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
Hanwool Choe | 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
- Victimhood narrative and interview narrative
- 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’
- Others in storyworlds
- Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Note
-
References
Published online: 25 November 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20136.cho
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20136.cho
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