“When Mister Right Comes Along”: Gender and Ethnic Identity in Narratives from Spontaneous Indian New Zealander Mother-Daughter Conversations

Abstract

Narrative has been theorised as significantly implicated in the articulation of social identities and in the reproduction of culture. The present study investigated the kinds of observable practices used to achieve those ends. Spontaneous interactions between mothers and adolescent daughters from the Indian immigrant community of New Zealand were recorded. The conversations were examined for narratives where gender and ethnicity were explicitly mentioned. The analysis drew upon conversation analytic, linguistic, and psychological approaches to narrative. The results show narrative as an interactional site where there can be an explicit display and contestation of cultural norms. Explaining deviations to cultural norms and repair contexts were moments where gender and ethnicity were observable resources for action. The findings are an initial step toward understanding the role of everyday, naturally occurring narratives, within the processes of cultural transmission and change.

Keywords:

• conversation analysis
• cultural transmission
• discursive psychology
• narrative
• social identity
• story telling

Notes

¹However, Mum is not completely unresponsive to her daughter's prior turn. Note the daughter's “why” is produced with laughter particles. Those particles can be understood as an invitation to laugh (Jefferson 1979), which the mother accepts producing some laughter in overlap with the daughter's turn, and also including laughter tokens in the first turn construction unit of her turn.