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‘Cooking lunch, that's Swiss': Constructing hybrid identities based on socio-cultural practices

Gonçalves, Kellie

In: Multilingua, 2013, vol. 32, no. 4, p. 527-547

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    Title
    • ‘Cooking lunch, that's Swiss': Constructing hybrid identities based on socio-cultural practices
    Author
    • Gonçalves, Kellie. English Department, University of Bern, Länggassstr. 49, 3000 Bern 9, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:299441
    Summary
    This study looks at the discursive construction and negotiation of hybrid identities within binational couples. I analyze conversations produced by Anglophones married to German-speaking Swiss residing in central Switzerland. I employ Bucholtz & Hall's sociocultural linguistic model (2004, 2005, 2010), which views identity as emergent in social interaction and allows for the investigation of identity at various analytical levels. The analysis shows how individuals interactively position themselves as hybrid based on their co-construction of specific socio-cultural practices of everyday life that concern food (preparation, conservation, cooking). By doing so, individuals draw on various linguistic features, including prosodically marked utterances, pronominal use, and overt mentions of national labels, which index their cultural hybrid identities while at the same time exemplifying the performance of hybridity