Discursive scaling: Moral stability and neoliberal dominance in the narratives of transnational migrant women

Abstract

In this article I apply the notion of scaling as agentive discursive practice to analyze the construction of moral positionings by migrant women. I draw from semi-structured interviews with Uzbek women in the United States and use discourse analytic methods to focus on the relationship between linguistic choices and existing power structures. I show that although these women are caught between multiple moral orders, by linking behaviors associated with these orders to different time-space configurations and different scopes of generalizability, they are able to justify their choices and highlight the stability of their own morality. I further demonstrate that while these acts of scaling are agentive, they may also be used to reinforce rather than dismantle existing hierarchies, pointing to the need for further investigation of the relationship between agency, discourse and power in contemporary globalization.

The (im)possibility of sociolinguistic hybridity: Power and scaling in post‐soviet, transnational life

“…Carr & Lempert, 2016; Dick, 2010), which are theoretical tools that bring nuance and structure to analyses of the discursive imaginary. While chronotopes are spatiotemporal envelopes peopled by particular social types and associated with specific moral norms (Agha, 2007; Bakhtin, 1981; Blommaert, 2015), scales are the ordering of various components, including chronotopes, within the discursive imaginary (Blommaert, 2015; Catedral, 2018).…”

Chronotopic (non)modernity in translocal mobile messaging among Chinese migrants in the UK

“…Our methodology enables us to explore not only how chronotopic identities are performed in interview, but how these are maintained and reconfigured in everyday encounters mediated by mobile technology. Throughout our analysis, we refer to project reports to support our observations (Blackledge, Creese and Hu 2015;2018). For the purpose of this article, we selected one representative exchange per participant to illustrate their negotiation of (non)modernity.…”

“…The imagined world of migrant life leads to speakers reproducing or challenging social inequalities and constructing themselves as particular gendered and classed personae. The need to position themselves in terms of homeland morality emerges also in interviews with transnational migrant women, who discursively manage multiple time-spaces in an attempt to justify their choices and present themselves as moral actors in the context of migration (Catedral 2018; and see Karimzad 2016). In our study, we explore the role that mobile technology can play in shaping how Chinese migrants in the UK position themselves chronotopically towards their multiple realities.…”

Adherence and the Moral Construction of the Self: A Narrative Analysis of Anticoagulant Medication

“…Narrating illness experience to an audience can lead the teller to examine their life in moral terms ( Hydén, 1997 ). Several narrative studies have explored this moral work ( Catedral, 2017 ; Drabble et al, 2019 ; Holdsworth & Robinson, 2008 ; Knutsen et al, 2011 ; Murdoch et al, 2013 ; Riessman, 2003 ; Ryan et al, 2010 ; Silva, 2013 ; Williams, 2002 ). Silva (2013) showed how working-class adults narratively framed emotional self-management and overcoming life’s obstacles as a matter of individual choice, resulting in harsh moral critiques against others who did not achieve self-transformation.…”