The Portrayal of Self and Other in Migrant Narratives: A Corpus-assisted Investigation

The present study is part of an ongoing research project that focuses on the collection and analysis of a corpus of first-person migrant chronicles. The narratives investigated contribute to an understanding of what migratory processes mean to those involved and underline their consequences on the representation, interpretation and evaluation of actors and events. Agency emerges in the narrators' reactions to difficult situations and events and is therefore analysed in terms of "the degree of activity and initiative that narrators attribute to themselves as characters in particular story-worlds" (Anna De Fina 2003: 93). As will be illustrated, such reactions and subsequent evaluations also provide the substance for acts of resistance to underlying discriminatory ideologies and practices