Positioning in the Oral Narratives of Displaced Syrian Women

Abstract This study offers an analysis of six Syrian women’s oral narratives of displacement in the aftermath of the Syrian revolution (2011). Drawing on Davies and Harré’s (1990) Positioning Theory (PT) and its development by Bamberg (1997, 2010), and using conversation analysis as a toolkit, this research is an attempt to reveal the ways in which the Syrian women interviewed for this study position themselves in relation to other individuals in their narratives, their audience and also in relation to the grand narratives of the Syrian conflict. To find out how the women position themselves, I investigated the discourse strategies and performance devices in their narratives. Analysis of the interviews revealed that the positions the women take up in their narratives reflect a change in their self-image, and are often contradictory. Moreover, the women challenged the dominant narratives of the Syrian war and resisted categorization. Furthermore, both the style and the content of much of their talk appeared to be designed to appeal to the audience