Pronominalization, agency and identity: the (in) visibilisation of agency in the narrative discourse of single mothers in Mexico City

Authors

Abstract

From a critical-discursive perspective and using the narrative as a unit of analysis, in this article I show some linguistic strategies with which a socially discriminated group, such as Mexican single mothers, negotiates its identity, protects its face and resists dominant discourses. The strategies we focus on are the pronominalization of yo; the use of tú without a pronoun in a collective sense; and the use of the marked gender of the pronouns nosotras and una. Through different narrative extracts, elicited in semi-directed interviews with six single mothers, I illustrate the functions that these linguistic elements fulfill. The results show that pronominalization has an agentive function that is part of a face-work (Brown and Levinson 1987); the second person singular without a pronoun is a face-protecting strategy, while the use of marked gender has a differentiating function. This analysis shows that it is essential to consider the complete communicative situation in which the narratives arise in order to assign meaning to the use of such linguistic strategies.

Keywords:

Agency, Pronominalization, Narratives, Single mothers, Mexico

Author Biography

Alba N. García Agüero, Universität Basel/Universität Bern, Suiza

Para correspondencia, dirigirse a: Alba N. García Agüero (alba.garcia@unibe.ch), Länggassstrasse 49, CH-3012 Berna.

References

Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ahearn, Laura M. 2001. Language and Agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109–137.

Bamberg, Michael. 1997. Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7: 335-342.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Penelope y Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some universals in language use. Cambridge, Reino Unido: Cambridge University Press.

Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bucholtz, Mary. 1999. You Da man: narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4): 46-479.

______ 2009. From stance to style: gender, interaction, and indexicality in Mexican immigrant youth slang. En Alexandra Jaffe (ed.). Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, pp. 146-170. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Castillo, Jénnifer., M. Galarza Dulce. M. y González, Rocío A. 2015. Resiliencia en familias monoparentales con jefatura femenina en contextos de pobreza. Revista Científica Guillermo de Ockham 13(2): 45-54.

Chant, Sylvia. 1999. Las unidades domésticas encabezadas por mujeres en México y Costa Rica: perspectivas populares y globales sobre el tema de las madres solas. En M. Gonzalez de la Rocha (coord.), Divergencias del modelo tradicional. Hogares de jefatura femenina en América Latina, pp. 97-102. Ciudad de México, México: CIESAS/Plaza y Valdés.

De Fina, Anna. 2003. Identity in narrative: A study of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

De Fina, Anna y Alexandra Georgakopolou. 2008. Introduction: Narrative analysis in the shift from texts to practices. Text & Talk 28(3): 275–281.

Deppermann, Arnulf. 2015. Positioning. En Anna De Fina y Alexandra Georgakopolou (eds.). The handbook of narrative analysis, pp. 369-387. Somerset, US: Wiley-Blackwell.

Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

______ 2004. Agency in Language. En Alessandro Duranti (ed.). A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, pp. 451-473. Oxford: Blackwell.

ELAN. 2022. Computer software. Version 6.1. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Language Archive. Retrieved from https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan

El Heraldo de México. 2019. Madres solteras en México: Pobreza, rezago educativo y sin oportunidades laborales 11/11/2019. En línea: https://heraldodemexico.com.mx/nacional/2019/11/11/madres-solteras-en-mexico-pobreza-rezago-educativo-sin-oportunidades-laborales-131096.html [Consulta: 30/06/22]

Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994 [1985]. Mental spaces. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fludernik, Monika. 2003. Nartural narratology and cognitive parameters. En David Herman (ed.). Narrative theory and the cognitive sciences, pp. 243-267. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Vols. 1, 2. New York: Pantheon.

Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2006. Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis. Narrative inquiry 16(1): 129-137.

______ 2015. Small Stories Research. Methods – Analysis – Outreach. En A. De Fina y A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, pp. 255-271. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.

______ 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1955. On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements of social interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18(3): 213-231.

González de la Rocha, Mercedes. 1999. Divergencias del modelo tradicional. Hogares de jefatura femenina en América Latina (Estigmas y estereotipos que se desvanecen: los hogares de jefatura femenina). Ciudad de México, México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social.

Hill, Jane. 1989. The cultural (?) context of narrative involvement. En Randolf Graczyk y Caroline Wiltshire (eds.). Papers from the twenty-fifth annual regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 138–56. Chicago Linguistics Society. INEGI. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía. En línea: https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/programas/ccpv/2020/doc/cpv2020_pres_res_cdmx.pdf [Consulta: 30/06/22]

Kany, Charles E. 1945. American-Spanish Sintax. Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Kiesling, Scott. 2006. Hegemonic identity-making in narrative. En Anna De Fina, Deborah Shiffrin y Maelich Bamberg (eds.). Discourse and identity, pp. 261-287. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Koven, Michele. 2011. Comparing stories told in sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous conversation. Language in Society 40: 75-89.

Labov, William. 1972. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. En William Labov (ed.). Language in the inner city. Studies in the Black English Vernacular, pp. 354-396. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Labov, William y Joshua Waletzky. 1967. Narrative analysis. En June Helm (ed.). Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, pp. 12-44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Lázaro Castellanos, Rosa; Zapata Martelo Emma y Beatriz Martínez Corona. 2007. Jefas de hogar: cambios en el trabajo y en las relaciones de poder. Política y cultura, (28): 201-224.

Millán Orozco, Antonio. 1970. Anomalías en la concordancia del nombre en el español de la Ciudad de México. Anuario de Letras, Lingüística y Filología 8: 125-146.

Ochs, Elinor. 1992. Indexing gender. En Alessandro Duranti y Charles Goodwin (eds.). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, pp. 335-358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oroz, Rodolfo 1966. La lengua castellana en Chile. Santiago: Universidad de Chile. Riessman Kohler, Catherine. 1993. Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Santos, María L., Nelcy Valencia, Juan C. Celis. y Ángela Betancourt. 2011. Mujeres Ausentes y Cabezas de Familia: Realidades Sociales y Económicas de las Familias Transnacionales Constituidas entre Colombia y España. Universidad de Salamanca. Última fecha de consulta 12.06.23: https://gredos.usal.es/bitstream/handle/10366/121336/Mujeres%20Ausentes%20y%20Cabezas%20de%20Familia.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Schegloff, Emanuel. 1997. “Narrative analysis” thirty years later. En Michael Bamberg (ed.). Oral versions of personal experience: Three decades of narrative analysis. Special issue of Journal of Narrative and Life History 7: 97–106.

Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996. Narrative as self portrait: sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in society 25: 167-203.

Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. En Keith. H. Basso y Henry. A. Selby (eds.). Meaning in anthropology, pp. 11-55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

______ 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. En Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks y Carol L. Hofbauer (eds.). The elements: A parasession on linguistic units and levels, pp. 193-248. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.

Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics, Concept structuring systems. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Toscano Mateus, Humberto 1953. El español en el Ecuador. Madrid: C. S. l. C.

Zabala, María del Carmen. 2010. Jefatura femenina de hogar, pobreza urbana y exclusión social. Una perspectiva desde la subjetividad en el contexto urbano. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO.