Caribbean Immigrants’ Discourses: Cultural, Moral, and Personal Stories About Workplace Communication in the United States
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2010
Keywords
organizational communication, immigration, stories, discursive positioning, sensemaking, american dream
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943610369789
Abstract
The authors determined how Caribbean immigrants position themselves and make sense of their workplace communication through their storytelling. Using the constant comparative technique, they analyzed interviews with 25 Caribbean immigrants and found two discursive positionings: (a) within their cultural-moral narratives of the American Dream and (b) in stories that reproduce and resist specific intercultural workplace communication. Personal sensemaking stories broke down the monolithic cultural and moral narratives of the American Dream to display participants’ perceptions about, communicative strategies for, and discursive self-positioning for handling their unique workplace experiences. They made sense of their experiences through invocation of difference discourses—race, class, gender, and immigrant status—and actively sought ways of asserting their agency materially and discursively.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
International Journal of Business Communication, v. 47, issue 3, p. 235-265
Scholar Commons Citation
Bridgewater, Melissa J. and Buzzanell, Patrice M., "Caribbean Immigrants’ Discourses: Cultural, Moral, and Personal Stories About Workplace Communication in the United States" (2010). Communication Faculty Publications. 733.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/spe_facpub/733
