Transcript Language and Identity

The last lectures will focus on identity,
language, and human agency
The stable and fixed aspects of selfhood: things
that you check off on census forms such as . . .
–Ethnicity (Chinese, German, Thai, etc)
–Nationality (American, Australian, etc)
–Social class (Poor, rich, etc)
–Gender (male, female, etc)
–Age
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Identity is an
accomplishment.
Identity is
fragmentary and in
flux.
People change
identities to suit the
needs of the moment.
Identities are . . .
–The stable features of persons that exist prior to
any particular situation (personal/individual).
AND
–Dynamic and situated accomplishments,
enacted through talk, and changing from one
occasion to the next (built/fluid).
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Identity in the American sense targets the
uniqueness and individuality that makes a
person distinct from others.
Identity is also a socio-historical way to refer to
qualities of sameness in relation to a person’s
connection to others and to a particular group
of people.
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The first favors a primordialist approach which
takes the sense of self and belonging to a collective
group as a fixed thing, defined by objective criteria
such as common ancestry and common biological
characteristics.
This view is dominated by the idea of the
individual as a agent in the promotion of the self,
and the awareness of the self in relation to other
people.
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The second, rooted in social constructionist theory,
takes the view that identity is formed by a
predominantly political choice of certain
characteristics.
ASIDE: A social construction (social construct) is a
concept or practice which may appear to be natural
and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is
an invention or artifact of a particular culture or
society.
Social constructs are generally understood to be
the by-products (often unintended or unconscious)
of countless human choices rather than laws
resulting from divine will or nature.
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Social constructionism is usually opposed to
essentialism (which dominates the first view),
which defines specific phenomena instead in
terms of trans-historical essences independent
of conscious beings that determine the
categorical structure of reality
Social constructionism then questions the idea
that identity is a natural given, characterized
by fixed, supposedly objective criteria.
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Identity is a volatile, flexible and abstract
‘thing.’
Its manifestations and the ways in which it is
exercised are often open to view (Remember
Geetz and the idea that culture is externalized).
Identity is made evident through the use of
markers such as language, dress, behavior and
choice of space, whose effect depends on their
recognition by other social beings.
Lets list some of the markers on the board…
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Markers help to create the boundaries that define
similarities or differences between the marker wearer
and the marker perceivers, their effectiveness depends
on a shared understanding of their meaning
(CULTURE!!!).
In a social context, misunderstandings can arise due to
a misinterpretation of the significance of specific
markers. GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE…
Equally, an individual can use markers of identity to
exert influence on other people without necessarily
fulfilling all the criteria that an external observer might
typically associate with such an abstract identity.
1. Master identities
2. Interactional identities
3. Personal identities
4. Relational identities
Master (primary) identities are relatively stable
and unchanging: gender, ethnicity, age,
national and regional origins
• The meanings of master identities change
across time and space.
– “Though the sex to which I belong is considered
weak … you will nevertheless find me a rock
that bends to no wind.”
Queen Elizabeth I speaking to a French
ambassador
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Interactional identities refer to roles that people
take on in a communicative context with
specific other people.
For instance, Jose is my next door neighbor
David’s oldest child, he works for Glass Nickel
Pizza, he is friends with my sister Ariel, and he
shares an apartment with some buddies from
college.
Personal identities are expected to be relatively
stable and unique.
– often reference ways in which people talk and
behave toward others: hotheaded, honest,
forthright, reasonable, overbearing, a gossip, a
brown-nose (both your own perception and
those of other people).
 Personal identities are frequently contested
(my mother says I am stubborn, but I don’t
think so..).
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Relational identities refer to the kind of
relationship that a person enacts with a
particular conversational partner in a specific
situation.
Relational identities are negotiated from
moment to moment and are highly variable.
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“working” a room, moving from group to group and
“talking up” that group. A server or a sales person.
Identity, whether on an individual, social, or
institutional level, is something that we are
constantly building and negotiating
throughout our lives through our interaction
with others.
– Joanna Thornborrow. (2004). Language and
identity. In Language, society and power.
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The emphasis is on identities not essentially
given but actively produced – whether through
deliberate, strategic manipulation, or through
out-of awareness practices. This both captures
the agency of speakers and views language as
social action.
– Paul Kroskrity. (2000). Identity. Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology, 9(1-2), 111-114.
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The focus on an individual’s freedom to
manipulate a flexible system of identities fails
to adequately take into account that some
identities – notably race and caste – are
imposed and coercively applied.
There are political economic constraints on
processes of identity-making.
– Paul Kroskrity. (2000). Identity. Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology, 9(1-2), 111-114.
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In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (linguistic
relativity hypothesis) postulates a systematic
relationship between the grammatical categories of the
language a person speaks and how that person both
understands the world and behaves in it.
This is the idea that Inuit peoples (indigenous people
that live in the equatorial north) have many words to
describe snow, where the Bedouin people (indigenous
people of the Middle East) have very few if any words
for it. It also describes how people relate to the world
(for example the change in how we perceive “green”)
National and/or regional
– Shared participation in literacy activities
Ethnic
– Language use: Latin, Linear Greek, and heritage
languages
– Discursive practices: how you argue a point using
references known to other speakers of the same
language
Social class and/or rank
– Working class neighborhoods in Boston
demonstrate strong loyalty to class through
pronunciation.
List on the board some terms used by your age-set
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Professional
– Examples include the specialist vocabularies of doctors,
physicists, really any specialist discipline, and the
Socratic/discursive style of lawyers.
Examples?
 Gender
– Transgender and queer identities are indexed by
discursive practices that challenge binary gender.
Examples?
 Age
– Discursive practices and language varieties index social
ages, such as teenager or elder.
Examples?
Naming
–How do you name yourself? This is all about
nicknames…
• To your parents? Quinn, Quincy
• To your friends? Q, Redwood
• To your professors? McCrary, Quincy, Professor
McCrary
• To your best friend? Quinn, Q
• To your romantic partner? Honey
–How do these people name you?
–Has your name changed over time?
Many languages have different 2nd-person
pronouns (familiar/formal):
– French has tu and vous
– Spanish has tu/Usted
– Italian has tu/Lei/voi
– German has du/Sie.
• Korean, Japanese, and other languages have
honorifics (formal pronoun for high status
individual).
‘A Boy Named Sue’
 Study said “Boys with names most commonly
given to girls (Taylor, Dominique) may be
prone to misbehavior at school as they get
older.”
– David N. Figlio ‘Boys named Sue: Disruptive
children and their peers.’ NBER Working Paper
11277, April 2005.
What is problematic with this conclusion?
Stereotypes?
Determinism?
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Identity-work:
– The process through which “talk” makes available
to participants and observers who the people
doing the “talking” must be.
The line “yes we can” in this culture at this time
brings to mind President Elect Barack Obama
Talk does identity work.
History does identity work (the way we think and
talk
about people from our past).
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Meanings that are intentionally given
– The content of an utterance
• Meanings that are given off
– The interactional meaning of an utterance
• Contextualization clues
– Those features of talk that people use to arrive
at the interactional meanings of what is being
said.
Crosstalk
– Crosstalk occurs when conversational partners
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Goffman claimed that everyone is concerned, to some
extent, with how others perceive them (I imagine you
can understand this being in college).
We act socially, striving to maintain the identity we
create for others to see.
This identity, or public self-image, is what we project
when we interact socially.
To lose face is to publicly suffer a diminished selfimage. Maintaining face is accomplished by taking a
line while interacting socially.
A line is what the person says and does during that
interaction showing how the person understands the
situation at hand and the person's evaluation of the
interactants.
Social interaction is a process combining line and face,
or face work.
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Code-switching
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Language Crossing
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Code-switching is the use of two languages
simultaneously or interchangeably.
Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termino
en español
Code-switching implies some degree of
competence in the two languages even if
bilingual fluency is not yet stable.
Code-switching may
be used to achieve
two things:
– To fill a
linguistic/conceptual
gap, or
– To establish an identity
different from one
that can exist in either
language
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While in some places and cases code switching
is the exception, in many multilingual and
bilingual communities it is and should be seen
as the norm (border language-identities).
Where code-switching is the norm it is
perceived as fluid, unmarked, and uneventful,
and where it is the exception it will be
perceived as marked, purposeful, emphasisoriented, and strange.
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Speakers communicate fluently, maintaining
an even flow of talk. No hésitation pauses (aw,
uhm, uh, er), changes in sentence rhythm, pitch
level or intonation contour mark the shift in
code.
There is nothing in the exchange as a whole to
indicate that speakers don't understand each
other.
Apart from the alternation itself, the passages
have all the earmarks of ordinary conversation
in a single language.
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Language crossing is the use of a language
which isn't generally thought to ‘belong’ to the
speaker (suburban youth using inner-city
slang).
Language crossing involves a sense of
movement across quite sharply felt social or
ethnic boundaries, and it raises issues of
legitimacy that participants need to reckon
with in the course of their encounter.
I have argued that the human condition is
distinguished from the condition of other living
species by culture…
 Human culture is:
 learned
 shared
 patterned
 adaptive
 symbolic
Culture did not emerge all at once but evolved over time.
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Culture
Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that
humans acquire as members of society.
Humans use culture to adapt to and
transform the world in which they live.
Symbol
Something that stands for something else.
Institutions
Complex, variable, and enduring forms of
cultural practice that organize social life.
The role of culture in human life is often debated in the
Western world, using concepts rooted in philosophy.
Dualism
The philosophical view that reality consists of two
equal and irreducible forces.
Idealism
The philosophical view (dating back at least as far as
Plato in Western thought) that ideas—or the minds that
produce such ideas—constitute the essence of human
nature.
Materialism
The philosophical view that the material activities of our
physical bodies in the material world constitute the
essence of human nature.
Mind-Matter Dualism
 Deeply rooted in Western thought, dating back to such
figures as Plato.
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Because culture includes ideas, it is often associated with
the mind and sometimes thought to control the material
body.
Determinism
The philosophical view that one simple
force (or a few simple forces) causes (or
determines) complex events.
Essence
An unchanging core of features that is
unique to things of the same kind and
that makes them what they are.
Holism assumes that mind and body,
individuals and society, and individuals and
the environment interpenetrate and even
define one another.
Anthropological holism argues that objects
and environments interpenetrate and even
define one another.
Thus, the whole is more than the sum of
its parts.
Human beings and human societies are
parts of open systems that cannot be
reduced to the parts that make them up.
Our biocultural heritage has produced a
living species that uses culture to surmount
biological and individual limitations, and is
even capable of studying itself and its own
biocultural evolution.
Universal civilization vs. vulnerable local
“cultures”
Early 20th century: anthropology and “the
savage slot”
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The plural use of culture allowed Franz Boas
and Bronislaw Malinowski to argue that, in their
own ways, “primitives” were as fully human as
“civilized” people.
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End of the 20th century: the plural use of
culture began to appear pernicious rather
than progressive.
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It condemns people to live as their ancestors did.
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It stigmatizes those who do not as “inauthentic.”
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This exposes the plural concept of culture
as a rigid, “totalitarian” concept of
culture that endorses a kind of oppressive
cultural determinism.
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Anthropologist Adam Kuper showed how the
rulers in 20th-century apartheid South
Africa made use of the plural concept of
culture in order to control indigenous African
populations.
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Kuper quotes one spokesman who
justified apartheid as a policy aiming at
encouraging “‘higher Bantu culture and
not at producing black Europeans.’”
From Kuper’s perspective, and contrary to
the goals of the American anthropologists
who first developed it, “the idea of culture
could actually reinforce a racial theory of
difference.”
Some anthropologists wish that all
anthropologists would stop using the concept
of “culture” in their writings.
However, a variety of groups have
incorporated the plural use of culture into
their own self-definitions, and in some cases
anthropologists defend this move as valuable
and progressive.
As a result, today “culture” is sometimes
used in ways that anthropologists find
objectionable but which they cannot control.
Nevertheless, the anthropological
perspective can also help us construct more
realistic and authentic ways of coping with
those complications.
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The exercise of at least some control over their
lives by human beings.
Individuals construct their own life course
through the choices and actions they take
within the opportunities and constraints of
history and social circumstances
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Agency is a philosophical concept of the
capacity of an agent to act in a world.
The agency is considered as belonging to that
agent, even if that agent represents a fictitious
character, or some other non-existent entity.
The capacity to act does not at first imply a
specific moral dimension to the ability to make
the choice to act, therefore moral agency is a
distinct concept.
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Human agency is the capacity for human
beings to make choices and to impose those
choices on the world.
It is normally contrasted to natural forces,
which are causes involving only unthinking
deterministic processes.
In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from
the concept of free will, the philosophical
doctrine that our choices are not the product of
causal chains, but are significantly free or
undetermined.
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Human agency entails the uncontroversial,
weaker claim that humans do in fact make
decisions and enact them on the world.
How humans come to make decisions, by free
choice or other processes, is another issue
altogether...
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The capacity of a human to act as an agent is
personal to that human, though considerations
of the outcomes flowing from particular acts of
human agency for us and others can then be
thought to invest a moral component into a
given situation wherein an agent has acted, and
thus to involve moral agency.
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Here anthropologists are attempting to
understand how automation impacts our
concept of agency.
In the automated mode of agency the artificial
rather than the human intelligence evaluates
information and determines action
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Little if any social action is conducted entirely in the
automated mode, but it is increasingly mixed into our
daily lives.
For example, earlier in the year I asked you to look up
articles on your chosen commodity.
Human intelligence consisted of you deciding to look
up a particular book…
Perhaps you also knew how to use the computer and
the database you were interested in…
Or you were aware enough to ask the reference
librarian for help.
Human memory contains things about the item you
are looking for (author, title, subject).
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Artificial memory refers to the library’s
database, which holds information regarding
the material’s location.
Artificial intelligence is what the computer
hardware and software do to connect the
student with information stored in artificial
memory.
Extended agency then is the use of automated
tools with artificial memory and intelligence to
process information for the human using the
automated and intelligent tool.