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The nature of identity in discourse analysis

Кошлата, А.В.

Identity is a keyword of contemporary society and a central focus of social psychological theorizing and research. Social cognition and symbolic interaction, two of the prevailing perspectives in sociological social psychology, provide the theoretical underpinnings of traditional understandings of identity. Identity is rapidly becoming a buzzword to which academics of all sorts gladly refer. This has led to fascinating new insights in the study of human behavior and social interaction. Baggioni & Kasbarian begin by distinguishing two types of identity, namely the personal and the collective. They name 'identification' as the process linking the former to the latter. In the majority of discourse analytical studies this collective identity is privileged, mainly under the name of 'social identity'. This is thus a first problematic point in contemporary studies of the notion of identity: on the one hand we have an acquired scientific insight into the multiplicity of identity, but on the other hand we often seem to be stuck with a sort of cognitive inability to imagine this multiplicity. A second wellknown observation in the field is the constructed nature of identity. In accordance with the linguistic turn that has marked the poststructuralist evolution in philosophy and social science; we have gained the insight that identity is not some sort of independently existing reality outside the individual, but that it is actively constructed by this individual. Before developing this key issue, we have to acknowledge that the terminology used in relation to it is sometimes rather confusing, and this paper – by lack of extended conceptual elaboration - does not escape from this either. Following also Davies and Harré's principle, identity is thus more than just the representation of some 'real world‘ group membership, it is its very constitution. We could say that there is no such thing as an external group membership or category to which identity would relate in a merely indexical way. The construction of identity is interpreted as an attribution of value or meaning to pre-existing environmental elements. The series of confusions cited above show that there is still a large degree of vagueness as to what or how many social realities are precisely constructed and whether there are still sorts of categories that exist independently outside discourse.

English

2017

linguistics

Полтавський національний технічний університет імені Юрія Кондратюка

Koshlata. A.V. The nature of identity in discourse analysis/ A.V. Koshlata // Гуманітарний вісник Полтав. нац. техн. ун-ту ім. Юрія Кондратюка : зб. наук. праць. – Полтава : ПолтНТУ, 2017. – Вип. 2. – С. 167-176.

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