Publication details
"Mluví jako kdyby fakt byla Češka". Konstrukce národnosti/ethnicity v promluvách dětí
| Title in English | "She Speaks as if She Really Were Czech". Construction of Nationality/Ethnicity in Children´s Speech |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sociální studia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | nationality; ethnicity; schoolchildren; discourse analysis |
| Description | 9th graders attending ethnically and nationally diverse classrooms (Vietnamese, Ukrainian/Russian, Roma) discussed in focus groups what the relationships are in their respective classrooms. My analysis combines discursive methods of conversation analysis and interpretive repertoires (Wetherell) in order to understand the ways in which nationality and ethnicity are constructed. Three key topics emerge: the topic of language as a tool of inclusion and exclusion; the topic of the construction of in-group and out-group; and the topic of culture as it is construed in the context of sameness/difference. I argue that speakers identify mastering of the majority language as the main tool of inclusion while native tongue remains to be a marker of the “essential truth” about a person s identity. While attempting to be included into the in-group, nationally/ethnically “Others” mobilize discursive strategies of their normalcy and similarity to the majority. The “natives” deploy discourses of individualization in order to position themselves as tolerant individuals while at the same time identifying the “good” and “bad” individuals of “other” ethnicities and nationalities. Culture as well as biology serve to explicate the differences between people. An interesting discursive space is opened by the category of psychic “interior” which might be used to think similarities and equality of all. |
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