linguistic strategies to presentthemselves in various ways to actual or imagined audiences, which lead to negative otherpresentationand positive self-presentation and construction of in-group and out-group membership.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University