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In:Current Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse: Global context and diverse perspectives
Edited by Yun Xiao and Linda Tsung
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 10] 2019
► pp. 245–263

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Chapter 12
Being a Kam in China

Ethnic identity in narratives

 | The University of Sydney, Australia
 | Southwest University, China
 | Southwest University, China
Published online: 15 April 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.10.12wan
Abstract
In light of the growing interest in investigating the ethnic minority Kam people in China, this paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis to explore how Kam people’s identity is represented and negotiated in spoken narratives with outside researchers. Drawing on sociolinguistic approaches to identity analysis (Bucholtz and Hall 2005; De Fina et al. 2006; Blommaert 2005) and membership categorisation analysis (Sacks 1972a & b, 1992; Baker 2004; Fitzgerald and Housley 2015), this paper explores the relationships between Kam people’s sense of membership in their ethnic community and social practices that define this sense of membership. It focuses on the self-representation of a former Kam village head in a remote village in Southern China, Guizhou Province, and explores his way of conceptualizing being a Kam with a view to examining the relationship between his representation of the ethnic identity and the sociocultural impacts on this identity construction process.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Identities in narrative
  • 3.Interview participants
  • 4.Power relations in interaction
  • 5.Representations of the exterior and interior worlds
  • 6.Membership categorisation
  • 7.Performance devices
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
References (21)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Wang, Wei
2022. Constructing the Kam Ethnic Identity in Narratives. Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology 4:3 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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