Critical Analysis
In this text, the author presents an overview of studies in discourse and identity, placing an emphasis on the various theoretical frameworks that have been adopted in three main areas of focus: social identities in discourse, personal identities in narrative, and—briefly—digital identities. This text is a brief encyclopedic resource.
The author argues that, broadly, identity and language are accepted as being intertwined: “most scholars would agree that language both reflects and creates identities” (1). While some have viewed identity as a cognitive presence in the mind, social constructionists see the relationship as something that is procedural and present in social interaction—that identity is constructed through the use of language.
One way of viewing the construction is through a lens of group membership, and how language indicates and forms a relationship between a person and a group. Indexicality is the idea that linguistic clues show how someone is positioning themselves (indexing) in relationship to social groups, while simultaneously modifying the social meanings of participation. Language has a social action and can be studied and understood. Related to Becker’s labeling theory, this indicates that identity means “being cast into a category related to certain characteristics” that have been defined, but this relationship to a group is not fixed; additionally, “identities are occasioned, that is, they are invoked, made relevant, and negotiated within particular discursive exchanges” which means that they are not tied explicitly to any one group (4). One is not stuck in a group that they have been socially assigned to, as their participation in that group is always under construction.
Narrative offers a view into personal identity creation and change; researchers who adopt this perspective are generally “advocating for the use of narrative as a research tool for collecting data and analyzing social phenomena” (4). This is based on a fundamental premise that identity is always being worked on through story, and the story gives meaning to life.
A related understanding narrative is that it is “an occasion for the discursive constitution of identity, not an expression of it” (4); “telling a story implies both constructing a fictional world and dealing with an interactional one” (4). The word positioning is assigned to the way a speaker aligns themselves with characters and events in their stories, and also to those they are speaking with. The “idea of performance reflects the fact that telling the self constitutes an act of identity and that being someone is a form of doing” (5).
Last, the author examines the emergent understanding of how identity is constructed in a digital context, where audience has been amplified, but response has been delayed. Kress is cited as one of many scholars who “stress the limitations of a study of identity centered on language, since other resources (including memes, videos, sounds, etc.) cannot be seen as simple accessories but as constituent elements of digital identities” (5).