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South African English, social inclusion and identity integration in New Zealand
Author(s) -
Barkhuizen Gary
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/weng.12476
Subject(s) - narrative , identity (music) , immigration , meaning (existential) , context (archaeology) , gender studies , sociology , inclusion (mineral) , participant observation , perspective (graphical) , ethnography , psychology , history , linguistics , social science , anthropology , aesthetics , visual arts , art , philosophy , archaeology , psychotherapist
A few months before immigrating to New Zealand, an Afrikaans‐English bilingual woman was interviewed in South Africa about her expectations of her sociolinguistic life in her new country. Fifteen years later she was interviewed again, in New Zealand. This article tells the story of her pre‐departure expectations and desires, and her retrospective meaning making of the experiences she had lived since her arrival in New Zealand. This longitudinal narrative study focuses on her use of South African English in the host country, particularly in the community and the workplace, and pays attention to its reception by others in these contexts. The study draws on a cognitive‐developmental model of identity integration to frame the analysis of interview data from a narrative perspective. It does so by using short story analysis (Barkhuizen, 2016). Short stories are extracts of interview data in story form and are analyzed for their content and varying scales of context. Three short stories are analyzed in this article. They show how the participant's English is used and received in New Zealand and what effect this has on her life and identity as an immigrant in the country over time.