Boundaries and Identity: Narratives of Female Arab Immigrants

Susanne Stadlbauer

Abstract for paper presented at
Conference of the Georgetown Linguistics Society
The Language and Identity Tapestry: Linguistic Re/presentation of Identities in Social Interaction
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
February 18-20, 2005

Globalization is a destabilizing process for identity formation within immigrant communities in the US. This paper illuminates identity construction in narratives of female Arab immigrants living in a large metropolitan area in Colorado, US. The intricate fusion of cultures renders gender - and any other form of identity - to be "a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred, never fully what it is at any given time" (Butler 1999). In these narratives, binary distinctions between the "male" and the "female", the East and the West, religious traditionalism and secular modernism, are constructed and deconstructed. This argues against homogenous and stable identities.

In the narratives I analyzed, women often form their identity against the background of gender segregation in the Middle East; of the aftermath of oppressive years of colonization by European powers; and of political instability. This leaves a picture of a lack of agency and power. However, this identity of being victimized is erased when the narrators associate with larger communities, such as the Pan-Arab community that advocates one culture and language uniting all Arabs (Haeri 2003, Suleiman 2003). The narratives then are vehicles that allow the speakers to transcend any limiting boundaries.

Asma (24) and Raja M. (22), for instance, are two sisters who grew up in Saudi Arabia and now attend college in Colorado. By assuming a collective Arab identity, they place themselves as active participants in narratives opposing the US occupation of Iraq. They express a strong value judgment about the injustice against all Arabs, which is initiated by the rhetorical question "What are they [US] trying to take from us [Arabs]?" (Excerpt 1, Line 2). The use of these pronouns is important in three ways: it allows the narrators to actively engage in the narrative action as a part of the Arab community; it signifies a strategy to appeal to the audience's morality; and it draws the audience into the narrator's logic of constructing moral righteousness. The tactics of adequation and distinction (Hall and Bucholtz 2003) are strategically used to point to the assumed moral flaw of the US and to lift the Arabs into a position of moral righteousness.

Furthermore, the women take control of the narrative space by employing conventional American narrative traditions: the use of direct quoted speech that allows the narrators to express their opinion through different voices (Hill 1995) and the use of the American colloquial discourse marker like (Excerpt 2). The abundance of like, which only occurs in passages opposing the US occupation, ironically indexes an association with American culture and allows the speakers to take advantage of the moral and political framework of their local community in Colorado and therefore of the symbolic power of popular agency.

In sum, the narrators construct a collective and collaborative alliance between them, their home countries, all Arabs, the audience, and local US conventions, in order to oppose oppressive forces, such as the US invading Iraq. They collapse any boundaries for the sake of a politically motivated strategic essentialism (Bucholtz and Hall 2003). For these narrators, boundaries reveal their ideologies and identities because they are not stable; they are productive in identity formation and change with a shift in discourse strategies. In the frame of transnational cultures, boundaries emerge as genuinely complex and often contradictory but always inclusive ideals.

Excerpt 1: Asma and Raja oppose the US occupying Iraq by assuming a collective Arab identity

1 A: they [US] have everything
2 what are they trying to take from us?
3 and I think in that sense we feel Arab identity
4 in the sense that they are physically suffering,
5 and to us it is us.
6 I definitely feel like there is a bond, I know.
7 I mean I am an Arab.
8 R: Yeah, it's like, what the hell did we do to you?
9 You know like, let's get off our backs, you know!
10 The US does that to everyone.

Excerpt 2: Raja uses direct quotes and like to strengthen her point.

1 R: Yes, like, the US government's head was like this big.
2 It's like doubled.
3 They are like "oh my god, we saved the world".
4 You know, that really upset a lot of people.
5 Even my friends feel sad.
6 They are like "we are so sad".
7 And I'm like "I know" ...
8 I talked to my aunt and that's what she said.
9 She's like "you know what ..".
10 She surprised me, she said the same thing,
11 she's like "I am happy he [Saddam Hussein] is caught
12 but I just wish it wouldn't be the Americans".
13 I was really surprised.
14 She's like "ya, I want .."

Susanne Stadlbauer is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, and associate editor of Colorado Research in Linguistics. She can be reached at Susanne.Stadlbauer@Colorado.EDU.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 18, Issue 1 - June 2005