Discourse, Identity, and China's Internal Migration: The Long March to the City

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Long March to the City: An Ethnography of Discourse and Layered Identities among China's Internal Migrants

Identities and Coca-Cola Cans

‘Identity’ is the focus of this research. Identity-making discourses such as ‘he is a Dutchman’ and ‘she is a teacher’ frequently circulate in our daily lives. In conferences we wear a badge with our names so that our interlocutors have an idea of whom they are talking to; while travelling abroad, people should remember to carry their ID, that is, passports or identification cards, and be prepared for potential police inspection – this can be crucial for groups such as Turks and Africans in some of the Western European metropolises; on meeting new colleagues we often exchange information on where we come from, our nationalities, what jobs did we do before. And as a Chinese, I find myself engaged in a constant task of explaining my name: which is my given name, which is my surname and in what circumstances I would rather use an English name.

Indeed, we are involved in identity rituals around every corner of our life. The question it raises – the question of ‘who am I' – often touches something dearest to our hearts, something we hold fast, whereas a challenge of it by others can easily offend us. Identity means different things on different occasions – ‘who I am’ depends on whom I am talking to, in what circumstances and from what perspectives. Let me illustrate this point with a metaphor (see Figure 1.1a, b and c).

Figure 1.1a gives a front view of a Coca-Cola can¹ and shows some of its defining features: its cylinder shape, its easily recognisable logo, trademark and so forth. It can be seen as a ‘normal’ view of a Coca-Cola can – a view that fits in with the stereotype we usually have. However, if we look at the can again from a lower angle (Figure 1.1b), we get a rather different picture: its cylinder shape is distorted, some features are exaggerated, such as the initial ‘C’ of the logo, while other features fall out of sight. An even more unusual picture is the one shown in Figure 1.1c – the same can be observed from the top. At this level, the distinguishing details of a Coca-Cola can (the logo, the design, etc.) are replaced by a set of more abstract features – metal, with an opening ring, and a sentence urging the consumer to recycle the can. It could be a Pepsi can or a beer can. Observing the can from this angle, one could not tell whether the rest of the can – its cylinder-shaped body – exists or not.

Figure 1.1 (a) Front view, (b) bottom-side view and (c) vertical view of a Coca-Cola can

Each time it is the can; the can is all of that. It is still the same can, but we end up with different descriptions observing it from different positions; the positions are vertically ordered: observed from a lower angle (Figure 1.1b), some details of the can are distorted, exaggerated or neglected whereas enough features remain for us to tell what it is. Our gaze then is moved upwards and we obtain a ‘normal’ stereotypical view (Figure 1.1a) that fits in with our expected image of a Coca-Cola can. On a higher scale when we look down from the top (Figure 1.1c), the defining details disappear, and what we see are some abstract and rigid features of any metal can. Each observation is partially similar and partially different and none of it shows a picture of the whole can – every description is conditioned by the position from which we observe it. There are an infinite number of scale levels that we may consider observing. I have taken three scales to demonstrate that one scale is not enough and a full analysis involves taking into account various scales. I could focus on more scales, but chose three so that we could more clearly see that a social phenomenon at one scale is different at another scale.

The examination of identity construction is of little difference from observing a Coca-Cola can. Focusing solely on lower level observation – the level of local interaction – we may obtain detailed yet distorted understandings of identity. Analysing only the ‘normal’ view – the level of people's discursive evaluation on their own and others' identities – we risk overlooking the ‘not-so-normal’ views of identity making. Positioning ourselves at the top level – the level of administrative realities – identity categorisation becomes rigid and abstract. None of the current paradigms in identity studies from a single level – whatever level that is – is sufficient, because social phenomena such as identity making are never singular and homogeneous, but are always layered and multifaceted, and all aspects have to be described and analysed comprehensively. What we need is a more sophisticated approach that revolves around an image of social reality as structured into different scales, which attends to the rules and conventions that operate at the different scale levels, and which uncovers the interplay and collaboration of different scales in one situated event.

There are compelling reasons to develop such an approach, and perhaps the most compelling one is the ever-increasing complexity of discursive processes of identity construction in the context of rapid linguistic and cultural exchanges among various communities as a result of transnational as well as intra-national migrations – what we usually call ‘globalisation’. The empirical data of this book have been collected in China, where intense rural–urban migration has been going on since the early 1980s. The rural–urban migration, also known as ‘internal’ migration, results in complicated sociolinguistic environments in which regional accents and dialects become salient markers of identity, projecting prestige and opportunity, or stigma and social inequality. The phenomenal rural–urban migration in China offers an enormously rich research potential in the discursive processes of identity construction; yet, there has been limited research focused on this field so far (but see Dong, 2009; Dong & Blommaert, 2009).

This book is therefore a contribution to filling this gap through a close look at the discursive processes of identity construction among Chinese internal migrants. There are two objectives in the present study. First, I propose and argue for a three-scale theoretical framework, a scalar structure that organises various levels and facets of identity making practice in the context of migration and globalisation. It is a selection of discursive scales indeed, but a salient selection of which all three scale-levels articulate different types of identity building discourses. We see more elaboration on this point in section ‘A n Alternative Approach’. My broader purpose, related to the first one, is to draw attention to a series of social processes through which we are able to gain an insight into transitions in Chinese society and the (re-)formation of social structure. The mass internal migration that forms the backdrop of this study, for instance, reactivates diacritics of social class stratification in a society that used to ideologically describe itself as egalitarian. Although the specific objects of such social processes considered in this book are sociolinguistic forms, these forms – the discursive practice of migrant identity construction – are arguably part of, and serve as a reflection of, the processual and dynamic social transition and reformation.

This introductory chapter opens with a metaphor of the general theoretical framework that I construct throughout the book. In what follows, I provide a brief account of several basic assumptions that underpin the arguments of this book, and further answer the question concerning why the field of identity study needs such a new approach focusing on the scalar nature of social reality. In section ‘A n Alternative Approach’, I elaborate on the proposed approach and explain how it has emerged from fieldwork and how it is theorised. I then outline the book in the section ‘Overview of the Book’, and sum up the study by reflecting on what I achieve in this chapter in the last section.

Identity and Identity Studies

‘Identity’ has been a popular research topic in various social-scientific disciplines ranging from psychology, sociology, anthropology and history, to linguistics, literature, education and others. Many kinds of identities have been studied, for example, ethnicity, race, class, gender identity, national identity, learning identity and so on (e.g. Block, 2006; Butler, 1990; Cameron, 1992; De Fina et al., 2006; Gao, 2009; Gao & Xiu, 2004; Gao et al., 2007a, 2007b; Hewitt, 1986; Kulick, 1998; Norton-Pierce, 2000; Rampton, 1999; Spotti, 2007; Willis, 1981; Wodak, 1997; Wortham, 2006, to name just a few). It is not my intention to give a comprehensive account of identity studies, and such a job is indeed impossible for the limited space of this book. Rather, I begin with a few assumptions and understandings of identity construction that are fundamental to this particular study, and then brief y evaluate two defining trends of recent discursive studies on identity construction. These evaluations will demonstrate the need for an alternative approach.

The first point I want to stress is that identity is not something one possesses, but it is constructed in social practice. This runs against the essentialist notion of the ‘self’ as given, core, natural and essentially innate to the person (Bucholtz et al., 1999; Potter, 2003). Identities are eminently social and performative in nature, being negotiated, enacted, constructed and perceived in social practices; indeed, we have seen various studies demonstrating that identity is a dynamic, flexible and changeable project (Foucault, 1984), such as research in gender identity (Butler, 1990), in ethnicity (Roosens, 1989) and national identity (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983).

Second, I do not see ‘identity’ as an individual, monolithic construct, but as a repertoire of identities, which suggests that people perform highly complex and ambiguous identities, shifting between as well as displaying simultaneously their multiple identities in social interactions. Moreover, people construct identities out of particular identity building resources (Blommaert, 2005a: 203). As access to such resources is often unequally distributed, identities that are built through identity building resources are layered and stratified. For instance, acquiring a prestige accent can be costly, if we think of how much people would invest in learning English with a standard American or BBC accent across the world, and there are people who never have the capacity to enact a highly ranked identity due to the lack of access to the highly ranked accent as an identity building resource.

Third, identities are achieved as well as ascribed, and consequently, identity processes are negotiation processes. Achieved identity, also known as subscribed identity or inhabited identity, refers to a ‘self-constructed and self-performed identity … through which people claim allegiance to a group’ (Blommaert, 2005a: 253). In contrast to achieved identity, ascribed identity is an ‘identity attributed to someone by others … including that someone in a socially defined category’ (Blommaert, 2005a: 251). In this sense, an identity has to be negotiated and recognised by others in order to be established in and as social reality, and more often than not identities are imposed by others rather than claimed by oneself. Examples can be found in othering processes, of which the use of pronouns such as ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘they’, ‘them’ often signals shifts of alignments to different social groups (see also Goffman, 1981).²

Having outlined several basic understandings of identity construction, I evaluate two major approaches of recent identity studies – Conversational Analysis (CA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Both approaches share the basic understandings about identity construction laid out above, but are deeply divided over theoretical and methodological issues – notably over the perceptions of the relationship between discourse and society. It is not a novel task to contrast CA and CDA (see e.g. Blommaert, 2005a; De Fina et al., 2006), and the division between the two approaches is not confined to identity studies (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1996; Schegloff, 1999; Widdowson, 1995, 1996, 1998). The contrast between them, however, is particularly remarkable in identity studies, as the discursive processes of identity construction are precisely about the relationship between discourse and society. Following the evaluations of these two approaches, I will argue that, although important and influential, neither CA nor CDA is sufficient for an adequate study of the discursive processes of identity construction, and I will propose an alternative approach that is able to address such complex and critical issues.

Let us first take a look at CA. In terms of conception of the relationship between discourse and society, research within this tradition typically emphasises interactional events between immediate participants within the immediate local context. Schegloff claims that an interactional event has to be analysed

in its endogenous constitution, what it was for the parties involved in it, in its course, as embodied and displayed in the very details of its realization – can we even begin to explore what forms a critical approach to it might take, and what political issue, if any, it allows us to address. (Schegloff, 1997: 168)

In terms of methodology, CA refrains from using ‘a political or cultural frame of analysis’ (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998: 5); instead, it advocates the use of ‘internal analysis' – a technical analysis internal to the interactional event at hand, that ‘talk-in-interaction does provide … an Archimedean point … internal to the object of analysis itself’ (Schegloff, 1997: 184). In the domain of identity studies, CA sees identity categories to be exclusively performed, practised and enacted by the participants engaged in the interactional events. Identities are therefore products of the interactional events at hand and the only relevant context is the immediate local context, although identity is one of the few topics on which ‘non-ocal’ context is sometimes allowed to play a role (e.g. D'hondt, 2001; Li Wei, 1998; Rampton, 1995; Zhu, 2008). In general, with several exceptions outlined below, CA stresses ‘talk-in-interaction’, and this conceptual position has a methodological consequence – that texts are often analysed internally, and researchers are discouraged from looking at issues on the macro levels of social reality. As a consequence, what we often see in CA research is the replication of interactions at hand and negotiation of identities at the level of individual interactional events.

A remarkable exception within CA can be found in Rampton's research on sociolinguistic styles and styling practice through everyday interactions in multilingual schools in inner London, which combines CA with broadly drawn social theories, in an attempt to avoid a reductive analysis of linguistic processes (cf. Rampton, 1995, 1999, 2006). Another exception is D'hondt's integration of membership categorisation into his research on quarrels among Dares Salaam adolescents, which offers firm connections between conversational work and observations of social structure (D'hondt, 2001). In both instances, we see that the authors, despite strong allegiances to a CA framework, allow wider aspects of context – non-situational context – to be drawn into the analysis, and allow such broader contexts to become critically relevant to the analysis.

As for identity studies, seeing identity as performed and enacted is a well-established understanding, and it has been addressed as a first basic assumption of this book. It will be problematic, however, to claim that identities only emerge out of interactional events and are only to be analysed internally. Examples can be found in the street corner data of Chapter 3, in which I, the fieldworker, encounter a street vendor who runs a small business of selling steamed dumplings as breakfast food. The conversations between the street vendor and me indeed articulate a clear process of identity negotiation. However, even before any interpersonal conversation occurs, both participants are likely to associate stereotypical identity categories with each other, that is, working class vs. middle class, migrant vs. local. Such categories have been pre-inscribed in and circulated through public, institutional and media discourses. That is to say, the identity categories of migrant worker and urban middle class have been moved into place at a higher level long before the interactional event, and they condition the negotiation process at lower levels of communicative exchanges. And while at the level of everyday interaction no one can be said to ‘have’ identities – there is always a negotiation process involved – at this higher level of social structure we can indeed say that we ‘have’ identities. There are limits to the negotiation process. The example above challenges both the conceptual position of ‘talk-in-interaction’ and the methodological hegemony of ‘internal analysis’, as we observe that local interactional events are constrained by identity processes at higher levels, that participants engaged in a linguistic exchange are not free to construct and claim any identity and that factors ‘out of interaction’ have to be taken into account when researching identities in interaction. The interactional construction of identities, in sum, is constrained, it is not a process of infinite indeterminacy, but rather develops within a determined space. This, I should note, is not an essentialist position. It is an empirically realistic one, and it accounts for the simple observation that I, as an adult, cannot speak as a child. I can speak like a child, and I can imitate a child. But no matter how hard I try, I can never be a child again.

Let us now turn to CDA. In contrast to CA's stance on the relationship between discourse and society, CDA maintains that discourse is socially shaped and socially shaping:

it is an important characteristic of the economic, social and cultural changes of late modernity that they exist as discourses … and that the processes that are taking place outside discourse are substantively shaped by these discourses. (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999: 4)

The distinctiveness of CDA, argues Wodak (1997: 173), lies in the relationships between language and society, and between analysis and the practices analysed. Such relationships include the ‘opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language’ (Wodak, 1995: 204).

Along this line of argument, identity studies often (although not always, see e.g. Blackledge, 2005; Fairclough, 1992) prioritise the political and ideological dimensions in the formation of identities, and see identities as being socially formed, conditioned and imposed by political and ideological contexts, particularly by power relations at institutional levels. Examples can be found in Wodak's study of doctor–patient discourse (Wodak, 1997), in which the dominance of ‘white male doctors’ is unquestionably introduced as the factual context of the discourse data, and