Switching identity in multicultural Canadian literature : codeswitching as a discursive strategy and a marker of identity construction

Title: Switching identity in multicultural Canadian literature : codeswitching as a discursive strategy and a marker of identity construction
Source document: The Central European journal of Canadian studies. 2008, vol. 6, iss. [1], pp. 77-87
Extent
77-87
  • ISSN
    1213-7715 (print)
    2336-4556 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
In this paper, I investigate how the discourse on multicultural and multilingual Canadian identity is represented and encoded in contemporary literary works. I focus in particular on the phenomenon of codeswitching as a negotiation of social and personal identity and as a discursive strategy. After outlining the sociolinguistic approach taken from Gumperz, Poplack, Myers-Scotton, and Heller, according to which the functions of language are markers of the choices the speakers make to convey personal identity and to establish their social role, I consider some examples from Nino Ricci's trilogy on the Italian immigrant experience in Canada (Lives of the Saints, 1990, In a Glass House, 1993, and Where She Has Gone, 1997), paying particular attention to the grammatical structures and the sociolinguistic functions of the switched parts of the texts, where codeswitching performs also as a narrative strategy adopted in order to introduce a discourse on Italian-Canadian identity and on Canadianness as the space of multiculturalism and multilingualism.
Dans cet article j'analyse comment le discours sur l'identité multiculturelle et plurilingue au Canada est représenté et codifié dans des œuvres littéraires contemporaines en faisant particulière attention au phénomène du codeswitching (l'alternance codique) comme négociation de l'identité sociale et personnelle et comme stratégie discursive. Après avoir défini la méthodologie sociolinguistique de Gumperz, Poplack, Myers-Scotton et Heller, selon laquelle les fonctions du langage sont des marques linguistiques pour souligner l'identité personnelle et le rôle social de ceux qui parlent, je prends des exemples de la trilogie par Nino Ricci sur l'expérience migrante des italiens au Canada (Lives of the Saints, 1990, In a Glass House, 1993 et Where She Has Gone, 1997) en me focalisant surtout sur les structures grammaticales et sur les fonctions sociolinguistiques des parties du texte en italien, de sorte que le codeswitching est encadré aussi comme stratégie narrative utilisée pour introduire un discours sur l'identité italo-canadienne et sur le concept de "Canadianness" comme espace du multiculturalisme et du plurilinguisme.
References
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