Chapter published in:
“Self” in Language, Culture, and Cognition
Yanying Lu
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 10] 2019
► pp. 131–152

Chapter 7
Conceptualisations of the migrant identity

Chapter 7 explores the collective conceptualisations of the migrant identity as they emerge in social interactions. As revealed and discussed in the previous chapters, the participating Chinese immigrants display a strong sense of self-awareness in the cross-cultural comparative context. Drawing on comments from the current participants, it can be said that negotiating this self-awareness has also become an important aspect of constructing their migrant identity in Australia. Some of them are of the opinion that they are able to see issues and reasons not easily seen by non-Chinese or Chinese people from China. Participants turn their cross-cultural experiences into knowledge upon which they can build their unique sense of being as a migrated individual of Chinese origin in Australia.
Keywords: self-awareness, exemplar identity, cross-cultural context, conceptualisation
Article outline
  • 7.1A bounded area
    • 7.1.1A cultural group is a bounded area
    • 7.1.2The exclusiveness of the bounded area
  • 7.2Viewpoints and perspectives in space
    • 7.2.1The space in discourse
    • 7.2.2Social proximity across cultural groups
    • 7.2.3From the perspective of women zhebian ‘we here’
    • 7.2.4From the perspective of “others”
  • 7.3The exemplar identity
  • 7.4The exemplar identity and beyond