Language

Anna de Fina discusses how the study of narrative can inform us about identity, focusing on the representation and negotiation of identities by Mexican migrants in the United States.

In the ‘Introduction’, DF explains her plan to describe aspects of the identity of Mexican immigrants and also advocate for a discourse-based approach to identity. In Ch. 1, ‘Identity in narrative: A discourse approach’, DF defines narrative and identity. She uses two types of narratives as data: stories of personal experience and accounts of the border crossing. She describes different theories of identity and explains her focus on discursive mechanisms and linguistic elements at the lexical, textual/pragmatic, and interactional levels, with particular attention paid to pronominal choices and identifying terms such as ‘Hispanic’.

Ch. 2, ‘The social phenomenon: Mexican migration to the U.S.’, gives an overview of the undocumented migration of Mexicans to the United States and a description of the participants in DF’s research, fourteen Mexican economic immigrants, mostly undocumented, living in Maryland. She describes her methodology and discusses data selection and transcription.

Ch. 3, ‘Identity as social orientation: Pronominal choice’, begins the data analysis and is the best-argued part of the book. DF discusses how pronoun alternations (e.g. shifts between I and we) express distancing, involvement, or solidarity with topics and participants, and how they convey responsibility or lack of responsibility. Looking at a variety of examples, she finds that the immigrants in her study shift emphasis away from individuals to the collective. She discusses how this may be related to the immigrants’ shared cultural background, but concludes that it is also connected to circumstances of immigration.

Ch. 4, ‘Identity as agency: Dialogue and action in narrative’, examines the presentation of self in relation to social experiences, focusing on reported speech, who speaks, and what kinds of speech acts are attributed to different speakers. DF finds that her informants represent themselves in passive roles and stress their dependence on the actions of authorities and the help of strangers. They also stress collectivity and downplay the role of individuals within the group.

In Ch. 5, ‘Identity as categorization: Identification strategies’, DF discusses ethnic identifications that may be used in argumentative narratives to back up claims about others. In Ch. 6, ‘Identity as social representation: Negotiating affiliations’, she turns to how the immigrants in her study apply the term ‘Hispanic’ to themselves and others in different contexts.

Finally, in Ch. 7, ‘Conclusions’, DF summarizes her findings and relates them to the ideas of social roles and communities. She relates her findings to current debates about identity and discusses limitations of the study and directions for future research.

While I found Chs. 3 and 4 to be better supported than later chapters, as a whole Identity in narrative convincingly argues for a discourse-based approach to identity. DF’s extensive use of excerpts from her transcripts also compellingly gives voice to the immigrants that she studies.