27.1629, Diss: Discourse Analysis, Socioling: Jay M. Woodhams: 'A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1629. Thu Apr 07 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1629, Diss: Discourse Analysis, Socioling: Jay M. Woodhams: 'A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context'

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Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2016 12:46:06
From: Jay Woodhams [jay.woodhams at vuw.ac.nz]
Subject: A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context

 
Institution: Victoria University of Wellington 
Program: School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2015 

Author: Jay M. Woodhams

Dissertation Title: A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa
New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context 

Dissertation URL:  http://hdl.handle.net/10063/4769

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     Sociolinguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Meredith Marra
Janet Holmes

Dissertation Abstract:

Political identity is a complex phenomenon that is generated within a rich
sociocultural context. This thesis examines political identity in informal
talk which is situated within a relatively under-explored context, New
Zealand’s capital city and political centre, Wellington. Grounding the study
within the critical realist model of stratified reality provides the
philosophical motivation to explore multi-layered discourses alongside the
extra-discursive referents that underpin them. The analysis centres on a model
of identity, contra postmodernism, which shows that identities, while socially
recognised in discourse, are articulated in reference to physical and social
structures. I adopt a comprehensive multi-layered approach to discourse by
examining the macro sociocultural influences that appear to pattern
interaction across the country, the meso-level subnational discourses that
influence dialogue at a more situated level and the micro-level interactional
stances taken up in everyday communication. Discourse at all levels is
implicated in the identities I examine in this thesis and it is against this
backdrop that I unpack political identity into its indexed discourses and
constitutive stance acts.

Framed by my ethnographic immersion in the study context and drawing on
in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-six individuals, I explore the
way in which discourse and stancetaking are implicated in the genesis of the
participants’ political selves. I first consider the extra-discursive context,
including the geographical, economic and cultural structures that underlie New
Zealand discourses. This is followed by detailed analysis of sociocultural
discourse as it appears in talk. I identify egalitarianism and tall poppy as
two related discourses which are embedded within the historical context of the
country. I also explore four subnational discourses relating to Wellington
city, including the political town, left-wing and small town discourses, which
occur alongside a discourse of contrast. These sociocultural and subnational
discourses influence much of the talk that occurs in reference to politics in
Wellington and are thus implicated in political identity as it is generated in
moment-by-moment interaction. To explore this in further detail I examine the
micro-level of interactional discourse, more specifically the processes of
stancetaking, in two detailed case studies. The two focus participants
demonstrate prominent stance processes which I argue are central to much
identity work: intersubjectivity, in which the stances of all those involved
in the discussion interact in complex ways; and multiplicity, when
participants take numerous stance directions that appear to contribute to
different aspects of their identities. The intensive focus on the case
studies, alongside analysis of the full discursive and extra-discursive
context, provides a multi-layered and philosophically anchored approach that
seeks to contribute to current understandings of and approaches to the study
of discourse and identity.




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