‘I am a mother before anything else’: An analysis through the discursive angle of Positioning Theory

Abstract

Constituting a profound change in women's being, becoming a mother might have different meanings across cultures. Utilizing the systematic analytic framework and discursive angle of Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990), this study analyzes the ideological construction of mother identity in archive of online documents with the expression ‘I am a mother before anything else’ in Türkiye. Positioning analysis was applied to reveal the story lines through which women position themselves as primarily mothers and its social consequences. The findings unveil five main story lines assigning certain duties fulfilled/rejected and rights claimed/rejected by the mothers, which legitimize their actions and states of being in different contexts and in the eyes of different audiences. Emerging themes of the mothers' discourse include a high emphasis on the concept of self-sacrifice while producing their intensive mothering position and primary mother identity. Traces of emotional exploitation through overwhelmingly affectuous expressions attributed to the divinity of maternity and using motherhood as a political strategy to indicate a superiority over men also come forward as the striking findings of this study.