Crossing paths: storytelling and storytellers in a mobile world
Professor Anna De Fina
Georgetown University, USA
Anna De Fina is Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics and Chair of the Italian Department at Georgetown University, and Affiliated Faculty with the Linguistics Department. Her interests focus on narrative, discourse and identity, immigrant and transnational communities and Italian American studies.
She has published widely on a variety of topics in Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, from the discourse construction of identities to the use of media among transnational communities, from narratives in immigrant discourse to the role of ethnography in sociolinguistic research. Among her publications are the volumes Analyzing Narrative: Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2012) co-authored with Alexandra Georgakopoulou, Identity in Narrative (2003, John Benjamins), and the edited collections Handbook of Narrative Analysis (2015, Wiley Blackwell), with Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Discourse and Identity (2006, Cambridge University Press), with D. Schiffrin and M. Bamberg.
Abstract
The study of narratives has occupied for several decades a central position in research about migrants and mobile individuals and groups. Most narrative based research has focused on the construction of identities and... [ view full abstract ]
The study of narratives has occupied for several decades a central position in research about migrants and mobile individuals and groups. Most narrative based research has focused on the construction of identities and reconstruction of experiences, usually by migrants belonging to specific ethnic or national groups. And although the shift in narrative studies from representational to interactional approaches has led to greater attention to narrators’ local positioning and the co-construction of narrative worlds, the focus of such research is still very much on positionalities and the representation of experiences by members of homogeneous communities. The patterns and composition of new migrant flows often pose challenges to such approaches to storytelling first because migrants who share dramatic experiences of uprooting and separation more often than not do not come from the same country and do not form homogeneous communities in the country of arrival, and second because given the nature of those experiences they are less prone to sharing them with researchers. In this paper I will argue that a practice-oriented and reflexive view of narrative that puts the stress on participants and on processes rather than on stories and events can offer an alternative tool to understand some of the experiences of migrants in our mobile world. At the same time, such approach can help us move the focus from identity building among groups with common denominators, towards meaning making practices stemming from encounters and sustained interactions between mobile and local individuals, thus also allowing for the investigation of shifting identities and chronotopes and of diverse narrative formats. To illustrate this point, I will use data from a project involving the social and linguistic integration of unaccompanied migrant minors in Sicily.
Session
KN-6 » Keynote (09:30 - Friday, 29th June, F&PAA Lecture Theatre)
