Chronotopically conditioned identities: The Chinese Indonesian context

The current paper examines how ethnic Chinese Indonesian youth negotiate identities in interaction. I propose a framework which applies and expands on Bloommaert and De Fina’s (2016) chronotopic identity theory. The... [ view full abstract ]

The current paper examines how ethnic Chinese Indonesian youth negotiate identities in interaction. I propose a framework which applies and expands on Bloommaert and De Fina’s (2016) chronotopic identity theory. The framework is used to account for young Chinese Indonesians’ construction of stance and socially salient identities in interaction. Blommaert and De Fina state that when individuals enter into a speech environment, they are presented with one or more chronotopic frames which emerge in particular timespace conditions, and which include particular social identities and patterns of social behaviour. Participants in interaction may choose to respond to these frames by converging towards the expected behaviours encoded in the chronotopic frames or diverging from them. The participants’ responses then reproduce chronotopic frame(s) for ongoing talk. I expand on Blommaert and De Fina’s previous work by arguing that an individual’s personal identity can influence their response to various chronotopic frames. The framework I propose can be used to analyse how participants in interaction formulate responses to chronotopic frames and reproduce chronotopic frames for ongoing talk. The framework shows that an individual’s perduring sense of identity, including their beliefs, ideologies and sense of self, plays a significant role in producing a response to chronotopic frames. The framework is presented in three stages in the current paper. Stage 1 focuses on the participant’s entry into a speech environment. Stage 2 illustrates how a participant evaluates the conditions in the speech environment, interprets the chronotopic frame(s) and calibrates them with their sense of identity before producing a response. Stage 3 shows how the participants’ response simultaneously invokes chronotopic frames for ongoing talk, enacts stance and presents a chronotopically conditioned identity. I apply the framework to a series of recorded interactions amongst Chinese Indonesian youths in Pontianak. The analysis demonstrates that the chronotopic identity that individuals choose to present can reproduce and contribute to their perduring sense of identity. 

Blommaert, J., & De Fina, A. (2016). Chronotopic identities: On The Timespace Organisation of Who We Are. In Ikizoglu, D.; Wegner, J. and De Fina, A. (Eds.), Diversity and Superdiversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives. Georgetown University Press: Washington