Language, culture, and identity: boundaries between languages in the speech of an immigrant

Abstract

This study analyzes how the Japanese language emerges in oral verbal interactions in Brazilian Portuguese by a Japanese immigrant subject, using as its corpus the documentary As Lentes de Kenji (2008), which pays tribute to photographer Kenji Ueta, a Japanese immigrant living in Maringá. Based on the theory of enunciative heterogeneities by Authier-Revuz (1990; 1998; 2004; 2007), we investigate how the subject mobilizes the Japanese language (and, consequently, Japanese culture) in their enunciation, seeking to understand how they navigate linguistic and cultural boundaries in the construction of their immigrant subjectivity and their circulation through identities – in the sense proposed by Hall (2006). To this end, instances where the subject transitions between languages were identified and transcribed according to the NURC standards described by Castilho (2014). A qualitative analysis of these instances was conducted to describe the uses of Japanese in the speech of the subject and to identify points of manifest heterogeneity that emerge in their verbal expression. The results indicate that these occurrences function as markers that reveal a subject split between languages and cultures, shaped by their dual Japanese-Brazilian nationality. Thus, by resorting to Japanese to express their experiences and practices, the subject reaffirms their Japanese-Brazilian identities, articulating their speech between two linguistic and cultural traditions.