NARRATIVE INQUIRY

The ability to narrate is closely associated with the speaker’s socio-cultural context of communicating, it depends on their social knowledge and plays a significant role in their socialising (Malan, 2000). The use of narrative data as a means of communicating participant voices, has been defined as a means that “allows individuals to regain control over the self, the world, and their own life story narrative” (Pavlenko, 2001:325). This research which is firstly among migrants and secondly among women, and highlights the importance of narrative inquiry of this kind. For women to counter the ways that they are constructed as object (Pavlenko, 2001) they must reclaim the right to speak for themselves, to have a say in how their experiences are represented. A number of poststructuralist feminists, including Irigaray (1993), Weedon (1987), and hooks (1981) have spoken of the

need for disempowered people to develop voices of their own, rather than just to be spoken about, or to speak in the language of the dominant group.

It is well known that for centuries and across cultures, women’s life stories have been documented less often. Their experiences often remain underground and invisible. It is essential to build new knowledge from women’s concrete experiences from a feminist position. Donna Haraway (1991) argues that knowledge grows out of women’s unique lived experiences and the specific interpretations of social reality that accompany those experiences. As Marjorie DeVault (1991) has argued, many women lack the opportunity to talk about their experiences with an interested party. Jaggar (2007:69) also explains that this type of research is reliable appraisal of society which also grants us a better chance of ascertaining the possible beginnings of a new society, in which all members can equally thrive. However some feminists challenge this view by saying that, these claims to accuracy can be promising yet problematic, because it tends to label the experiences of some women ‘more real’ (better or more accurate) than another’s.

Nevertheless, this type of research allows the participants to narrate their experiences in the language of their choice. In the case of my research, some of the interviews were conducted, where appropriate or necessary, partially in Gujarati language which was an important aspect of my shared identity with participants. At the same time, it also allowed the participants to choose the best linguistic repertoire to express their ‘self’. I have analysed the issue of code-switching during the interview or in the life situations by the participants, further in chapter six. Devault (1990) urges researchers to pay attention to the language with which a respondent expresses his or her own reality and researchers should honour hesitant language, terms and tone and the respondent’s use of language. Being fully aware of the linguistic nuances of the respondents’ first language helps to identify markers, which are valuable source of information that lead to rich qualitative interview data. The decision of choosing English, Hindi or Gujarati for answering my questions or code-switching as the topics change provides an insight into the participants’ linguistic connection to the topic under discussion. For example, a participant chose to speak Hindi but switched to Gujarati while speaking about her gambling husband and then to English when she was

asserting her own views on the importance of English, or the participants expressed how code-switching takes place in the family conversations.

According to SLA theories, it has been notoriously difficult to define the concepts of bi- and multilingualism. Ellis (1985) defines bilingualism as, “The ability to produce meaningful utterances in two (or more) languages, the command of at least one language skill (reading, writing, speaking, listening) in another language, [and] the alternate use of different languages” (p 57). Pavlenko (2006) uses the term bilingual to account for speakers who use two languages in their daily lives, and multilingual for those who use more than two languages in their daily lives. However, in accordance with traditions within the field of bilingualism, she uses the term bilingualism to account for research that examines both groups of speakers (Pavlenko, 2006:2).

In the first half of the 20th century, Whorf and Sapir claimed that ´the way we think, is conditioned by the language we speak´ (Norton and Toohey, 2004). This hypothesis remains valid. Questions of translatability of emotional concepts, and states between different languages, as well as, questions of feeling like and being perceived as “different people”, when speaking different languages have been explored in a recent volume on language and emotion (Pavlenko, 2006). It has further been pointed out that differences in registers and styles are not restricted to multilingualism but also found in monolingualism, where speakers switch between linguistic repertoires when speaking to different interlocutors (Pavlenko, 2006:1). Pavlenko further argues that results from a web-questionnaire with 1039 bi-and multilingual respondents, however, show that many bilinguals do perceive themselves as being different when speaking different languages, and that this notion is not restricted to late bilinguals, but rather a more general part of multilingual experience (Pavlenko, 2006: 27).

The participants in this research speak Gujarati as their first language and can communicate in other additional languages of the country of their origin. The impact of their ability to communicate in various languages on their identity depends on various other factors such as their location, social status, class, race etc. In this case, hybridity is particularly useful in

looking at how identities are necessarily renegotiated in these increasing sites of cross- cultural and multilingual interaction for the participants.

Post-structuralist theory opens up ways of thinking about issues relating to language, identity and difference (Weedon, 1997; Pennycook, 2010). The significance of post- structuralist theory lies in its recognition of the constitutive force of language in identity formation as well as its conception of the notion of identity as fluid, complex, contradictory and multifaceted (Norton, 1997). Hybridity theories of Homi Bhabha (1990) and Stuart Hall (1992) are significant in offering a more complex view of ethnicity and language than simplistic categories premised on the idea of the fixity of positions. Spivak (1988) argues that there is ‘no space’ from which the ‘subalterns’ can speak and she further advocates the idea of ‘third space as a place of contestation and negotiation’, deeply grounded in re- translation. The lived experiences of the participants in this research, like others, are marked by constant acts of border crossing, cultural contestation and appropriation (Coombes and Brah, 2005; Pennycook, 2010). Further, the participants’ negotiation of their different identities is marked by their numerous investments that may not always be compatible (Norton, 1995). According to Gedalof (1999) rethinking identity categories also means rethinking the connections between apparently discrete categories of analysis and resistance.

The construction of the stereotypical South Asian woman is being challenged through the women’s role as active agent in society. Through her participation in an interview, she is given the opportunity to talk about her experiences (both social and personal), i. e. it creates a space for their voices to be heard (Mirza, 1997; Puwar and Raghuram, 2003; Wilson, 2006) This supports the assertion that listening to women’s voices is crucial in feminist research particularly with reference to knowledge production and to challenging pathologising discourses. (Brah, 1992)

However, Osgood (2010) has questioned the ethics of representing the voices of others through qualitative research on the grounds of the privileging that occurs in the decisions that are made and the ways in which participant voices are portrayed and presented. She

argues that ‘voices heard’ are only ever partial, interpreted, reframed, and presented with certain (feminist) aims in mind and hence they should only be cautiously adopted for the potential they offer to ‘hear stories’. Considering this, I would argue that Gujarati women's voices in my research highlight their experiences, not as an 'authentic truth' but as a method of uncovering how their subjectivity is constructed and the discursive character of experience.

The approach used in this thesis allows for a more informed understanding of subject positioning in relation to wider British society. For me the research has been an opportunity to challenge the stereotypical notions of South Asian womanhood and to present these women as active agents in their identity construction as language learners, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, migrants. They negotiate multiple intersecting identities to make sense of themselves. By drawing on the voices I have sought to develop an enhanced understanding of the relationship between identity and language learning.