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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 33:1 (2023) ► pp.192–221

The other-granted self of Korean “comfort women”

Analyzing interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II

ORCID logo | The University of Hong Kong

Bringing together “identity as agency” (Schiffrin, 1996; De Fina, 2003), Bamberg’s (1997) three-level positioning, and Tannen’s (2008) narrative types, I analyze three interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II, commonly known as “comfort women”. Through an eye toward “others” – e.g., Japanese soldiers, “comfort station” managers, interviewers, and sociocultural and sociopolitical forces – I investigate the manipulation of the women’s agency with their identities positioned as victims, rather than survivors. Meaning-making strategies, such as “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007[1989]), repetition, deixis, and third turns, present the ways in which various others objectify and marginalize the women as well as control their stories. These illuminate how the women’s identities are granted and defined by others. This other-granted identity work reinforces aspects of language ideologies and ideologies of being silenced.

Keywords: agency, positioning, interview narrative, victimhood narrative, self-making, identity, comfort women, small-n narrative, big-N Narrative, master narrative
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical background
    • Victimhood narrative and interview narrative
      • Others in a victimhood narrative
      • Others in an interview narrative
    • Identity as agency, positioning, and narrative types
  • Korean “comfort women”
  • The study
  • Data analysis
    • Others in storyworlds
      • Other-chosen language
      • ‘Who wants to go to nibang’
    • Others in tellingworlds
      • Third turns
    • Others in livingworlds
      • ‘I can’t have babies’
      • ‘yakekuso’
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 25 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20136.cho
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