Rearticulating everyday discourse in interviews on political engagement: the metapragmatics of identity

This paper investigates the way intellectuals and activists with a Moroccan background report everyday language use within a framework that is relevant to their political engagements. They use metapragmatic markers to position themselves in relation to the discourse and practices of other actors in society (e.g. parents, peers, teachers, friends, political opponents and / or institutions wielding minority and/or majority discourses). Moreover, they are involved in the rearticulation of discourse(s) that originated elsewhere. Through the use of metapragmatic markers, individuals can highlight the mental processes with respect to language use that are relevant to their selves within a given context (see Blommaert 2005: 253; Verschueren 1999: 187-88). Zienkowski defines the self as a reification of the processes that allow an individual body to (reflectively) position itself as a coherent and whole mind/body in relation to spatial, temporal, social, and (inter)textual aspects of (contextual) reality. Any of these relations may be indexed by means of metapragmatic language use (Verschueren 1999). The author argues that linguistic markers of metapragmatic awareness provide a useful entry point in the analysis of the interpretive logics (see Glynos and Howarth 2007) constitutive of the politics and discourse of the intellectuals and activists under discussion. Metapragmatic markers provide clues as to how they argue for a prefered mode of ethics and politics. The claims in this paper will be illustrated by examples derived from transcripted interviews with intellectuals and activists with a Moroccan background in Flanders. These illustrations exemplify the importance of metapragmatic awareness for the construction of a more or less coherent and politicised self in relation to a reality that provides a staggering multiplicity of possible identifications. The investigated markers include hedging (see Hyland 2000; McLaren-Hankin 2008) and various forms of rearticulated or reported speech (see Coulmas 1998; Daryl Slack 1996; Holt 2009; Howarth 2004.