Autobiographical Accounts of L2 Identity Construction in Chicano Literature

Abstract

This paper uses narrative accounts to explore intercultural experiences and the perception of the self by second language (L2) users. The analysis follows poststructuralist and postmodern theories of cultural and language identity. Extracts from the autobiographies of three chicano writers from the 1980s to the new millennium, Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, Ilán Stavans' On Borrowed Words and Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands: La Frontera, will be used to illustrate the socialisation processes that take place when acquiring a second or third language and the creation of bilingual identities. The narrative analysis of the testimonial accounts will on the one hand be based on Bourdieu's theory of language (1991), which highlights the unequal relationships of power between different speakers, and on the other, on the premise that identities are multiple and subject to change over time.