Zamri, Norazrin (2019) The ‘good’ mother? The discursive construction of identities among new mothers in Malaysia. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This study investigates the ways selected new mothers in Malaysia discursively construct their different, sometimes competing, identities in discussion of their beliefs and practices regarding motherhood in research interviews and on social media platforms.

This qualitative study draws on Baxter’s (2007) Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis, Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) sociocultural linguistic principles of identity construction, and Schippers’ (2007) concept of hegemonic femininities as its theoretical and analytical framework. The main data were obtained from individual interviews (about 32 hours’ worth of recording) with nineteen Malaysian women, who had children under five years, conducted in 2016. These data were supplemented with six months’ worth of the participants’ motherhood-related Facebook and/or Instagram posts which were published within the same year. The participants were selected from various demographic backgrounds with diverse career roles, ethnicities and religions.

Findings show that the ways the participants construct their identities are intricately complex. Identity construction is often intertwined with various pervasive factors such as career decisions, and heterogeneous ethnic and religious backgrounds. When expressing their ambivalent beliefs and experiences of motherhood, the participants often orient to, reinforce, challenge and negotiate multiple interrelated emergent discourses that are frequently inextricably linked with the notion of the ‘‘good’ mother’. The women’s multifarious accounts of ‘good’ mothering thus reflect identity struggles in which they are orienting to and trying to combine the sometimes opposing temporal, sociocultural, career-related, ethnicity-related and religious aspects that are associated with being a ‘good’ mother in Malaysia. The diverse textual data sources and analytical approach used in this study also contribute to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of how identities are discursively constructed and analysed.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Motherhood -- Malaysia, Mothers -- Malaysia, Women -- Identity, Discursive psychology, Social media -- Psychological aspects -- Malaysia
Official Date:	April 2019
Dates:	Date Event April 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Applied Linguistics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Schnurr, Stephanie, 1975- ; MacDonald, Malcolm, 1953-
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	xiii, 287 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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