Approaching Identity from a Post-Structuralist Perspective

Post-structuralism remains an ambiguous and ill-defined term (Block, 2007) that is broadly applied to a range of theoretical stances, drawing on the work of French scholars (Althusser, 1971; Derrida, 1976; Foucault, 1986). French post-structuralists greatly contributed towards the contemporary understanding of identity by elaborating their reflections on “the subject in language” (De Fina, 2003:15) and the irreducible link between the two (i.e., “identity” and “language”). For instance, Derrida (2000:91), pointing in this direction, maintains that the subject is “inscribed in language, is a function of language”. Another perspective that post-structuralists emphasised is the role of social practices and cultural templates, such as Althusser’s (1971) notion of the social subject produced in discourse. By

drawing on the conceptualisation of the way people tend to come to accept and “internalise” the existing social structure and norms, Althusser (op. cit.) coins the term “interpellation”. Foucault’s (1984) theory takes a similar path by asserting that social practices produce specific social subjects.

Unlike earlier essentialist approaches, French post-structuralists drew attention to the role of language and interaction as well as the socio-cultural practices in theorising identity. Weedon, the foundational theorist in post-structuralist discussions on identity, drew on Lacan, Weedon preferring to use “subjectivities” instead of “identity” (Weedon, 1997:32). For Weedon “subjectivity” refers to that aspect of individual psyche by means of which a person can identify him/herself and their place in the world by “inserting” themselves into specific “subject positions” within a chosen “discourse”. Consequently, “subjectivity” changes constantly, whenever new discourses or different subject positions become available.

In rendering meaning to a range of potential interpretations of the world, social institutions and processes, Weedon (1997) draws on Foucault’s work in her application of the term “discursive fields” (34). Although, Weedon acknowledges that it is possible for an individual to be satisfied with the available subject positions throughout their lifetime, as soon as the full identification with available discourses ceases, a conflict emerges:

Where there is space between the position of the subject offered by a discourse and individual interest, a resistance to that subject position is produced. […] The discursive constitutions of subjects, both compliant and resistant, is part of wider social play for power.

(Weedon, 1997:109)

It is argued here that any subject positions (be it the desired ones or not) are not innocent choices, but a response (possibly even a manipulation) to the contextual (micro and macro) circumstances, affected by the societal norms and standards.

Weedon’s understanding of subjectivity as continuously being reconstituted in discourse is echoedinButler’s (1999) performative theory of gender. In Butler’s theorisation of gender identity, she claims that individuals become “gendered” by means of acquiring

socially acceptable norms of behaviour, dress code and physical appearance, as well as language, as they enact or “do being men and women” (Butler, 1999:179). Identities, according to Butler, just as subject positions are not only physical (bodily) but also linguistic enactments of discourses at given times and in particular spaces.

Butler’s notion of “performativity” can perhaps be traced back to Goffman’s “footing” (1959). In Goffman’s work there are also a number of references to contextually-determined “situated identities" (in Block, 2007:17). Namely, “situated identity” has to do with the way discourse participants position themselves towards one another and with regard to broader cultural and institutional arrangements. These processes of positioning are not predetermined but emerge in discourse by “doing being” a certain kind of person (Goffman, 1981). Also, Goffman distinguishes between “the performance” as the impression that individuals intend to “give off” and the way that “performance” is received and interpreted by the audience, which may be quite different from the actual observed performance (Goffman, 1981:128).

By reference to the presentation of self in face-to-face interaction, Goffman (1981:129) also introduced the notion of “footing”, to refer to the alignment and change of alignment involved in the production and reception of an utterance that the speaker takes towards him/herself and to others. Change of footing may be motivated by the change of the vantage point in one’s narrative from past to present as well as when quoting others or alluding to institutional discourses. Goffman (1981:144) claims that the speaker may have one or more of the following roles with respect to the utterance: the animator (refers to animating one’s own words but also speaking another person(s) words), the author (refers to speaking one’s own words, or the words of the author, who has developed the text, be it written or spoken) or the principal (refers to adopting an institutional position vis-à-vis the utterance).

Although, Goffman’s work has been influential among social scientists, especially linguists, over the last 30 years, some researchers have been sceptical towards its application

to the study of discourse and identity. For instance, Davies & Harré (1999:45) are rather disapproving towards Goffman’s stance, arguing that his approach disregards the fact that alignments may precede and therefore shape the very act of speaking. Davies & Harré (1999) claim that positioning theory is more apt for capturing the ongoing and emergent nature of multiple subject positions that appear in the course of interaction. Davies & Harré (1999) draw on both the linguistic signs (especially the physical metaphors of position and location) as well as other semiotic activities (e.g., dress, body language) as the basis for their theory. The scholars assume that not only do the individuals engage in positioning (by situating themselves through their discursive practices), but they are also positioned (situated) by others, which inevitably transpires in the narrative.

It has been argued that positioning may take place in different space (geographical/ metaphorical), time frames (i.e., with reference to the present, past or future) as well as in relation to different communities (who are either in immediate proximity or geographically remote). The notion of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Eckert & McConnell- Ginet, 1992) gives insight into understanding the process of identity construction in terms of positioning self in relation to different groups. Eckert & McConnell-Ginet define “communities of practice” as consisting of a group of people brought together by an engagement in a certain activity, thereby generating “common practices” (i.e., ways of thinking, speaking, beliefs, values, etc.) (1992:464). Communities of practice allow individuals to adopt a range of “subject positions” (see the discussion on identity as the social positioning of self and other in Bucholtz & Hall, 2010:18) either on a short-term (i.e., daily basis) or a long-term (i.e., life-long) basis, depending on the communities they are exposed to. This connection between social participation and communities of practice is considered to be indispensable for an individual, as the active partaking in the practices of the social communities allows one to construct

identities in relation to them via the following “modes of belonging” or “modes of identification”:

• Engagement having the most immediate relation to ‘practice’ (engaging in activities or doing things), such as talking, developing things, either alone or together, allowing one to develop an identity of participation or non- participation in the communities that people belong to;

• Imagination by engaging with the world, people also construct its representation, which allows them to make sense of their belonging. Images or representations allow one to position oneself, to see oneself from a different angle, as well as reflect on the situation via language, pictures, stories, etc. These images give away the interpretation of one’s participation in the social world; • Alignment is a ‘mode of belonging’ that links ‘time’ and ‘space’ without being

restricted by mutual engagement; through alignment, an individual becomes a part of a larger community by ‘playing their part’ or at least the way s/he understands that part, which may or may not be consistent with the understanding of others;

(Wenger, 1998:197)

Wenger (1998) presents these “modes of belonging” (engagement, imagination and alignment) as a way of understanding identity formation. These three modes are not mutually exclusive, and are best conceptualised as interconnected. That is, alignment ‘focuses’ imagination, whilst engagement ‘grounds’ it, allowing it to be negotiated in practice. Although it appears at first that communities of practice are a matter of individual’s choice, in fact their entrance is not free to anyone at any given time.

To an extent, “communities of practice” have a lot in common with Mathews’ (2000) metaphoric “cultural supermarket”, which offers individuals an exposure to a variety of internationally available media and technologies, making a whole range of identities available to be assumed by individuals. Nevertheless, despite a seemingly endless free choice (i.e., agency), identities are not completely free for everyone to choose from. Since not everyone has unrestricted access to all that is available (nor can they enact all identities), identity choices remain delimited by historical, socio-cultural, political norms and contexts (i.e., structure).

In relation to this observation, some identity and language researchers (Norton, 2001; Kinginger, 2004; 2013)drawing on Wenger’s (1998) argument that imagination plays a crucial part in identity work, have pointed to the existence of “imagined subject positions” in “imagined communities” (the term coined and used by Anderson, 1991). Individuals tend to create “imagined communities” and assume “imagined subject positions” in these communities by transcending the time and space, and by creating new images of themselves and the world based on their individual understandings and interpretations (cf. Wenger, 1998:176). This also implies that not only a small group of friends or colleagues but also a whole nation could be a “mental construct”, an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) or in Hall’s terms “a system of cultural representations” (1996:612). This is fairly common, since most communities have been observed to be “imaginary constructs”, as the members of even the smallest nations will not be able to meet every single representative of that national group.

Nevertheless, in their imagination, an idea of a more or less homogeneous collectivity exists and at times can be “ventriloquated” (to borrow a Bakhtinian term, see Bakhtin, 1981:294) by any given individual. That is, by making discursive choices, individuals “ventriloquate” (use the voices of others in their speech or writing) not only the voices they have come across in the past (i.e., “actual intertextuality”) but also the more abstract voice types (i.e., interdiscursivity). This is taken to refer both, to the content of the utterances (or what is talked about) as well as the lexico-grammatical choices that the speaker or writer makes as each utterance becomes “populated with the intentions of others” or “interanimated” (ibid.) by others’ voices (i.e., see the discussion on the notions of voice and dialogism in Bakhtin, 1986), thereby proliferating “the imagined communities” as well as making claims about “self” in relation to these communities.

Earlier studies observed that particularly under the circumstances of change, uncertainty and strangeness, when an individual may endure psychological state of “fragmented

consciousness, a sense of unreality, and feelings of being disconnected from oneself or one’s environment” (Steinberg & Schnall 2003: 9 in Dervin, 2007), elements of intertextuality/ interdiscursivity may enter their narratives (especially when talking about themselves and their experiences) as a common adaptive defence technique. This has been described as “the act of dissociation” (psychological and linguistic), including: (a) depersonalization (when one talks about oneself as if ‘self’ were another person, as if one watches oneself from the distance); (b) internal dialogue (or externalized internal/virtual dialogue)mostly occurs when a person has to make a decision or role-play a conversation that has taken/ will take place. This notion is very similar to the pragmatic notion of “represented speech” or “constructed dialogue” (see Bakhtin, 1981), or the notion of “polyphony” (presence of multiple voices in one’s discourse). Dervin (2007) too identifies a number of instances, containing what he calls “virtual voices”, when one introduces a speech that is attributed to oneself, (c) derealisation, which is normally the result of stress, fatigue, extreme surprise or amazement, e.g., one cannot believe, realize or understand what is happening to oneself; (d) identity alteration is connected with change of discourse and identifiers; talking about oneself by using “we”, “you” or “one”; acting like a different person, as in imitating speaking in different accents, pretending to be experiencing certain emotions (e.g., happiness, satisfaction, anger, etc.).

This implies that identities are reflexive and interpretative as well as contextually- determined, political, historical and cultural (Wodak et al., 1999). To illustrate this, Wodak et al., (2009:14) argue that individuals regularly resort to narratives as they “arrange and interpret, rearrange and reinterpret past events in their own life”. The narrative identity that one assumes as s/he narrates captures its fluid nature that is prone to change in time and space, against the backdrop of a seemingly coherent storyline. Wodak et al. (ibid.) explain the significance of narrative identity by drawing on Ricoeur’s (1992) and Martin’s (1995) theoretical concepts:

Narrative identity allows various, different, partly contradictory circumstances and experiences to be integrated into a coherent temporal structure, thus making it possible to sketch a person’s identity against the background of a dynamic constancy model which does justice to the coherence of a human life. Thus

the concept of narrative identity can go beyond the one-sided model of an invariant, self-identical thing. It can take into account the idea that the self can never be grasped without the Other, without change.

(Wodak et al., 2009: 14)

This quotation sets the stage for the use of macro-strategies in “dynamic discursive constructions of identity” (33), which always requires a mirror image, a contrast, or “an Other”, as it allows one to juxtapose self against the other, determining what one is by noting what one is not:

Identity implies both a uniqueness and sameness … one’s identity cannot be defined in isolation: the only way to circumscribe an identity is by contrasting it with other identities. Consequently, identity is an ambiguous notion. It gets its meaning from what it is not, from the Other: like a word in a crossword puzzle, it is located in a place where uniqueness, defined in a negative way (one’s identity implies that one is different from the Others), meets a sameness which needs an ‘elseness’ to exist (to get an identity one must be perceived as identical to or to identify with someone else).

(Martin, 1995: 5)

An individual’s self cannot exist in isolation, requiring another to validate its existence. This view is suggestive of an ongoing process of comparison between ‘self’ and ‘other’ that takes place and indicates the contextually-determined, social nature of identity, attempting to negotiate between one’s own and others’ similarities and differences.

This view of identity as a “social location”, informed a number of theories in sociology and sociolinguistics, where ‘self’ is primarily understood by its membership or identification with particular group(-s) (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006:24). One of the key theories of group identity is Social Identity Theory (SIT) (Tajfel, 1982), which was later expanded in Social Categorisation Theory (see Turner et al., 1987). Social identity theorists assume that “identity” emerges through individual’s identification with a group, which involves a reflexive knowledge of a group membership as well as an emotional attachment, affecting the individual’s desire for affiliation with a group, or indeed, the wish to distance oneself from that group.

On the basis of this assumption, SIT differentiates between “in-group” and “out-group”, which are flexible rather than deterministic categories, prone to change, often determined by the activities one is involved in. “In-group” membership relates to the community an individual affiliates him/herself with, while the “out-group” implies assumed distance and difference by

being on the “outside”.Benwell & Stokoe (2006) point out that in-group identifications often become strengthened by means of reductive categorisations of the out-group through stereotypes and prejudice, as the individuals tend to present the positive in-group characteristics in contrast with the negative out-group features. Although SIT and its conceptualisation of identity gained popularity among variationist sociolinguists, it has also been criticised for its “treatment of identity as a cognitive, pre-discursive and essentialist phenomenon”, often imposed by the analysts, rather than being provisional and emergent in discourse (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006:26).

Nevertheless, as people need to categorise their experiences, ideas and others whom they meet, in order to “survive” (Howarth, 2002:20), the notion of “representation” is useful here, as identities are constructed through and against representations. This stance draws on the anti-essentialist view of identity and assumes that all meaning is situated “in a series of representations” (Brubaker & Cooper, 2006:31) that are constructed, negotiated and changed through discursive interaction within and between social groups.

For quite some time now representations have been predominantly studied by the scholars of social psychology, but the notion has also made its way into other fields, such as intercultural communication (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). The study of social representations or socio-cognitive representations (as they can be called more accurately) is associated with the name of a French social psychologist, Moscovici (2000) and has been defined as “organized, coherent, socially shared set[s] of knowledge about an object or domain of objects31’ which combine with ‘affective structures with inherent normative and evaluative dimensions” (Augoustinos et al., 2006: 42, 94). Socio-cognitive representations comprise of beliefs and/or knowledge, including the knowledge acquired through media, as well as the attitudes and

expectations deriving from norms and values held by members of a given discourse community (Koller, 2012:21).

Thus, socio-cognitive representations are not mental models held by individuals but rather “cognitive structures” shared by members of a particular group (ibid.). These structures are “socially and discursively constructed in the course of […] communication, establish social identities and relations by being communicated, and appear to be subject to continual transformation [...] through the flow of intergroup relations” (Augoustinos et al., 2006: 258). What follows from this is that representations are at least to an extent constituted intertextually, as the result of various texts (written) and discourses (oral) being circulated within the communities. Thus the key function of social representations is “making something unfamiliar, or unfamiliarity itself become familiar” (Moscovici, 1984:24), via communication (discourse), whereby constructing a shared social reality among the members of a social group. However, these representations are not stable or consistent throughout time or across different contexts and may be reshaped by the individual members of a community.

Studying representations is not unproblematic, and the scholars need to shift their focus from inquiring into “what someone’s identity is” to asking more open-ended questions, “how one’s identity is constructed/ represented?” (Dervin, 2007). Therefore, when working with identity, one needs to focus closely on discourse, looking past its “surface” (Dervin, 2011), while concentrating on what is concealed in discourse and analyse the specific linguistic choices of the speaker used to construct different representations.