Amsterdam: ταξιδάκι αύριο & παρουσίαση σε συνέδριο

από αύριο (29/9) και ως την Κυριακή 4/7 θα βρίσκομαι στο Άμστερνταμ, οπότε το γραφείο δεν θα λειτουργεί!
θα πάμε εκεί για να δούμε την πόλη και συμμετοχή στο συνέδριο:
“Researching and Applying Metaphor – Metaphor and Domains of Discourse” που διοργανώνει η σχολή Επικοινωνίας και Γλωσσών του Πανεπιστημίου εκεί.
Το συνέδριο, όπως φαίνεται και από τον τίτλο του, αφορά την έρευνα για την χρήση της γλωσσικής μεταφοράς σε διάφορα πεδία του λόγου.
Η εισήγηση που θα παρουσιάσω εκεί, μέρος της ερμηνευτικής ανάλυσης του διδακτορικού μου, αφορά τη χρήση των μεταφορών του βιασμού και των “άγριων θηρίων” στο λόγο των συνεντεύξεων από 2 άτομα που μίλησα, μέλη της 2ης γενιάς στην Ελλάδα.
Πιο κάτω μπορείτε να διαβάσετε την περίληψη που έγινε δεκτή:

“The Rape of Savage Beasts”: The Discursive use of Metaphors by second generation migrants in Greece in an interview setting.

This paper draws on interview data from my ongoing PhD research about the experiences of young adults, members of the second generation of migrants, in the settings of school and precarious labour. Coming from a background of critical discursive social psychology (Wetherell, 1998; Bozatzis, 2009) I will try to demonstrate how my informants use metaphors in action – in the context of an interview – to account for and, most importantly, evaluate their lives. Informed by theories of discursive psychology (Billig & McMillan, 2005) metaphors used by the informants are set analytically in the specific context of their actual use, viewed as a rhetorical resource, designed and effected in order to accomplish the end of reflexive evaluation of their life, accounted in an social psychological interview. After presenting the Greek inclusion regime affecting the second generation, I will particularly focus on the employment of two discursive metaphors by the informants: the metaphor of “rape” concerning hardship at work, and the metaphor of “savage beasts” referring to resilience against difficulties of inclusion at school. Presenting actual, “raw” interview data, the analysis of the “rape” metaphor in discourse will examine the issue of embodied precarious labour, as constructed by a bodily metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) of enforcement and violence. On the other side, the metaphor of “savage beasts” serves to account for children’s agentic strategies of insertion in the school life through resilience and perseverance.

Overall, this paper is advancing the idea of the discursive employment of these two metaphors as personal evaluations by the informants, as “value practices” (De Angelis, 2007). These practices serve to establish and describe, in the context of the interview, of their activity as meaningful and important – or not; they are set to frame their life as “good” or “bad” within a given value system and to account for their individual choices and actions based on that discursive evaluation. In this way, the metaphors of “rape” and “savage beasts” become resources informing accounts of self and identity, but most importantly, become agentic value practices against the regime of precarious labour and racism affecting the offspring of migrants in the country.

Bibliography:

Billig, M. & MacMillan, K. (2005) ‘Metaphor, idiom & ideology: the search for ‘no smoking guns’ across time’, Discourse & Society, vol. 16(4), pp. 459-480.

Bozatzis, N. (2009) ‘Occidentalism and accountability: constructing culture and cultural difference in majority Greek talk about the minority in Western Thrace ‘, Discourse & Society, vol. 20(4); 431-453.

De Angelis, M. (2007) The Beginning of History, London: Pluto Press.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wetherell, M. (1998) ‘Positioning and Interpretative repertoires: conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue’, Discourse & Society, vol. 9(3), pp. 387-412.