The interactional and narrative construction of normative and resistant discourses about Hindi and English

Sandhu, P. (2014). The interactional and narrative construction of normative and resistant discourses about Hindi and English. Applied Linguistics, 35(1), 29-47.

This article is part of a study that examined the narratives of 19 Indian women about the impact of Hindi or English medium education on their lives. This paper examines an interview segment containing a hypothetical narrative recounted by one of these participants - Aditi. Conversation analysis (CA) tools are used to reveal the presence of conflicting Discourses regarding the value attached to English speakers by the two interactants - Aditi and the interviewer. One of these leads to significant trouble in the talk that is attended to by Aditi through recounting a hypothetical narrative to justify her perspective. The study shows how the two planes of the narrative—the narrated world and the interactional narrating plane—are used by Aditi to critique hegemonic Discourses about English speakers. Additionally, a CA-based sequential analysis reveals the embedding of the narrative in its local interactional setting while also displaying that the act of narration can be a site for the enactment of resistance to societal Discourses.

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