Making sense of being between languages and cultures: a performance narrative inquiry approach

Abstract

This paper explores how French native speakers experience moving between languages and cultures internationally for work purposes. Examining the narratives of professionals who have relocated to Australia from France using performance narrative inquiry methods, I argue that bilingual speakers strategically draw on multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives in interactions in the host culture. The theoretical reference points that underpin the argument draw on the work of Ricoeur on narrative phenomenology, Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital and Goffman's dramaturgical view of the self.Cet article explore comment les Français vivent l'expérience de mobilité entre les langues et les cultures en travaillant à l'étranger. En utilisant les méthodes narratives j'examine les narrations des professionnels français demeurant en Australie et postule que les locuteurs bilingues utilisent de manière stratégique des perspectives linguistiques et culturelles multiples au cours des interactions dans la culture d'accueil. Les points de références théoriques qui sont à la base de cet argument sont la phénoménologie narrative de Ricoeur la notion du capital symbolique de Bourdieu et la conception du soi dramaturgique de Goffman.

Assimilation of Foreign Culture Concepts: Acculturation Experience Using Material of Secondary Texts

“…A lot of researches have been devoted to the process of cultural interaction [1,2,3,4,5], and scientists have made a considerable advance in this field. It has been pointed out that exchange of information between cultures may happen via different products of culture, such as texts, films, cartoons and comics, art etc.…”

Exploring the Intercultural Identity of Slovak-Roma Schoolchildren in the UK

“…This attitude, although perhaps born from an ideological aspiration to respect and preserve a minority ethnicity (see Nistor et al 2014), paradoxically could serve to reinforce an outdated sense of enclosed and immutable otherness. Perhaps Roma ethnicity is being singled out as the single determinant factor of identity, 'manufactured by uncompromising binarization' (Levinson 2014: 16), and there is a failure to perceive individuals of Roma ethnicity as being influenced by globalising forces which are so comprehensively discussed in relation to contemporary identity negotiations (see Bhatia & Ram 2009;Omoniyi 2010;O'Neill 2013). The findings suggest that perceptions of the participants still evidence a degree of essentialism and, in juxtaposition to Antaki and Widdecombe's (1998) interculturality perspective, that the participants' ethnic identity is ascribed permanent salience externally.…”

“…The question arises here as to how far the participants are being, and how far they are becoming. O'Neill (2013) suggests that individuals become 'actors in their own narratives' and 'present preferred selves who strategically negotiate interactions ' (pp. 386-7).…”

“…Taking a performance narrative inquiry approach, O'Neill (2013) argues that today 'there is an increasing need for people to navigate linguistic and cultural borders ' (p. 397) and this has a significant impact on the ways in which identities are constructed, maintained and revised. She concludes that under globalised conditions people must work to move beyond misunderstandings of identity and to reject negative stereotyping.…”

Middle School Emergent Bilingual and Bilingual Students' Perspectives on U.S. History

“…Leung, Harris and Rampton (1997) posited that the traditional assumptions about "idealised" native speakers and emergent bilinguals overlook the reality in multicultural and multilingual settings. Indeed, the research on the language affinity of speakers in historic and contemporary contexts reviewed above suggests a complex relationship between communities seeking to preserve heritage languages as a means of "summoning their roots" (Quirk, 2000) at times, while also using, as Wright (2014) andO'Neill (2013) note, other languages to access educational and market resources. Given these broad sociocultural findings, I next examine research on characteristics and experiences that influence individual identity formation and language learning.…”