Discourse and Identity

Identity from a discursive point of view has been studied in primarily two discursive

scopes (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). A group of accounts sets sight on broader pictures,

where identity is realized in terms of the existing sociocultural and sociohistorical

structures, with ideological power placing constraints on constitution of the self (e.g.

Althusser, 1971; Foucault, 1972; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). The other track

of theorization of discourse, however, focuses more on individuals’ performances and

self-image presentation shaped by here-and-now interactional contexts and demands

for interpersonal objectives (e.g. Goffman, 1959; Mead, 1934; as cited in Benwell &

Stokoe, 2006). Despite this divergence between structure and agency, they are in

essence two sightseeing angles to look at the same view. Postmodernism’s ontological

nature gives rise to a concept of identity that is anti-essentialist, constituted through

discourse, and full of possibilities for social reproduction and creative reformulation

of social meaning. From this perspective, structure and agency are complementary to

one another in that ideology is transmitted via generations of performative acts and

that any (new) elements introduced by identity performances can only make sense

when informed by cultural-historical voices. In other words, an ideal realization of

identity should be an all-encompassing one, relevant to participation in both the target

event on the spot and anterior texture of the social discourse. This attempt to

accommodate concepts of both structure and agency is found in Butler (1997), which

suggests the need of a theory of the psyche or conscience in the process of subjection,

and Fairclough (2005), where discourse is a focal location for (re)construction of

social life in processes of social change. Benwell and Stokoe (2006) and Bucholtz and

Hall (2005) jump on this trend, arguing that the notion of identity is interactionally

emergent from multiple levels of discourse, from empirical examples of language use

to ideological structure. As the present study makes most reference to these works, we

shall quickly turn to them in the following passages.

Benwell and Stokoe (2006) conduct a well-rounded review of interaction-based

theories of identity. For them, “micro” analytic approaches such as ethnomethodology

(EM) and conversation analysis (CA) go hand in hand with “macro” methods of

narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA) in the effort to spell out the

full implications of “being oneself.” Particularly drawn into the combination of

micro- and macro-levels of discourse are discursive psychology, narrative analysis

and critical discourse analysis. They claim that only by such details as linguistic

descriptions (i.e. actual speech and texts) can we find the link between

macrostructures and the reality, hence the prime attention given to social interaction

and practices. It is, however, a pity that the niche between any two of the introduced

methods is simply left there; there is no clear attempt to incorporate them into one

comprehensive theory, which is both interaction-based, able to bring local actions to

macro socio-political levels, and can therefore serve as a powerful framework for

future analyses.

On the other hand, Bucholtz and Hall (2005) are ambitious enough to propose

five principles characterizing identity work, no matter under which approach it is

investigated. The first principle of their concern is the emergence principle, as

explained in the following:

Identity is best viewed as the emergent product rather than the pre-existing source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore as fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon. (p. 588)

The principle suggests that identity could be a sense of self that inhabits an individual

mind; however, identity matters most to the world and the field’s scholars only when

taken as emerging from one’s social practices and dialogic discourse. In other words,

identity cannot be simplified as some pre-discursive social categories; it is supposed

to be acted out in the course of interaction, where it is associated with the socially

meaningful ideology. As for the second principle – the positionality principle, it starts

out from the just mentioned emergent quality of identity:

Identities encompass (a) macro-level demographic categories; (b) local, ethnographically specific cultural positions; and (c) temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles. (p. 592)

As the conception of identity is emergent through dialogues such nuanced processes,

not only the macro-sociological sense of self (i.e. the widely recognized demographic

labels such as age and gender) but also that of the more micro levels are of

importance to the understanding of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. This principle is

so called because “position” seems to be a more flexible word to describe what is

going on in any encounters, even though the positions taken may accumulate to build

ideological associations with large-scale constructs of identity. The ontological

statuses of identity such as the emergence and positionality qualities are actualized

through the third principle – the indexicality principle. The indexicality principle

unveils the mechanism whereby linguistic forms are semiotically linked to social

meanings (Ochs, 1992), thereby preparing the notion of identity for sociolinguistic

analyses. For Bucholtz and Hall, all levels of linguistic structure and use are possible

platforms for indexical processes:

Identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including: (a) overt mention of identity categories and labels; (b) implicatures and presuppositions regarding one’s own or others’ identity position; (c) displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles; and (d) the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups. (p. 594)

The naming of identity categories, interlocutors’ choices of lexical items, syntactic

structures, and even the entire linguistic systems can mean an infinite number of

different ways to project oneself in public. Their performances of language could be

easily interpreted as display of one’s “stances” or more durable structures of mind.

The relationality principle, the fourth principle, in turn emphasizes identity as an

intersubjective discursive product, suggesting that the goals behind any choices of

language rely on the intended social positions relative to one another. Bucholtz and

Hall here, along with their previous endeavor (2004), pitch the idea of tactics of

intersubjectivity, which encompasses a broad range of relational processes:

Identities are intersubjectively constructed through several, often overlapping, complementary relations, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice, and authority/delegitimacy. (p. 598)

The three pairs of relations are respectively termed, or say, “verbalized” as adequation

to highlight the idea that identities emerge out of social actions. Adequation and

distinction are processes by which speakers position themselves as alike or distinct in

relation to an ideologically enforced identity category; authentication and

denaturalization are operated to reconfirm or challenge the naturalized associations

between indexical forms and identities; authorization and illegitimation involve the

exercise of power given by structures of ideology to impose or suppress particular

identities. The fact that identity can be constructed through interactions leads to the

last but not least principle – the partialness principle:

Any given construction of identity may be in part deliberate and intentional, in part habitual and hence often less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation and contestation, in part an outcome of others’

perceptions and representations, and in part an effect of larger ideological processes and material structures that may become relevant to interaction. It is therefore constantly shifting both as interaction unfolds and across discourse contexts. (p. 606)

Because who we are is not only a reflection of the individual self (yielding conscious

presentation of ourselves or cognitively habitual practices) but an outcome of

interactional negotiation of meaning among the situated contextual elements

(interactants and ideological structures, etc.), any representation of identity is partial.

In line of this, a multiple dimensional view of identity will have the edge of being

able to uncover a fuller picture of the reality.

We learn from the above review that most approaches of the field before the

twenty-first century cannot handle the complexities of social meaning implied by the

interrelation between identity and discourse; they tend to take care of only one or a

few more aspects of the entirety. Bucholtz and Hall (2005) recognize the lack of

coalition among such approaches and explicitly theorize the notion of identity by

exemplifying interactional detail and furthermore relating it to wider macrostructures.

In the following section, we introduce the concept of community of practice, which

circumscribes a space where such relation between agency and structure is built up in

a locally meaningful way.