Literature on identities in marriage has suggested that there is a tension between the
interpretation of marriage as a unity between two partners, and the importance of each partner
within the marriage maintaining his/her individuality. By drawing on data from seven semistructured
qualitative interviews with married couples or couples involved in marriage-like
relationships I examine some ways in which these boundaries between individual and
collective identities and associated epistemic rights are drawn or become treated as blurred.
Specifically, I use a conversation analytic approach to examine two sets of practices that
reveal how this tension is made observable and is negotiated: 1) the use of personal and
collective pronouns and 2) shifts in gaze direction. In contrast to previous research on this
topic, I focus on the exploration of these phenomena in their moment-by-moment construction
in talk-in-interaction. Based on my findings, I conclude that these practices serve to
demonstrate the oriented-to ways in which marriage involves compromising one’s own
individual identity or epistemic rights while becoming a part of a unit and show how and
where this is done in interaction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/11871 |
| Date | 03 September 2012 |
| Creators | Ronge, Angelika |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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