下岗女工身份构建的叙事分析

A Narrative Analysis of the Identity Construction of the Laidoff Women Workers

“下岗女工”是在中国经济体制转型期涌现出的新兴的社会群体之一, 她们面临着从“半边天”到“边缘群体”到再就业的个人经历及身份转变。其身份的变化值得社会语言学和语篇分析界人士关注。下岗女工关于身份建构的自述给予语篇分析者重要启示: 人们的社会身份不是先在的、制约人们言语行为的固定的社会范畴; 人们的语言使用是在一定的社会、文化和历史背景下对其身份的动态构建; 社会群体的划分及范畴的界定是国家机构为了某种目的所赋予的理论描述。

Laidoff women workers constitute one of the new social groups in the economic transformation period in China. Their identities shift from Half the Sky to the socially marginalized , and then to the reemployed. Their identity shift is worth studying by sociolinguists and discourse analysts. We critically apply Labov’s evaluation model to the analysis of the narrative texts transcribed from the recordings of 20 women layoffs in Changchun whom I interviewed, and draw such a conclusion: people’s identity is not an inborn and fixed social category that constrains their speech acts; people’s language use is a dynamic construction of their identity in certain social, cultural and historical background; the classification of social groups and the definitions of social categories are theoretical descriptions by the state institutions for particular purposes.