Discourses of victimhood and agency: A case study of a teenage Indian girl negotiating her identity in a gendered world

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I report on the case of a young Indian adolescent girl, Anita (a pseudonym), and explore how she constructs and negotiates her various identities. Using discourse analysis, in particular the concept of positioning, I examine how Anita locates herself in the period of transition between childhood and adulthood, while drawing on various notions of gender and sexuality available to her in the specific social context of her school in India. The specific focus of examination is Anita's identity construction in relation to ideas of victimization and agency, which are seen to run parallel with each other.

ABSTRACT IN HINDI

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse analysis
• identity construction
• discourse and identity
• positioning
• agency

KEYWORDS:

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Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank Dr. Stephanie Schurr at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick for giving valuable and insightful comments. I also thank my editors and reviewers at AJWS for their enriching suggestions and comments.

Notes on contributor

Disha MAHESHWARI is a final year PhD scholar at the Faculty of Education, University of Delhi and has recently submitted her PhD thesis. She was a Commonwealth Scholar for split-site PhD at Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick in 2015–2016. She has a post-graduate degree in English literature and in Education respectively. Her current research interests are discourse analysis, gender and discourse, and discourse and identity.