Brandon Bales and Dr. Janis Nuckolls, Linguistics Department and Dr. Charles Nuckolls, Anthropology Department
Abstract
Displaced people present a problem for ethnographic research in that they generally lack stable socio-cultural contexts on which researchers rely for making empirical observations. This study shows how people produce memory-texts as a way of recontextualizing themselves in new or unstable social situations and establishes memory-texts as the empirical material necessary to produce analysis on displaced people. The discursive production of memory-texts is an activity displaced people engage in to recontextualize and stabilize themselves in shifting or new environments. Memory-texts are composed of the interface between defining moments in people’s lives and recent experiences and cultural frameworks. As an interdiscursive construct, memory-texts are not a pure reflection of historical events but rather a complex semiotic device created by bringing various elements of experience into discourse with one another to produce a unified text based on memorable experiences. This study demonstrates how people construct and use memory-texts in three ways. First, people combine different experiences into a unified mental text and then use that memory-based texts to evaluate categorize and generate meaning for experiences. Second, the combination of disparate experiences creates a formal pattern that is then projected to different social levels and situations in a kind of social fractal recursion, explaining how the construct of memory-texts forms the kind of flexible, context-relative identity observed in many refugees. Third, the memory-texts that successfully evaluate experiences and create identity can be adopted by group members from a similar background. Overtime, these memory-texts become highly rutinized tokens of group experience used in specific types of ways to evaluate group experiences and unify group identity.
Research Methods
This study was carried out for an 8 week period in West Valley, Utah, utilizing linguistic analytical methods including theories on language ideologies developed by Gal and Irvine (2005), Fractal Recursion (Gal, 2002), Interdiscursive mechanisms of token and type (Silverstein, 2005); theories on cross-cultural interaction developed by Barth (1965), and Rutherford (2006); and approaches to refugee studies pioneered by Malkki (1995). Research methods included Participant observation, surveys, questionnaires, formal and informal interviews. Data was gathered, transcribed and analyzed using the above analytical theories to reach this study’s conclusions.
Evaluating Experiences
When Bopha was young she had several spiritual experiences in which she was visited by angles in dreams and mental impressions. These visits taught her moral principles, protected her from harmful situations and revealed to her the future coming of a savior for the Cambodian people. When she came into contact with the teachings of the Mormon Church she felt the teachings and doctrines were compatible with her previous life experiences. Filtered and shaped through Mormon doctrine, Bopha’s past experiences become an amalgamated personal text through which she interprets her past suffering in the Khmer Rouge labor camps as the result of human sin. Her protection from suffering resulted from God’s mercy and God’s ultimate plane to “teach and take care of his sheep”. Her interpretations are based on making experiences analogous to moral knowledge contained in her memory-text.
Identity construction and Fractual Recursion
Saila Va has developed an identity that oscillates between Cambodian and western ethnic features. This is possible by Saila implanting his personal experiences on Cambodian cultural myths and also inversely using Cambodian cultural forms to make sense of his current experiences. His identity is an outgrowth of a polarized memory-text that places Cambodian on one pole and American at the other pole. This polarized construct nests and repeats itself within different cultural spheres in a kind of social fractal recursion. Such a construct creates an identity relative to social context. At school Saila is Cambodian, but at home with parents he is American, etc. In America he is Cambodian, but in Cambodia he is American. He reports that he cannot date Cambodian girls because he is too Americanized, but he cannot date “white” girls either because he is too Cambodian.
Identity construction and Fractal Recursion
Saila Va has developed an identity that oscillates between Cambodian and western ethnic features. This is possible by Saila implanting his personal experiences on Cambodian cultural myths and also inversely using Cambodian cultural forms to make sense of his current experiences. His identity is an outgrowth of a polarized memory-text that places Cambodian on one pole and American at the other pole. This polarized construct nests and repeats itself within different cultural spheres in a kind of social fractal recursion. Such a construct creates an identity relative to social context. At school Saila is Cambodian, but at home with parents he is American, etc. In America he is Cambodian, but in Cambodia he is American. He reports that he cannot date Cambodian girls because he is too Americanized, but he cannot date “white” girls either because he is too Cambodian.
Group Solidarity—Tokens and Types
Other group members borrow those memory-texts that are most successful at creating stable identity or generating meaningful interpretations of experience. In this way, through time certain memory-texts become powerful tokens of experience and provide group identity and solidarity. During a bar-b-que activity, Sai Rith commented that the park pavilion reminded him of the pavilions in the Khmer-rouge work camps. Everyone became very talkative about the subject. Pairing these two experiences shows the interdiscursive group held rules for combining two different token experiences. Through time these group held rules create group identity and reflect group structure.
Implications
A foundational understanding regarding the principles of ethnic identity formation and cross-cultural interaction, to which this study contributes, can be applied to improve results in a wide number of pursuits including: the preservation of indigenous heritage and social moral order, the prevention of ethnic violence, the improved effectiveness of international diplomacy, the increased understanding of how group-created memories give legitimacy to indigenous political ideologies, the verbalization of memories as a cognitive method for overcoming psychological trauma, as well as improved organizational behavior in businesses, NGOs and other institutions.