The negotiation of

Identities
By Anna De Fina
Supervised by Prof Mohamed Gamgami
Presented by: Youssef EL BOUTAIBI
Outline

 Identity and Interpersonal Pragmatics

 The shift in identity studies
 Social Constructionism
 A. Identity as Talk-in-interaction
 B. Identity as Positioning
 C. Identity as Social Practice
 Conclusion
 Identity and Interpersonal Pragmatics

 Identity has become a major area of research for

social sciences: Social psychology, Interpersonal
communication sociolinguistics, Anthropological
linguistics, interpersonal pragmatics, etc.
 The shift in attention to identity as emergent and
constructed in concrete social contexts implies a
strong connection between identity studies and
Interpersonal Pragmatics
The Paradigm Shift

Investigation of identity
A vision of identity as as a process in Flux
a fixed set of enacted in concrete
categories that can social encounters and
be attributed to the social practices
individual/group ( negotiation and
Construction)
 Social Constructionism Movement

 Identities are seen as highly negotiable

 1. in interaction,
 2. emergent
 3. Largely co-constructed
 The movement comes as a reaction to the previous
pragmatic models that place the individual as a rational
being at the center of attention.
 Hence, the focus shifts from the individual to interaction
and social practices as the locus for studying Identities.
 The Impact

“ Social constructionism, a movement

that has come to dominate our thinking
about the ways people build and
negotiate images of themselves and
others ” Anna DE Fina
The impact

 A shift from Monologic identity to dialogic identity

 A shift from identity as a product to identity as a process
 Instrumental in Rejecting individualistic and monolithic notions
of the self

 “ It accepts that identities are never unified and, in late modern

times, increasingly fragmented and fractured, never singular but
multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and
antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. ( Hall 2000:17)
Berger and Luckman's Contribution

 Identities are constructions, not mental products

or sets of properties
 Although the social world appears to us as an
objective reality, it is in fact constituted through
human action and interaction and is not
independent of it
 So people continuously create and recreate social
reality and in turn are shaped by it in a dialectical
process
Example: Imagine this scene

 Jamal is Moroccan fullbrighter sitting in a Sturbacks Café in

New York City drinking Brazilan coffee and interacting with
Annita, another Fulbrighter from Salvador. Jamal is wearing
an Italian coat and a Swiss watch, Annita is wearing a Sari
that she bought from an Asian Market. They are planning a
project on global citizenship. Of course they are talking in
English.
1. Identity as Talk-in-interaction

 Identity categories are not mental products and do not pre-exist

social interaction.
 They stress the situated nature of identity categories and claims
 They base their findings on ethnomethodology
 Analysis of how people go about displaying, constructing,
negotiating who they are in everyday life
 While analyzing, they make a close connection between process
of identity attribution, negotiation and categorization strategies
Major Principles
 For a person to have an identity, is to be cast into a category
with associated features or characteristics,
 Such casting is indexical and occasioned ( emergent and
negotiated within that particular context) ,
 It makes relevant the identity to the interactional business
going on
 The force of having an identity is in its consequentiality in the
interaction
 All this is visible in peoples exploitation of the structures of
conversations
(Antaki and Widdicombe 1998:3)
example
 Jamal: do you live with the family?
 Anita: no I live alone, but I am looking for a guy to get married. My
friends tell me that I need to go out a lot.
 Jamal: yes, a good idea. What kind of person?
 Anita: just a nice guy, a gentleman
 Jamal: I think you should look for a God fearing guy
 Anita: what do you mean? Are you a religious expert?
 Jamal: no, no, just a man who can stay faithful to you
 Anita: yes, important…anyway being single is not such a bad thing
 …..
 ……
2. Identity as Positioning
 Positioning is a theoretical construct within social
psychology
 Davis and Harre view identity as being basically
determined by one's social and cultural position.
 Positions as the discursive production of a diversity of
selves
 There is no single , coherent identity but rather identities
are related to the kinds of social situations and discursive
practices in which people get involved
 Subjectivity and personal involvement play a major role in
positioning theory
 Identities are inherent in the interactional
processes in which people are continuously
positioned by others, position others, and position
themselves

 Unlike Talk-in approach, they refer to mental and

cognitive processes as central to such practices
because people interact and negotiate based on
their past experiences with social categories and
attributions
The Narrative Turn

 While reading narratives, we place ourselves and other

people within the story to understand the performing
identities
 Narrative practices as a main locus for identity
construction
 It is within narrative studies, positioning as a concept has
been developed the most, evolving into a more interactive
notion
Narrators can position themselves with
respect to:
 The characters in the story world
 The other participants in the storytelling event
 Themselves as subjects
3. Identity as Social Practice

 Since 1990 s, there has been a need to be aware

of diversity and variability in groups and speech
communities rather than always assuming
homogeneity
 Attention turned towards the ethnographically
oriented study of linguistic behavior within social
practices and contexts
 The major important concept is indexicality
 Indexicality relates linguistic signs to complex systems of
meaning such as ideologies, social representations about
group membership, social roles and attributes, about all
aspects of social reality, individual and collective stances,
practices and organization structures.

 Example: a Marxist addressing the audience: "my dear

Comrades… “

 Identities are performed, indexed and conveyed through

the use of linguistic and non linguistic signs.
 Style and Distinctiveness

 Styles of speaking involve the way speakers as

agents in social space negotiate their positions
and goals within a system of distinctions and
possibilities
 Styles may be exploited as strategies to create
certain personas at the local level of interactional
exchanges and performances.
Conclusion: Any convergence between
the three approaches?
 A focus on discourse and interaction as sites for the
construction of identity
 A recognition of the fundamentally social nature of the
self
 A need for understanding how participants themselves
signal, negotiate and index their identities.
 A need to discover and describe linguistic resources for
identity work
 They all study identity as a discursive work taking place
within the social practices that surround it