The socio-cultural construction of identity : discursive practices in four autoethnographic stories by hyphenated-American writers

Abstract

This thesis examines the topic of the socio-cultural construction of identity in autoethnographic narratives written by four hyphenated-American authors: Julia Alvarez, Richard Blanco, Junot Díaz, and Achy Obejas. Through the analysis of selected texts by the aforementioned writers, the study explores the discursive strategies through which identity is constructed and negotiated within a diasporic setting. The theoretical framework is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which explores the relationships between language use and the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Due to the qualitative nature of the project and its reliance on textual data, a case study approach is adopted as the most suitable methodology for this research. Given that the analysis focuses on language within autoethnographic narratives, it adopts an external interpretive lens drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin‘s notion of heteroglossia.