Social categories, Standardized Relational Pairs and identity work in World War II-narratives
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Kim Schoofs
Kim Schoofs is a PhD student at KU Leuven within the Department of Linguistics. In 2016 she started working on her PhD project –
Exploring the Dialectic Relation Between Narrative and Context from an Interactional Sociolinguistic Perspective: The Case of World War II-testimonies – under the supervision of Dorien Van De Mieroop. Kim’s PhD project aims to gain insight into new ways of scrutinizing the dialectic relation between the discursive construction of local stories and of identities on the one hand, and dominant discourses circulating in the global context on the other hand. The theoretical elaboration of Positioning Analysis is at the core of her project. In general, Kim’s research interests cover Narrative, Life stories, Identity Construction, Discourse Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics.
and
Dorien Van De Mieroop
Dorien Van De Mieroop works as an associate professor at the Linguistics Department of KU Leuven, Belgium. Her main research interest is in the discursive analysis of identity. She has (co-)authored more than 30 articles in international, peer reviewed journals, co-edited a special issue on professional identities in the journal
Pragmatics (2012, 22/2) and a book (Identity Struggles , Benjamins, 2017). With Jonathan Clifton, she also coauthored a book entitledMaster Narratives, Identities, and the Stories of Former Slaves (Benjamins, 2016). She is co-editor ofNarrative Inquiry .
Abstract
Drawing on Membership Categorization Analysis, we aim to tease out how narrators talk into being the social group constellations in their storyworlds and how these – potentially shifting – constellations can be related to the narrator’s identity constructions. We investigate two World War II-testimonies narrated by Belgian concentration camp survivors and scrutinize whether the expected Standardized Relational Pair of victim-perpetrator – viz. the camp prisoners versus the Nazis – is in operation, how these two categories are talked into being, whether other social groups are mentioned and how all these processes affect the narrators’ identity work. It proved to be the case that, even though the victim-perpetrator Standardized Relational Pair is indeed present in both testimonies, it functions very differently in both stories, resulting in almost opposing identity work by the two narrators.
About the authors
Kim Schoofs is a PhD student at KU Leuven within the Department of Linguistics. In 2016 she started working on her PhD project – Exploring the Dialectic Relation Between Narrative and Context from an Interactional Sociolinguistic Perspective: The Case of World War II-testimonies – under the supervision of Dorien Van De Mieroop. Kim’s PhD project aims to gain insight into new ways of scrutinizing the dialectic relation between the discursive construction of local stories and of identities on the one hand, and dominant discourses circulating in the global context on the other hand. The theoretical elaboration of Positioning Analysis is at the core of her project. In general, Kim’s research interests cover Narrative, Life stories, Identity Construction, Discourse Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics.
Dorien Van De Mieroop works as an associate professor at the Linguistics Department of KU Leuven, Belgium. Her main research interest is in the discursive analysis of identity. She has (co-)authored more than 30 articles in international, peer reviewed journals, co-edited a special issue on professional identities in the journal Pragmatics (2012, 22/2) and a book (Identity Struggles, Benjamins, 2017). With Jonathan Clifton, she also coauthored a book entitled Master Narratives, Identities, and the Stories of Former Slaves (Benjamins, 2016). She is co-editor of Narrative Inquiry.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Social categories, Standardized Relational Pairs and identity work in World War II-narratives
- The discursive construction of high achievers’ identities in American culture
- Resisting Europe, setting Greece free: Facebook political discussions over the Greek referendum of the 5th July 2015
- Online hate propaganda during election period: The case of Macedonia
- Political Metaphor Analysis
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Social categories, Standardized Relational Pairs and identity work in World War II-narratives
- The discursive construction of high achievers’ identities in American culture
- Resisting Europe, setting Greece free: Facebook political discussions over the Greek referendum of the 5th July 2015
- Online hate propaganda during election period: The case of Macedonia
- Political Metaphor Analysis
