Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time, and Space in a Post 9/11 America Susanne Stadlbauer University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected]
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University of Colorado, Boulder CU Scholar Linguistics Graduate Theses & Dissertations Linguistics Spring 1-1-2012 Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time, and Space in a Post 9/11 America Susanne Stadlbauer University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.colorado.edu/ling_gradetds Part of the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Linguistics Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Stadlbauer, Susanne, "Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time, and Space in a Post 9/11 America" (2012). Linguistics Graduate Theses & Dissertations. Paper 14. This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Linguistics at CU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics Graduate Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CU Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DISPLACED ISLAMIC IDENTITIES: LANGUAGE, TIME AND SPACE IN POST 9/11 AMERICA by SUSANNE STADLBAUER B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 2003 M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder, 2005 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics 2012 This thesis entitled: Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time, and Space in a Post 9/11 America written by Susanne Stadlbauer has been approved for the Department of Linguistics Kira Hall J. Andrew Cowell Barbara Fox Ruth Mas Carla Jones May 2, 2012 The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB protocol # 0207.47 Stadlbauer, Susanne (Ph.D., Linguistics) Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time, and Space in a Post 9/11 America Thesis directed by Associate Professors Kira Hall and J. Andrew Cowell This dissertation examines how women in the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Colorado at Boulder respond to the negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims that have proliferated since 9/11. The media’s positioning of Muslim women as “backwards” and “un-American” compels MSA women to construct an extensive discourse of da’wah (outreach to non-Muslims) that repositions Islamic doctrine within the terms of American modernity. While this discourse shows respect for Islamic ritual practices, such as praying five times daily and wearing the hijab, the women construct their use of these practices as an agentive choice informed by study, self-discipline, and conscious reflection. The seven chapters that constitute this dissertation examine the discursive strategies that facilitate this construction of a contemporary Islamic self across multiple discourse domains, including interviews, personal narratives, rehearsed performance, and everyday conversational interaction. The dissertation is centrally concerned with uncovering the spatial and temporal dimensions that underlie the discursive production of identity. As a sociocultural linguist, I incorporate a range of theoretical perspectives to illuminate the interplay of time, space, and identity, engaging directly with Bakhtin’s (1981) understanding of chronotopes, Benjamin’s (1986) distinction between historical time and messianic time, and Keane’s (2007) exposition of the moral narrative of modernity. I similarly incorporate a range of methods in my analysis of the discourse data that I collected over the course of two and a half years of iii ethnographic fieldwork. Chapter 2 employs Membership Categorization Analysis to examine how MSA women negotiate a mediatized Muslim-American binary. Chapter 3 focuses on the women’s use of spatial and temporal deixis to illuminate how they situate themselves in response to a media that portrays them as both foreign and anti-modern. Chapter 4 incorporates narrative analysis to shed light on the women’s faith development narratives, which articulate their journey with Islam as evolving from ritualistic obligation to intellectual choice. This methodology is also the basis of Chapter 5, which analyzes the narratives of American women who converted to Islam after 9/11. In contrast to other kinds of religious conversion narratives discussed in the literature, these narratives, which I identify as “reversion” narratives, do not demonstrate a clear break with the past but rather rewrite the past as Muslim, thus aligning with other faith development narratives in emphasizing learning as instrumental to self-progression. Finally, Chapter 6 incorporates linguistic anthropological work on the subject of language ideology to illuminate the social meaning behind the women’s alternating uses of Qur’anic Arabic, contemporary heritage languages, and English. Taken together, these chapters provide on-the-ground examples of how sociocultural linguistics, with its emphasis on interdisciplinary theories and methods, contributes to the larger endeavor of analyzing the place of Islam in contemporary U.S. society. iv To Karl Stadlbauer and George Figgs, for their support Acknowledgments This dissertation is the product of four years of thought, work, and discussions with many scholars and supporters, whose generous contributions made it possible. Foremost, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the members of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Colorado between the years of 2007 to 2010 for their extended welcome and willingness to participate in this academic endeavor. I am especially thankful for their trust in working with me on this project during a time of political difficulty for Muslims in the United States. I also wish to express gratitude to Dr. Kira Hall and Dr. James Andrew Cowell, who served as my co-advisors throughout my course of study at the University of Colorado. Their academic knowledge and dedication provided the all-important inspiration for this project, which would not have been possible without their efforts. Dr. Barbara Fox has similarly advised me throughout my academic endeavors and provided much appreciated intellectual support. Dr. Ruth Mas has always been generous in personal and intellectual assistance and inspiration. Likewise, I like to thank Dr. Carla Jones for her support and dedication. Both scholars have been an instrumental help in the beginning stages of this dissertation. I like to sincerely thank all members of my advisory committee. Since 2005, my colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder, especially my fellow graduate students in the Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP) program, have inspired me to pursue these studies and provided invaluable feedback. In particular, I would like to thank Aous Mansouri for his insights throughout the years. I also feel indebted to numerous scholars at conferences and colloquia for their input. vi I also received abundant support from the University of Colorado, including the staff of the Department of Linguistics, the Office of Contracts and Grants, the Human Research Committee, and the Graduate School, among many others. For financial support, I gratefully acknowledge that work between 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 was supported by the Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Scholarship from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I thank the FLAS reviewers and staff. Work in 2011 was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Writing Grant by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Finally, I am grateful for my family – my mother Karin Sirtl, my father Karl Stadlbauer, my stepdad Heinz Sirtl and my stepmom Maria Albrecht – for their encouragement and support. I owe special gratitude to George Figgs, whose love and support has been invaluable. vii Transcription Conventions, inspired by Bucholtz (2011) and Ochs & Capps (2001) The names of interviewees in the dissertation are change to ensure their privacy. In the data excerpts, the following symbols are included to make the excerpts more readable, to illustrate content and context, and to point to relevant text for the analysis: Intonation and stress: ↓ The down arrow indicates a falling intonation at the end of an intonation contour ↑ The up arrow indicates rising intonation at the end of an intonation contour word Underlining indicates stress or emphasis on a word or parts of a word Length: ::: Colons indicate stretching of the preceding sound, proportional to the number of colons Flow of speech: > < The talk between the “greater than” and “less than” symbol is faster < > This stretch of talk is slower (1.0) Number in parentheses indicate silence in estimated seconds Loudness: WOrd Upper case letters indicate loudness ~ ~ Speech between these signs indicate quiet or soft segments of talk Extralinguistic information: (( )) conversational information (word) a transcribed word in parenthesis indicates uncertainty on the transcriber’s part bold linguistic form of analytic interest viii ix 1 INTRODUCTION: MUSLIM WOMEN AND THE LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF ISLAM AFTER 9/11 Out of Place: Contested Islamic Space in United States Media Discourse. Every Friday at 4:30 pm, members of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Colorado filter into the classroom reserved for the weekly general group meetings. The members are Muslims of various backgrounds - Saudi Arabian, Kuwaiti, Jordanian, Egyptian, Nigerian, Sudanese, Iranian, Indian, Pakistani,