Finding culture in ‘poetic’ structures: The case of a ‘racially-mixed’ Japanese/New Zealander |
Finding culture in ‘poetic’ structures: The case of a ‘racially-mixed’ Japanese/New Zealander
Journal of Multicultural Discourses
Online Before Print: 2012-01-18
19 pages
DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2011.610507
Masataka Yamaguchi, Professor of Japanese Studies
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
In this article, I analyze discourse taken from my interviews with a ‘racially-mixed’ Japanese/New Zealander in which he represents his ethno-national identities to me in New Zealand. Drawing on the concept of ‘poetic’ structure, I reveal implicit assumptions in the patternings of discourse. Specifically, he discursively constructs his ‘racially-mixed’ identities by presupposing ‘pure race’ as a social fact. It is also shown that a powerful implicit assumption is the hegemony of whiteness, to which he responds in the construction of New Zealander identities. For comparative purposes, I further analyze interview data taken from another Japanese-heritage participant. Based on the analyses, I discuss implications for the analysis of multicultural discourses, and suggest that the reproduction of hegemonic values deserves more attention.
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Tags: Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Masataka Yamaguchi