This article combines insights from existing research on young 'Asian' hybridities and micro-linguistic approaches to language/discourse and identity by linking an exploration of discourses and subject positions negotiated in the talk of five British Bangladeshi girls to an analysis of lexical, syntactic, paralinguistic and sequential features of their interaction. The extracts of data I present originate from spontaneous conversations about the topic of marriage, self-recorded by five 15-16 year old girls from London, England. They reflect not only the heterogeneity of the positions adopted by individual members of the group, but also the complex process of negotiations that the girls engage in locally to find a consensus on their group's stance to marriage. The article focuses on the modified discourse of arranged marriage which emerges as a hybrid in the girls' interactive negotiations of a wide range of cultural discourses with ethnic, gendered, classed and more local inflections and provides a significant space for the girls' construction of British Bangladeshi femininities.
From: Women's Studies International Forum 30 (2007), pp.201-216
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