Survival Communication: A Linguistic Analysis of Captivity Narratives of Migrant Filipinos

Abstract

Survival communication emanates from the symbolic interactionist notion of the subjective understanding and perceptions of and about people, symbols, language and actions. It framed the message of captivity and survival by describing how language is important in understanding the captivity experience. The theoretical groundings anchored on symbolic interaction, constructivist interpretation, and language meaning potential provide the analytical frames of understanding captivity and survival as lived experiences. The Filipino migrant nurses as participants are framed in the global capitalist economy and their captivity narratives are extraordinary portraits of life, experience, emotion and survival. Since the Filipino nurses are constantly in demand nurses in war torn countries like Libya, this study on survival communication presents a constructivist perspective anchored on language, its orders of meanings and speech acts through symbolic interactionism. The gap of the study was addressed through the following questions: 1) In recounting the migrant women's experience under ISIS, what linguistic resources are used in communicating captivity and survival; 2) how do the captives express these linguistic resources as linguistic patterns to substantiate the themes; and 3) what model of communicating survival can be drawn from their narratives as captives? Five Filipino migrant nurses and clinical instructors who once worked at Sirte, Libya and were abducted by ISIS on September 2015-October 2016 were interviewed. Using the Filipino migrants' interview texts as data, the corpora are analyzed through linguistic parameters or orders of meanings starting from semantics and pragmatics. As they interact with their fellow captives and captors, they use language more intensely in their utterances, reproducing meanings that are culture-specific. Utterances are speech acts that convey meanings beyond what is actually said. These meanings are reproduced not only in their interactions with their fellow captives and captors as linguistic resources but also categorized as recurring linguistic patterns, which substantiate the formulation of the themes. Within the context of the narratives of captivity, the orders of meanings and speech acts provide the theorization of survival communication that addresses the gap in communication studies research. The findings reveal that linguistic resources, consisting of lexical choices and phrases are used metaphorically in communicating the self, describing their captors, and speaking for/to non-Filipino individuals during captivity. Lexicons such as Filipinos, medical workers, God, and escape, are the words that were repeatedly used by the migrant captives. In the same manner, the lexical choices regarding survival integrate the understanding of meaning of how the migrant captives survived. The lexical semantics of convert, food, and pills develop an account of how words are understood when the migrant captives construct their meaning of survival. The lexical and phrasal choices used by migrant captives to describe their captors in the narratives are ISIS, sheik, Alladin, Qur'an, sniper,"patay" and "bomba". The migrants use these lexicons as they endure their captivity at the hands of their captors, and how their captors used the migrants to their advantage during war. The words respect, treatment, war and "awa" are also used to express and describe the relationship of the migrant captives and their captors in a survival scenario. The common lexical choices of "Itim", "bata", and"inggit" are the migrants' words when they describe their fellow captives fromAfrica. The word that was strongly used by the migrants when they talk aboutsurvival with their fellow captives is the word slave. The speech act categories used in this study are thanking, confirming, questioning, ordering, and describing.These acts arise from the different typologies that are mentioned by Leech(1983). In elucidating these categories of leaning, linguistic resources contains concepts that represent Filipino values such as pananampalataya, hawak-kamay,pusong-pinoy, and kapit-bisig. The metaphors that reveal suggest not only aFilipino-centric worldview but also a phenomenological understanding of survival communication. To accentuate the concept of Filipino identity, the utterances are reformulated extending their metaphorical meanings to vernacular expressions.The model that has emerged in this study illustrates a reconceptualization of communication within the frames of captivity, interaction, symbolic, and survival. As theorized in this study, survival communication articulates a conceptual space in asymmetrical human interaction that use language in negotiating meanings and values.