Chapter 5
Us, them and all the others
Analyzing belonging among Japanese immigrant women in The Netherlands
This study examines the linguistic practices of a group of Japanese immigrant women temporarily living in Amstelveen, and their ways of constructing belonging. Taking as an example three linguistic variables: (i) personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’; (ii) specific ethnic labels (single self-referring label Nihonjin ‘The Japanese’ versus multiple labels Orandajin, Oranda no hito/hitotachi, Orandajin no hito/hitotachi, Oranda ‘The Dutch’); and (iii) the use of non-standard Osaka Japanese negation I discuss how speakers in this group (re)create various boundaries, and how they draw on ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy as a way of achieving group cohesion.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Constructing belonging
- Ethnographic background
- ‘Japan on the Amstel’
- The Club
- Participants
- Data and methods
- Language resources as means for indexing belonging
- Personal pronouns: From ‘I’ to ‘we’
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Ethnic labels
- The use of standard and non-standard negation
- Discussion and conclusions
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Notes
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References
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Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Ilbury, Christian
2022.
A tale of two cities: The discursive construction of ‘place’ in gentrifying East London.
Language in Society 51:3
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