The discursive construction of identities (Judith Baxter)
a modernist / liberal-humanist of identity: an essence is at the core of the individual, which is unique, fixed and coherent, and which makes a person possess a character or personality
poststructuralist perspective of identity
individuals are inside cultural forces or discursive practices and subject to them
individuals are governed by a range of subject positions (ways of being), approved by community or culture, made available to them by means of the particular discourses within a given context.
stigmatized if they cannot conform to these approved discourses
naming, labelling, and membership categorization
happens in social media like Facebook and Twitter
language becomes a regulatory force to pressurize individuals to conform approved patterns of speech and behavior
How institutional settings can become an agent of identity construction
a classroom context
students are subject to a range of institutional discourses offering knowledge about 'approved ways to be' in terms of their speech, behaviour, teacher-student relationship
competing or resistant discourses will be constituted by peer value systems and will partly govern peer identities and relationships both in and out the classroom
The discourses will be interwoven with broader societal discourses, embracing competing perspectives, on age, gender, ethnicity, class and the like
The competing discourses make a complex, multifaceted individuals with unique yet reasonably predictable ways of being
utilizations of discursive construction of identity
second language acquisition
sexual orientation
constructed as Black within certain language communities based on the poststructuralist notion of being multiply positioned by assumptions about racial identity
(Ibrahim, 1999)
language learning practices can naturalize heteronormative sexual identities as well as challenge them (Moffat and Norton, 2008)
gender
cultural assumptions about female-male dichotomies may lead to inequalities among particular groups of language learners such as woman, minorities, the elderly and the disabled, but crucially, they can also be contested. (Pavlenko, 2004)
multilingual studies
super-diversity notion Blommaert and Rampton (2011)
individuals are shaped by the possibility of multiple subject positions within and across different and competing discourses
formation and reformation of identity is a continuous process
individuals must be thought of as 'unfixed, unsatisfied, ... not a unity, not autonomous, but a process, in construction, contradictory, open to change (Belsey, 1980, 132)
a fluid network of subject positions
subjective/ies (Weedon, 1997)
the plural, non-unitary aspects of the subject
subjectivity as a site of struggle
subjectivity as changing over time
Agency: a measure of individual awareness or control over the means by which subjects are 'interpellated' or call into existence (Althusser, 1984) to a range of subject positions made available by different discursive contexts
Questions
What is the relationship between discourse and the individual as implied by poststructuralist theory?
How much 'control' does an individual have over their ways of being in the world?
Our identity exists in some sort of compliance with or resistance to discourses
Identity becomes simply a function or an 'effect' of discourses, seen to be relevant to the ways in which meanings are produced through social practices
individuals are not uniquely positioned, but are produced as a 'nexus of subjectivities' (e.g. Davies and Harre, 1990), in relations of power that are constantly shifting, rendering them at times powerful and at other times powerless.
Summary: the range of poststructuralist perspectives on identity can be characterized along a spectrum between ....
the more radical thinkers, who perceive the concept simply in terms of discursive functions or effects
the more moderate, who consider that identity embraces psychological elements such as the consciousness and memory of the individual, physical and material aspects
such as expressions of pain and pleasure (filtered through discourse)
semiotic expressions that index wider cultural identities
four key poststructuralist perspectives on the relationship between language and identity
Performativity
Feminist poststructuralist
Positioning
Enunciative pragmatics