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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 28:1 (2018) ► pp.30–55

After asylum

Hermeneutic composability in former refugee narratives

 | South Dakota State University
In this study I examine a corpus of former refugee narratives published by the nonprofit Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) on their website in 2011. In order to investigate the relationship between the constituent parts and the narrative as a whole, I use critical discourse analysis to examine the strategic use of person, quantified temporal phrases, broader thematic elements, and the constitution of “former refugee narrative” as a genre. I conclude that the RCOA dominates temporality and maintains authority over the narratives through specifically applied quantification yet captures the necessary subjective and emotional material of the refugee experience to achieve the authenticity the co-narratives need to be well-received by the public. Thus, by manipulating hermeneutic composability, the RCOA evidences an objective, authoritative portrayal yet captures a subjective experience worth telling, and by manipulating intertextual gaps they appeal to the Australian nationalism implicit in the contemporary political climate.
Keywords: narrative, critical discourse analysis, former refugee, asylum, entextualization, intertextual gap, hermeneutic composability, genre, Australia
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Entextualization of refugee narratives and the intertextual gap
  • Hermeneutic composability and narrative structure
  • Chronological events
  • Thematic elements
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 27 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17059.rud
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2024. The “good refugee” ideal: How discourses of deservingness permeate Australia's refugee and asylum seeker narratives. Australian Journal of Social Issues 59:1 ► pp. 148 ff. DOI logo
Laws, Ben
2024. Evidence-Hearing and Evidence-Making. In Asylum and Nonreligion, ► pp. 41 ff. DOI logo

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