An approach to the representation of discrimination in The Thing Around your Neck (2009)

In contrast there is another school of thought that seeks to minimize and display abuses of power that may exist in the hierarchical structures of society. This thought is leaded by the Marxist school of thought, known as scientific socialism postulated by the philosopher, economist and sociologist Karl Marx that advocates for human freedom in opposition to the capitalist economy in which powerful people from a higher hierarchical position abuse their power for them and not for the less powerful population that comprises the lower hierarchical positions in society (Chambre and McLellan. 2018).

This current of thought has served as inspiration or basis to other theorists from diverse fields of investigation regarding economy, politics, sociology, linguistics and especially in specifics fields of the linguistics such as socio-linguistics. Concerning this field, the linguist Norman Fairclough (1989) designs a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) applied to the sociolinguistics in which it is taken into consideration “language use and unequal relations of power” (p.1)in other words, language inside the social dynamics, specifically its relations and interactions with power structures such as the hierarchy imposed and perpetuated by society.

Similarly, this type of analysis can be considered suitable for the nature of this research since it provides the tools for analyzing different social issues from two scientific perspectives. Moreover, language can be considered the most appropriate object of study of social problematic since, as Halliday (2004) asserts that language “construe human experience” (p.29) That is to say, language is a representation of human perceptions, experiences and contexts and within these elements there are space for the analysis of the relation between power and society and the interaction among both.

In addition, it could be considered that there is no deeper linguistic representation about human nature than literature. Welch (n.d) describes literature as a description of “human condition” (para. 1) specially regarding human society and phenomena. At present, one of the most outstanding phenomena in society is that of migration. The literature focused on topics such as migration, particularly from the perspective of immigrant writers, has brought as a result a literature that reflects “on the challenges of existence in multicultural and multilingual contexts” (Wajeman. 2016. para. 3) that is known as “new world literature”. Within these challenges of multicultural contexts topics such as identity, adaptation and discrimination haven taken important roles in the development of these works.

For the purpose of this research, it will be needed to define what is understood as identity and discrimination. Nakayama and Martin (2010) define identity as “the concept of who we are” (p.162). In other words, it can be considered a set of features that describe the person in different aspects such as origins and beliefs. As broad as it seems, the concept of identity includes several subcategories such as gender, sexual, age, racial, ethnic, religious, national and regional identities that along compose the personality and history of an individual. Moreover, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre describes discrimination as “unequal or different treatment or harassment that causes harm” In a related form, the discrimination takes into account the identity of the individual but as a role within society, taking into account only the unequal treatment of the individual within social structure.

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Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi: the female voice of an African immigrant in the United States of America

Given the importance that discrimination has acquired in literature of English-speaking authors from diverse cultures, we attempt to revise and analyze this phenomenon through the literary work of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, who is recognized as one of the most prolific authors of Nigeria.

Obtained from GettyImages

She was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977 during one of the most critical financial crisis of this country that comprises between the decades of 1970 until 1990. During this period, the output prices of oil declined which caused a major downfall in the economy (ThisTime. 2016. Para. 4-6). Moreover, as the economy of the country lost value to the point of being declared as a low-income country by the World Bank, there were socio-political changes in this nation such as a constant conflict between ethnicities, expulsion of several illegal workers and the privatization of many public enterprises due to the completely-centralized policies of government of the Nigeria of this period. With this, it could be considered that Nigeria, in this period, was a country with a high rate of poverty and national discontent which led to Adichie to interrupt her studies of medicine at the age of 20 to pursuit studies on communication and political science in the United States of America, where she experienced first-hand the stereotypes Americans and popular culture had about African culture (St. Louis Public Radio, 2018).

This experience marked her perception regarding topics as the perception of Africans in literature regarding stereotyping and various types of discrimination; hence, becoming an advocate for feminism and ethnic equality as this is evidenced in several of her literary works such as Americanah (2013) that narrates the story of a Nigerian young woman that migrates to the US in order to pursuit her dreams of studying since in Nigeria she did not have a future. There, she faces the challenges an immigrant has to face such as discrimination, adaptation to a different culture within the framework of youth and young love. In this sense, this work is considered as an analysis of the different perspective of African immigrants and their struggles regarding “how their immigrant status affects them through gender, race, as well as economically and culturally” (Yazher. 2017. p.1). Furthermore, it seems that her voice not only extends to the problem of African immigrants in the United States, but also takes into account the discrimination that women experience, especially African women in society nowadays as in her relevant TED talk and later essay We All Should be Feminist (2013) in which she advocates for the issues that African women experience in African society and highlights the importance of being feminist regardless genders.

In addition in 2009, publishes The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of shorts stories centered in African culture from the point of view of the immigrant in America. Within which the short story homonymous obtains special importance as an object of analysis of this research.

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The Thing Around your neck (2009): Field, Tenor and mode.

For the purpose of this research, it is first needed to clarify what it is understood as field, tenor and mode since this represents the most suitable approach to the literary text and the nature of this paper as it provides separate and marked frameworks for analysis and development of texts. Halliday and Hasan (1989) developed a model for the text analysis regarding the register of it that is divided in field, tenor and mode. The first is intended as the subject of matter, the context of the situation presented in the text as well as the situation itself. The tenor represents the social relation between the participants that focuses on the register and hierarchical interaction and mode that specifies the structural format of the text meaning verbal or nonverbal forms of the text as well as their formal structures.

This classification serves as a method to divide the main feature of the text in order to analyze and get to a more complex comprehension of the different processes that interact and constitutes that text. Hence, for the purpose of this analysis, it will be taken into consideration this model as a form of approaching and subdividing of the text that is taken as subject of analysis, the short story The thing around your neck (2009) by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

First, the mode of “The thing around your neck” (2009) is written in a short story structure with a narrative in form of a monologue in second person singular (you) that could be considered as a strategy to allow the reader to feel identify with the experience narrated.

Second regarding the tenor, it could be divided in two categories: a macro and a micro. The first is presented in the narrative in which the narrator and the main character are the same; this is represented as Akunna’s inner voice that narrates the story from her perspectives and experiences being an immigrant in the US. In contrast to this, the micro perspective takes into consideration the story narrated, in which Akunna is the immigrant and she is not in terms of equality regarding opportunities and, hence, hierarchy in opposition to the average American citizen. With this, it is presented a hierarchical structure in which the main character observes the situation and interacts with it from the perspective of an inferior. Furthermore, it is necessary to highlight that above these categories, it is present the voice of the writer that could be regarded as the one in charge of defining the roles and ideological positions of the characters as well as the social hierarchy that each one possesses.

Finally in the field, it is presented a narration of the story of Akunna, a Nigerian woman who wins the green card lottery and migrates to the US. She faces different challenges as a foreigner such as sexual harassment from his uncle, problems of adaptation to the new culture, difficulty for economic solvency due to his immigration status, work below the minimum wage, inability to pursue higher education due to her economic situation and above all discrimination due to her ethnicity, youth and her condition as an immigrant and woman. As much time as she spends in that new country, a sentiment of suffocation starts increasing, described as a thing around her neck. Which leads her to question whether her decision of migrating was correct as she faces the clash between her perceptions and what she perceives as the general American thought. Finally, she decides to release that feeling of suffocation when she turns back to her country leaving the reader the open end of whether she eventually decides to return to America or not. Regarding the language, it is noticeable that throughout the narration there is a constant comparison between American and African culture and how the main character perceives them. This is reflected in the uses of Igbo words that are part of the languages spoken in Nigeria. With this, it would be possible to claim that the language used has an important role in the development of the perceptions and interactions between the characters.

Ideational metafunction in The thing around your neck: an approach to the clause as a representation.

As Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) state, language has functions in the social environment that are recreating the experiences and social relations as a manner of construct of “human experience” (p.29) and convert them into meaning. Ideational metafunction is the lexicogrammar resources for the analysis of the meaning of these experiences. This metafunction of the text can be analyzed through the examination of the clause as a representation in which the semantic level of analysis postulated by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) is applied. With this, the clause can be interpreted as a whole and each individual element with relevant meaning in the short story can be analyzed in-depth for the purpose of this research. In this sense, an excerpt of The Thing Around your neck (2009) will be divided into two parts. The first, referred to the clauses, takes into consideration the perception that the protagonist has on the word “home” and the second, on her perspective regarding her host country, America.

“You laughed with your uncle and you felt at home in his house; his wife called you nwanne, sister, and his two school-age children called you Aunty. They spoke Igbo and ate garri for lunch and it was like home.” (p. 98)

In this first part, Akunna explains how was the dynamic of living with her Nigerian family and the form in which she felt regarding aspect of Nigerian culture, described as “home.” In this sense, the main character uses verbs in their past tense such as “laughed”, “felt”, “called”, “spoke” and “ate” in association with the word “home” that represents a recurrent word used throughout the story. With this, it would be possible to affirm that, in this case, the clauses acquire a positive connotation.

From the semantic point of view, the verbs laughed (laugh) and felt (feel) are mental processes, described by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) as “construing the inner experience of an emotion.” (p.170). Thus, the fact that those are mental processes involves the perception of the character. This perception is involved as a manner of filter between her and the reality. In other words, Akunna perceives the elements of this family’s dynamic as an inner positive experience referred to the concept of home due to the language used.

Furthermore, the verbs “called” (call) and “spoke” (speak) are verbal processes which are “symbolic relationships constructed in human consciousness and enacted in the form of language” (Halliday and Matthiessen. 2004. p.171). Those processes of the act of speaking in this situation can be seen with a positive connotation since they are accompanied by foreign words from Akunna’s home culture, in Nigeria. Semantically, it would be possible to say that there are certain words that are commonly related with positive perceptions. This would be the case of words that refer to the family since they are generally associated with positive feelings of proximity, warmth. In the following clause, we can see how the word “sister” is used together with words in the main character’s mother tongue, making this entire clause a representation of what is missed by Akunna:

“his wife called you nwanne, sister”

This represents not only the comfort of being called sister but also the positive intention of being called “sister” in one’s home culture. Correspondingly, in the clauses

“They spoke Igbo and ate garri”

The verbal process spoke (speak) and the material process ate (eat) are both attached to foreign words. The first is meant as a language spoken in Nigeria by 18 million habitants. The second, being part of the traditional food of Nigeria. Consequently, it could be arguable that the features that compose the main character’s home culture can bring, semantically, alter the connotation of the process. In other words, it could resemble a linguistic strategy for Akunna to highlight the marked differences between her perceptions regarding her culture and her experiences in America. In other words, it could be perceived as pattern in which when a process is followed by an Igbo word, it would have a positive connotation for Akunna.

In contrast, the elements in clauses related to her experiences or perceptions regarding America tend to represent negative connotations as it is presented in the following clauses

“He picked you up at the airport and bought you a big hot dog with yellow mustard that nauseated you. Introduction to America, he said with a laugh.” (p. 97)

First, it is necessary illustrate what is intended as a material process. Defined as “construing the outer experience of the creation of a commodity” (Halliday and Matthiessen. 2004. p. 170) that is to say, a material process involves a physical, therefore external, activity. In this case, the clauses

“He picked you up at the airport and bought you a big hot dog with yellow mustard”

The processes picked up and bought are material accompanied by concrete nouns such as airport and hot dog are followed by a subordinated clause

“that nauseated you.”

This clause carries a mental process that confers a negative association regarding the preceding clauses. With this, the main character may want to transmit her feeling towards America. From a more specific point of view, the word hot dog not only represents a certain type of food but also it has a great importance in the construction of the image of America. Hence, the feeling of sickness that this food brings to Akunna can serve as a metaphor of her feeling towards America. This statement can be demonstrated through the following clause

“Introduction to America, he said with a laugh.”

The phrase Introduction to America can be an indication that those feelings that she experimented will be the general sensations that she will perceived throughout her stay in the US.

Moreover, in the story the uncle of the main character tries to have sexual relations with her however she stops him. He proceeds to tell her that the only form in which women succeeded was letting men use them physically as it is narrated in the following excerpt:

If you let him, he would do many things for you. Smart women did it all the time. How did you think those women back home in Lagos with well-paying jobs made it? Even women in New York City? (p.98)

From the point of view of pragmatics, it is important to highlight the sentence “Smart women did it all the time” since the mood element is “smart women” which makes an emphasis on the adjective “smart.” In other words, it could be analyzed that only smart women are able to realize that the only form to professionally succeed is by having sexual relations with those in power, in this case, referred as men. Furthermore, Akunna’s uncle specifies that that occurs everywhere since that is the only mode in which women of New York City or Lagos “with well-paying jobs made it”.

Macro-social analysis: social relations and institutions

Institutionalized racism in the US

After the analysis of the linguistic context of the short story, as proposed by Fairclough (1995), it is necessary to take into consideration the social aspect of the text understood as the historical, economic, cultural and political situation of a given society. These levels in Fairclough’s model of discourse analysis are designated as macro and micro social analysis. The first is intended as examination of the social relations perpetuated by influential social institutions such as the government and, consequently, laws derived from it. On the other hand, the micro social analysis is focused on how these perpetuations of social behaviors are portrayed by individuals inside the society.

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Throughout the history of the US, it has been presented different occasions in which institutions have not only allowed racism but also promoted this behavior. For instance, in 1876 it was implemented the legal system called the Jim Craw Law which separated African American from white population stating the conception of equal but separate. This law was abolished in the Civil Rights Act of 1965, almost twenty years after the World War II. However, it is possible to argue that although institutions do not support racism in the United States, there are marked differences between African Americans and immigrants and the Caucasian population that represents the traditional image of this country.

The United States of The thing around your neck (2009) is a nation governed by Barack Obama, an African American. With this, it could be possible consider the government of an African American as a precedent regarding racial equality that would result in the improvement of the quality of life of the community of color until obtaining social equality. Indeed, since 1965 it was approved a commission called U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in charge of protecting people from discrimination based on a person’s ancestor, country of origin, accent or ethnic community. However, it is a fact that still there is a considerable gap between the income of a white American and an African American. Moreover, the difference regarding income increases when immigrants are included. Jan (2017) asserts that white families have ten times the net worth than African and Hispanic families since the opportunities of work regarding both groups are not equal which is reflected in the annual income average of each group.

Although it is not explicit the form in which institutions permit the difference between the incomes in the different ethnic groups, this contrast is presented in the part in which Akunna searches for a job: “You walked into the restaurant with the bright, clean awning and said you would work for two dollars less than the other waitresses. […]He said he had never had a Nigerian employee but all immigrants worked hard.”(p.98). With this, it is noticeable that immigrants and members of minorities get paid less than white population.

Through the textual analysis of Akunna’s perception on what America is and the contrast between it and her concept of “home”, it is possible to find a relation of reciprocity among the textual level of analysis and its discursive practice; in other words, the individual actions of people in society as a reflection of this matter.

In the short story, the main character constantly describes negative feelings towards the US as in the clauses “The trick was to understand America, to know that America was give-and-take. You gave up a lot but you gained a lot, too.” (Ngozi, 2009, p.97) With this, it is possible to assume that Akunna considers that, in order to live in America, she most sacrifice several aspects of her life regarding work, relationships with others, education and/or sexual freedom. This is supported along with the following paragraph:

Until your uncle came into the cramped basement where you slept with old boxes and cartons and pulled you forcefully to him, squeezing your buttocks, moaning. […] After you pushed him away, he sat on your bed—it was his house, after all—and smiled and said you were no longer a child at twenty-two. If you let him, he would do many things for you. Smart women did it all the time. How did you think those women back home in Lagos with well-paying jobs made it? Even women in New York City? (p.98)

In this paragraph, it is possible to observe that the main character, as a woman, is perceived as not as capable to find success in America as a man, immigrant or not, could be. This idea is based on the systemic oppression that immigrant women experience in the US in which immigrant women are “discouraged from voicing their opinions, particularly when they speak out against discrimination.” (Rodriguez, 2011, para. 2).

In fact, this situation of discrimination among women leads Akunna to confront several related difficulties related to the fact of being a woman, young immigrant such as education. This is presented in the following clauses: “You could not afford to go to school, because now you paid rent for the tiny room with the stained carpet. Besides, the small Connecticut town didn’t have a community college and credits at the state university cost too much.”(p.98). This could correlate with the fact that tuition payments in the US have become increasingly expensive in the last decades. CNBC illustrates this aspect declaring that from 1988 to 2018 there has been of more than the double regarding the cost of education. These digits have a consequence in the rate of immigrant’s education in the US which leads to difficulties in aspects of quality of life such as salary or access to health care.

Among others, in the short story, the main character experiences obstacles to obtain a stable economic life such as the inferior payment that she receives in the restaurant she works at as it is illustrated in the following clauses “You walked into the restaurant with the bright, clean awning and said you would work for two dollars less than the other waitresses. […]He said he had never had a Nigerian employee but all immigrants worked hard.”(p.98). This is connected to the fact that there is a noticeable difference between the payment of an US citizen and an immigrant. According to Forbes, in 2017 there was a significant difference between the annual income of an US-born citizen (59.689$) and the income of an immigrant (40.175$) This acquisitive difference in turn affects the possibility of accessing education or even having medical attention as well as the capability of acquiring any type of luxury.

Still, you chose long brown envelopes to send half your month’s earnings to your parents at the address of the parastatal where your mother was a cleaner; you always used the dollar notes that Juan gave you because those were crisp, unlike the tips. (p.99).

This paragraph portrays the restrictions that the main character suffers due to her low income which translates into low quality of life.

Lastly, to this environment of educational, monetary and sexual repression, the aspect of discrimination could be added not only due to of her position as a woman but also due to of her ethnicity.

Later you told him why you were upset, that even though you went to Chang’s so often together, even though you had kissed just before the menus came, the Chinese man had assumed you could not possibly be his girlfriend, and he had smiled and said nothing. (p.103).

This represent a constant problematic treated in different fields of investigation since although in the year in which the short story was written (2008) Barack Obama was elected president of the US, the rate of racism did not decrease. “you could not possibly be his girlfriend” makes an emphasis in the mood element (you) that specifies that other person could possibly be his girlfriend but not the African main character. This is depicted in a “post-racial America”, in other words, an America that technically avoided racial discrimination. Even though that in the discourse practice, 64% of American citizens claim that racial segregation still remains as an important problematic.

Conclusion: the representation of the African female immigrant in American Society

Through the tridimensional analysis postulated by Fairclough, it has been possible to perceive the different problems presented by the fact of being an immigrant, African and woman in American society. Akunna, the main character is confronted with the contrast between American and Nigerian culture in which she does not have equality due to her status of an African immigrant that cannot obtain the same economic stability of the white population. This prevents her from having a standard lifestyle that includes access to education. On the other hand, her status as a woman, in the case of her interaction with her uncle, shows her that the power is mainly held by the male gender and that the only way in which she could obtain such stability would be to succumb to the wishes of this gender since this would be the only way to be "successful" in America. Finally, all these perceptions are marked within the language used in which the semantics show how Akunna negatively perceives many aspects of the host-culture in contrast to the aspects of her home-culture and how the use of foreign words of her native language exacerbates this contrast. With all this, it is possible to argue that "The Thing Around Your Neck" (2009) represents a visualization and protest against discrimination and stereotypes of African culture, especially the culture of Nigeria which provides an immigrant perspective within this social phenomenon.