Identity Who are you Put as simply as

Identity

Who are you? Put as simply as possible, your identity is who you are. If someone asks ‘Who are you? ’, the answer they expect is your name. Or maybe the person asking ‘Who are you? ’ already knows your name. Maybe it is you looking in the mirror. Here obviously some more profound form of identity is being sought. Who are you really? Who are you deep down? Now the answers come far less easily, because who one is ‘deep down’ can never be fully captured and articulated in words.

Two basic aspects to a person’s identity Their name, which serves first of all to single them out from other people, and then that deeper, intangible something that constitutes who one really is, and for which we do not have a precise word. Soul for many people is overloaded with religious connotations that distract from its core meaning. Ego is similarly overloaded with Freudian baggage, and self and inner self are redolent of later pop psychology. Identity has the additional meaning of ‘the condition of being identical’, and even personal identity is ambiguous between one’s name, which performs the ‘deictic’ function of indicating an individual, and that other thing we might think of as the meaning of one’s name, which performs the ‘semantic’ function of telling us who that person really is.

What language has to do with it � Imagine, if you will, a group of strangers waiting at a taxi stand. An empty taxi drives past without stopping, and the following remarks ensue: � A Outrageous. � B I say. � C Fuckin hell. � How well these inferences correspond to the ‘true’ identity of A, B and C is not the point. There may not be a ‘true’ identity. The point is the power of our instinctive capacity to construct identities based on such minimal input.

What language has to do with it So it is not the case that language entirely determines how we conceive of a person. But how they speak, inseparably from what they say, plays a very fundamental role. In a large number of instances our contact with people is purely linguistic, taking place over the phone, by Internet, by letter, reading them as a character in a book, etc. Under these circumstances we seem to be able to size them up, to feel that we know who they really are – that ‘deep’ identity again – more satisfactorily than when we only see them and have no linguistic contact.

What language has to do with it What is more, the way we ‘flesh out’ our construction of other people’s identities is interesting in itself. We fill the gap between the meagre linguistic and other evidence available to us, and the whole person we construct, using knowledge some of which may perhaps be ‘hard-wired’ into us genetically, but the bulk of which has been accumulated over a lifetime of experience of meeting people, making ‘hypotheses’ about what they are like, and ‘testing’ these hypotheses in our dealings with them. Every human being has such an accumulation of knowledge and puts it to work in every social encounter. It is as unique as our own life experience, and when we put it to work to construct the identity of someone else, we are constructing something that involves who we are at least as much, and often much more, than who they are.

Fundamental types of identity Already we have seen three apparent pairs of subtypes of personal identity: • one for real people and one for fictional characters; • one for oneself and one for others; • one for individuals and one for groups.

Fundamental types of identity The difference between individual identity and the identity of a group – a nation or town, a race or ethnicity, a gender or sexual orientation, a religion or sect, a school or club, a company or profession, or that most nebulous group identity, a social class (the list is far from exhaustive) – is most like a true difference of kind. Group (or ‘communal’) and individual identities function distinctly enough on the deictic (pointing) or name level, since group identities like ‘American’ or ‘female’ do not constitute what we normally think of as names. The ‘proper’ name is a word like ‘Joseph’ that may once have had a meaning in some language (in this case, Hebrew), but this meaning is now sublimated to the deictic function of designating particular individuals. We shall see, however, that the degree of this sublimation varies greatly from culture to culture.

Fundamental types of identity ‘American’, in contrast, is an overtly meaningful term, not just indicating certain persons but expressing something about them more significant than the mere fact that ‘John’ is the name their parents chose for them. On this semantic or meaning level, however, the difference between individual and group identity is more complex. Your ‘deep’ personal identity is made up in part of the various group identities to which you stake a claim, though you no doubt believe there is still a part of you that transcends the sum of these parts.

Fundamental types of identity Group identities would seem to be more abstract than individual ones, in the sense that ‘Americanness’ does not exist separately from the Americans who possess it, except as an abstract concept. Yet combinations of such abstractions are what our own individual identities are made up of. What is more, group identity frequently finds its most ‘concrete’ manifestation in a single, symbolic individual. The group identities we partake in nurture our individual sense of who we are, but can also smother it. Individual identity is established in part by rank relative to others with the same group identity. Ultimately this means that the distinction between individual and group identity is not so clear as it first appears;

Construction and multiplicity The first is the assumption that our identities, whether group or individual, are not ‘natural facts’ about us, but are things we construct – fictions, in effect. Yet there at least two senses in which each of us undeniably has multiple identities. The first is the universal fact that individuals have various roles with regard to others – child, friend, spouse, parent, teacher, colleague, boss and so on – and in these terms our identity shifts according to the context of who it is that we are with. The second sense in which identity is multiple has to do with Smuts’s ‘consciousness of other selves’. Obviously I cannot, in fact, be conscious of anyone else’s ‘self’. I cannot know what it is to be you from the inside. All I can do is to construct my own version of you, based on what I have observed of you, and of others, fashioning all this upon the template of my own unique sense of self. Everyone who knows you or simply comes into contact with you does the same. So there as many versions of ‘you’ out there as there are people whose mental space you inhabit. One might argue that only your own version of you is the real you, and yet no one but you can know that version. Each person can only proceed as though their version of you is real for them.

Primacy effect versus recency effect � While there obviously exist many actual and potential identities, some have greater importance than others, and Jenkins suggests, for example, that those established early in life may be less ‘flexible’ than those acquired later on. Indeed, there is a psychological ‘primacy effect’ which implies that initial experience has greater weight than things that come afterwards – largely because it is, simply, first. So, when Jenkins writes about the importance of the ‘formative years’, he is only summarising what many theories of personality take to be gospel. But there is also a psychological ‘recency effect’, whereby later information is more relevant, more up-to-date, and more accessible. And this, too, has been extrapolated to matters of personality, although it has fewer adherents than do variants of the ‘childhood is primary’ position.

Identity: Personal and social The essence of identity is similarity: things that are identical are the same, after all, and the word stems from the Latin idem. And this most basic sense is exactly what underpins the notion of identity as it applies to personality. It signifies the ‘sameness’ of an individual ‘at all times or in all circumstances’, as the dictionary tells us, the fact that a person is oneself and not someone else. It signifies a continuity, in other words, that constitutes an unbroken thread running through the long and varied tapestry of one’s life. It can even invoke an almost mystical sense of connectedness, particularly when one considers the very real changes that take place in that tapestry. As Orwell observed (1941) in his discussion of the cultural continuity of the English, of the links between the Englands of 1840 and 1940: ‘What have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person. ’ We can note that there are obvious and important connections between individual identity and ‘groupness’, and that the heart of these is continuity. At a personal level, this is what reassures me of my own on-going integrity; at the level of the group, it is a connectivity born in history and carried forward through tradition.

Identity: Personal and social � � Personal identity – or personality – is essentially the summary statement of all our individual traits, characteristics and dispositions; it defines the uniqueness of each human being. But it is important to realise that individuality does not arise through the possession of psychological components not to be found in anyone else. That would be a strange social world indeed. Rather, it is logical to assume that all personalities are assembled from the same deep and wide pool of human possibilities – logical, and also widely accepted as a philosophical and psychological principle. The uniqueness of the individual comes about, then, through the particular combination or weighting of building blocks drawn from a common human store. To accept this is to accept that no rigid distinction can in fact be made between personality and social identity.

Identity: Personal and social � Again, this is a view of very long standing: ‘no man island, entire of itself ’. Our personal characteristics derive from our socialisation within the group (or, rather, groups) � to which we belong; one’s particular social context defines that part of the larger human pool of potential from which a personal identity can be constructed. Thus, individual identities will be both components and reflections of particular social (or cultural) ones, and the latter will � always be, to some extent at least, stereotypic in nature because of their necessary generality across the individual components.

Language and identity � � Some reasonable restrictions must be applied, and the delimited range here is that which treats the language–identity relationship. In a way, of course, this is not really much of a restriction, since language itself is such a broad topic and since, as Joseph (2004: 13) has pointed out, language and identity are ‘ultimately inseparable’. Indeed, since language is central to the human condition, and since many have argued that it is the most salient distinguishing characteristic of our species, it seems likely that any study of identity must surely include some consideration of it. Language can certainly be considered as a ‘marker’ at the individual level. The detail and nuance of psycholinguistic acquisition patterns, for instance, lead to the formation of the idiolect – that particular combination of accent and dialect, that particular assemblage of formal and informal registers, that particular pattern of stress and intonation which, if we were to look closely and cleverly enough, we would find unique to the individual.

Language and identity � But the importance of language as an identity marker at a group level is much more readily evident than that: everyone is used to accent, dialect and language variations that reveal speakers’ memberships in particular speech communities, social classes, ethnic and national groups. As well, such variations are obvious when the groupings are based upon gender, or age, or – expanding the linguistic focus to include jargons, registers and styles – occupation, or club or gang membership, or political affiliation, or religious confession, and so on. �

Linguistics applied perspective versus Sociocultural perspective � Consistent with its view of language as universal, abstract systems, the more traditional ‘linguistics applied’ approach to the study of language use views individual language users as stable, coherent, internally uniform beings in whose heads the systems reside. Because of their universal nature, the systems themselves are considered self-contained, independent entities, extractable from individual minds. That is, while language systems reside in individual minds, they have a separate existence and thus remain detached from their users. Although individuals play no role in shaping their systems, they can use them as they wish in their expression of personal meaning since the more traditional view considers individuals to be agents of free will, and thus, autonomous decision-makers.

Linguistics applied perspective versus Sociocultural perspective Moreover, since this view considers all individual action to be driven by internally motivated states, individual language use is seen as involving a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in both form and message as individuals strive to make personal connections to their surrounding contexts. As for the notion of identity, a ‘linguistics applied’ perspective views it as a set of essential characteristics unique to individuals, independent of language, and unchanging across contexts. Language users can display their identities, but they cannot affect them in any way.

Sociocultural perspective � Language use and identity are conceptualised rather differently in a sociocultural perspective on human action. Here, identity is not seen as singular, fixed, and intrinsic to the individual. Rather, it is viewed as socially constituted, a reflexive, dynamic product of the social, historical and political contexts of an individual’s lived experiences.

Social identity � When we use language, we do so as individuals with social histories. Our histories are defined in part by our membership in a range of social groups into which we are born such as gender, social class, religion and race. For example, we are born as female or male and into a distinct income level that defines us as poor, middle class or well-to-do. Even the geographical region in which we are born provides us with a particular group membership and upon our birth we assume specific identities such as, for example, Italian, Chinese, Canadian, or South African, and so on. Within national boundaries, we are defined by membership in regional groups, and we take on identities such as, for example, northerners or southerners.

Social identity � In addition to the assorted group memberships we acquire by virtue of our birth, we appropriate a second layer of group memberships developed through our involvement in the various activities of the social institutions that comprise our communities, such as school, church, family and the workplace. These institutions give shape to the kinds of groups to which we have access and to the role-relationships we can establish with others. When we approach activities associated with the family, for example, we take on roles as parents, children, siblings or cousins and through these roles fashion particular relationships with others such as mother and daughter, brother and sister, and husband wife. Likewise, in our workplace, we assume roles as supervisors, managers, subordinates or colleagues. These roles afford us access to particular activities and to particular role-defined relationships. As company executives, for example, we have access to and can participate in board meetings, business deals and job interviews that are closed to other company employees, and thus are able to establish role relationships that are unique to these positions.

Social identity � Our various group memberships, along with the values, beliefs and attitudes associated with them, are significant to the development of our social identities in that they define in part the kinds of communicative activities and the particular linguistic resources for realising them to which we have access. That is to say, as with the linguistic resources we use in our activities, our various social identities are not simply labels that we fill with our own intentions. Rather, they embody particular histories that have been developed over time by other group members enacting similar roles. In their histories of enactments, these identities become associated with particular sets of linguistic actions for realising the activities, and with attitudes and beliefs about them.

Habitus � The historically grounded, socially constituted knowledge, skills, beliefs and attitudes comprising our various social identities – predisposing us to act, think and feel in particular ways and to perceive the involvement of others in certain ways – constitute what social theorist Pierre Bourdieu calls our habitus (Bourdieu, 1977). We approach our activities with the perceptions and evaluations we have come to associate with both our ascribed and appropriated social identities and those of our interlocutors, and we use them to make sense of each other’s involvement in our encounters. That is to say, when we come together in a communicative event we perceive ourselves and others in the manner in which we have been socialised.

Habitus � We carry expectations, built up over time through socialisation into our own social groups, about what we can and cannot do as members of our various groups. We hold similar expectations about what others are likely to do and not do as members of their particular groups. The linguistic resources we use to communicate, and our interpretations of those used by others, are shaped by these mutually held perceptions. In short, who we are, who we think others are, and who others think we are, mediate in important ways our individual uses and evaluations of our linguistic actions in any communicative encounter.

Contextual relevancy of social identity � Even though we each have multiple, intersecting social identities, it is not the case that all of our identities are always relevant. As with the meanings of our linguistic resources, their relevance is dynamic and responsive to contextual conditions. In other words, while we approach our communicative encounters as constellations of various identities, the particular identity or set of identities that becomes significant depends on the activity itself, our goals, and the identities of the other participants. Let us assume, for example, that we are travelling abroad as tourists. In our interactions with others from different geographical regions it is likely that our national identity will be more relevant than, say, our gender or social class. �

Contextual relevancy of social identity � It is important to remember that our perceptions and evaluations of our own and each other’s identities are tied to the groups and communities of which we are members. Expectations for what we, in our role as parent, can say to a child, for example, are shaped by what our social groups consider acceptable and appropriate parental actions. Some groups, for example, do not consider it appropriate for a parent to tell a child how to do something. Instead, the child is expected to observe and then take action. Our linguistic resources then can perform an action in a communicative event only to the extent to which their expected meanings are shared among the participants. Given the diversity of group memberships we hold, we can expect our linguistic actions and the values attached to them to be equally varied.