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Mother and friends in a Holocaust life story

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2002

DEBORAH SCHIFFRIN
DEBORAH SCHIFFRIN
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20057, schiffrd@georgetown.edu
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Abstract

Although oral histories about the Holocaust are increasingly important sources of public commemoration, as well as data for historians, they also provide opportunities for survivors to recount life stories that describe intensely personal and painful memories. One type of memory concerns relationships with significant and familiar “others.” By analyzing the linguistic construction (through variation in the use of referring terms and reported speech) of two relationships (with mother and friends) in one Holocaust survivor's life story, this article shows how survivors' life stories position “others” within both their own lives and more broadly construed matrices of cultural archetypes and historically contingent identities (victim, survivor, bystander).

Keywords

Narrativelife storyoral historyidentitymother/daughterfriendshipreferring termsreported speechHolocaust discourselanguage and history
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 2002 , pp. 309 - 353
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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