Identity

1
Identity

• Lesley Southern
• and
• Amy Hogan

2
Presentation Outline

• Traditional/Dominant Views of the Self
• 6 Critiques
• Cross Cultural, Deconstructionist and Social
  Constructionist
• How does language shape identity?
• Summary of Social Constructionist view

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Activity No. 1

• Attributions of Personhood
• What constitutes the self?
• What is identity?

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Traditional View

• Western concept of self
• separate
• individual
• self contained
• unique
• distinct
• private
• Encompassed in many psychological theories

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Traditional View

• Summary
• 1) Self contained mind, unique, separate
• 2) One set of fixed traits
• 3) Private, self generated thoughts expressed
  through language
• 4) The individual is the source of experience

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Traditional View

• the western conception of the person is as a
  bounded, unique dynamic centre of awareness,
  emotion, judgement and action organised into a
  distinctive whole and set contrastively against
  other such wholes and against a social and
  natural background.
• (Geertz 1973 229)

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Critique

• Critique of the traditional view not recent
• James, Cooley, Mead
• Six Critiques
• Feminist
• System Theorists
• Critical Theory
• Cross Cultural
• Deconstructionists
• Social Constructionists

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Cross Cultural

• Selfhood is less individuated
• Identity is created, disseminated and understood
  within culture
• There is no universal concept of self
• Balinese - do not refer to inner states
• Proffers culturally heterogeneous views of the
  self

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Deconstructionism

• Challenges the centrality and sovereignty of the
  individual
• Derrida (1974)
• Social practices are not merely mediated
  through language but are constituted by it.
• Derridas critique of logo- phonocentrism

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Derrida

• Logo/Phonocentrism Speech provides privileged
  access to the mind. Writing is secondary.
• Spoken words .. are the symbols of mental
  experience and written words the symbols of
  spoken words
• (Derrida 197411)

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Derrida

• Writing already inhabits speech through memory -
  Trace
• Present is always mediated by the Trace
• Self is not direct and unmediated experience
• Permits key role for socio-historical traces to
  structure the self
• Proffers non-centred, dynamic, multidimensional
  selves that supplement each other

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Activity No. 2

• D. Kondo (1990) Crafting Selves Power, Gender
  and Discourses of Identity
• Q What does this tell us about the social
  construction of identity?

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Social Constructionism

• Selves are socio-historical constructions
• Focuses on how language is used to construct and
  reify the world
• Identities are open to change because they
  originate in communal interchange

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Language and Identity

• Language as Grammar
• Language as Discursive Action
• Narratives
• Identity used in talk
• the truth of an identification is never
  sufficient to explain its use
• (Moerman 1974 61 in Antaki 1998 2).

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Activity No. 3
What are the narratives? What are the identities
being constructed? Participants/Audience/Trisha Wh
at is gained by presenting self in a certain
way? How hard is it to change the ascribed
identity once formulated?
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Identity Categories

• Sacks (1973) Identity Categories
• Identity is being cast into a category with
  associated features
• Such casting is indexical and occasioned
• The identity is functional
• Having an identity is in the consequence of the
  interaction
• Present in the structures of conversation

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Identity as Functional

• the functioning of the social self concept is
  situation specific particular self concepts
  tend to be activated in specific situations
  producing specific self images .. as a function
  of an interaction between the characteristics of
  the perceiver and the situation
• (Turner et al 1987 44 in Antaki 1998 17).

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Summary

• Language plays a fundamental role in constructing
  identity
• Identity is constructed in discourse
• Identities proffered are functional
• There is no self - an entity to be discovered.
  We can only investigate how it is constructed

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Critique and Implications

• Failure to replace individuated self concept with
  relational theories
• What does it mean for identity?
• Need synthesis of two extreme opposing views of
  individualism and collectivism.
• Individual
• Society

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Activity No. 4
Discussion Makeover and the construction of
identity. Construction of the Inner/Outer self?
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Useful References

• Shotter, J., Gergen, KJ (1989) Texts of Identity,
  Sage Publ. London.
• Sampson in Shotter, J., Gergen, KJ (1989) Texts
  of Identity, Sage Publ. London.
• Antaki, C., Widdicombe, S. (1998) Identities in
  Talk, Sage Publ. London.