Critical response

The aim of this paper is to critically response and review an article called “A women studies war: stranger in a man’s world” written by Edna Lomsky-Feder in 1996.

The article is written from the perspective of the author which is a female as an interviewer who is researching and interviewing Israeli soldiers to gather information about their experience during a war. The author is the editor, producer and presenter. The aim of the author is to use her personal experience to create a link between language and identity. She builds her argument on an experience which has ultimately made her wonder about her self-identity and to find out about an identity inside her which she has not been able to see it before.

The author describes herself in a situation where the response from the soldiers has resulted in thinking about her identity twice and consequently her identity changes from an Israeli woman interviewing soldiers from her own country to a total stranger who is unfamiliar to the topic of war and the interviewees. There is a particular relationship between language and identity as in this case another factor plays an important role and that factor is gender. When the soldiers remind the interviewer that she cannot understand the experience and the situations which they have been through and how strange she is to their world, her identity changes and therefore the language of the interview also changes. Interestingly enough the interviewer is no longer just an interviewer but a woman who has no idea about a war which has happened in her own country and is strange to that world. It makes sense as taking up a role as an interviewer requires wide information and familiarity with the language of the interviewee is essential to understand their identity and their language of expression.

The author reveals that she has been unfamiliar with the language of the soldiers and they way they have described their situations and feelings; therefore she has tried to change her interview in three different stages. Each stage she takes on a different identity in order to get closer to the identity and the experience of the interviewees. The author shows that language and identity are strongly interacting. It also shows that language represents identity as in this case the language of the soldiers represents their identity which is unfamiliar to the author and has influenced her identity. The author states that she has finally accepted that she can use her identity as a stranger as a tool to expand and develop the interviews and that she has finally realized that she is unfamiliar with the world of the soldiers but it does not mean she cannot get close to them and to understand them.

The paper is successful in explaining the difficulties which a female in this case could come across in understanding an issue in a society which belongs to her but still unfamiliar with some part of it. It shows how an important group of people in a country identified as women are kept apart from men’s world to an extent where they are as much strangers as some foreigners are. It is also successfully concluded that being familiar to the language of expression is crucial in understanding the identity of a person or group of people even if they are all speak the same language.

Reference:

Lomsky-Feder, E 1996, A Woman studies war: stranger in a man’s world, Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives, Sage, London.