Identity in Applied Linguistics Research

Lisa McEntee-Atalianis

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781623564070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

This book provides a broad survey of historical and contemporary treatments of identity in various branches of Applied Linguistics, identifying common themes and areas for future research. The volume explores theoretical and methodological approaches and features detailed empirical accounts and case studies. The book not only presents current debates in Applied Linguistics and related fields but also the theoretical and practical implications of studying identity from various perspectives and disciplinary approaches. It also offers researchers a new approach to the study of identity: 'The Dynamic Integrated Systems Approach'. As such Identity in Applied Linguistics Research is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and academics and practitioners working on issues of identity.

CHAPTER ONE

Historical and Theoretical Overview

Introduction

On 8 April 2013, Baroness Margaret Thatcher died and within hours of her passing a barrage of divisive media and public analysis of her life and legacy ensued. Throughout the debate she was variously described as an academically successful daughter of a humble shopkeeper and the product of a working-class Methodist upbringing; a devoted/distant wife and mother; a short-lived chemist and barrister; a reviled/respected politician; the longest-serving British prime minister in the twentieth century; the first female prime minister; ‘an iron lady’ with an uncompromising will; a war hero/villain; an anti-Unionist; a victim of failing ill health … and so the characterizations and descriptions went on. In some accounts, selective aspects of her identity, for example, the familial, were emphasized; in others, they were silenced. In her working life, she, like many politicians, had taken steps to fashion her public image through dress, rhetorical style and voice training, as well as the appropriation and manipulation of externally constructed epithets – imagery and tropes – most famously the image of the ‘iron lady’ and the metaphor of JOURNEY, as expressed via the much-quoted entailment of ‘the lady’s not for turning’. The days leading up to her funeral were consumed with much debate about who she had been, what and who she identified with, who identified or distanced themselves from her, and the enduring positive and negative consequences of her existence and ideology – ‘Thatcherism’. The debate continues, for in July 2017, attempts to construct a public memorial, a 10-foot bronze statue, were met with derision by some, and fear by her more sympathetic admirers who believed the threat of vandalism to be too great to allow it to be erected in Parliament Square in London.

In death, as in life, it would seem that issues relating to identity are inconsistent, neither predetermined nor self-determined, mutable and immutable, ever ubiquitous, open to revision and apparently never clear-cut or final. They appear challenged by self and others across contexts and time. But what is ‘identity’ and how might we define it? This question has existed since at least the time of Plato and remains not only a ‘philosophical aporia’ (Riley 2008: 70) but also one that challenges many in the social sciences. While some question the usefulness of the term as a concept and analytic category (Brubaker & Cooper 2000), few can deny that it is prevalent in public discourse and has become central to many studies in the social sciences, including applied linguistics, with some scholars even suggesting that it is a separate ‘field of inquiry’ (De Fina 2010: 263).

In his philosophical account of modern Western¹ identity, Taylor (1989/2006) asserts that we cannot understand subjectivity (and by extension define it) without examining the ‘sources’ of its transformation within and across different sociocultural, epistemological and philosophical traditions over at least three to four centuries. Although such a comprehensive undertaking cannot be achieved here, nor attention be given to the differences and complexities within and across different intellectual traditions, inspired by, and drawing upon such historical accounts as Benwell and Stokoe (2006), we briefly examine the influence of major schools of thought and selective ‘thinkers’ on historical and contemporary treatments of ‘identity’² of relevance to applied linguistics research. We initially review major paradigmatic shifts, particularly emerging within the fields of philosophy, psychology, anthropology and sociology, revealing how new ways of conceptualizing identity, in synergy with changing sociocultural and political conditions and intellectual endeavours, served to destabilize old perspectives and fashion new theoretical trajectories. As the discussion progresses, we see how different conceptualizations from diverse fields of enquiry continue to influence contemporary research. In the second part of the chapter, different theoretical perspectives of identity are discussed. While these are far from the only theoretical frameworks of identity appropriated in applied linguistics research, these illustrate how different conceptualizations and representations of identity, arising from different disciplinary bases, can influence theoretical, methodological and analytic frameworks and trends in particular subfields of applied linguistics. We discuss how these and other frameworks have informed contemporary research later in the book.

We begin with early accounts of identity (or ‘self-hood’) followed by a consideration of modernist, postmodernist and post-structuralist considerations.

Historical overview

Philosophical musings on identity can be traced as far back as the Ancients: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Pericles to name but four. For centuries, philosophers and orators have debated the temporal continuity of self-hood and the relationship of mind and body. In Republic, Plato asserts a belief in the individual possession of a metaphysical, true identity. His dialogues are concerned with how individuals accomplish self-knowledge. Aristotle, in contrast, mused over the multiplicity of individual identity, while Pericles’ funeral oration alluded to Athenian collective identity.

Early influential theorizations in the West emerged throughout the Renaissance during which time notions of ‘identity’ focused on the individual project of self-determination emerging from the principles of humanism. The self was no longer conceived as unquestionably beholden and subject to political or religious ideology and social mores, but as autonomous and free thinking. Medieval society had previously restricted social and intellectual mobility and provided limited opportunities for self-reflection or criticism. Rather, truth was ‘revealed’ and power and control held mainly in the hands of the Church and in monarchical rule. Self and societal determination gained ground over the centuries fuelled by rationalism, increasing secularization and democracy, in addition to scientific innovation in the eighteenth century (Benwell & Stokoe 2006).

In the seventeenth century, the philosophical doctrine of René Descartes (1596–1650), known as Cartesianism, became established in parts of Europe and marked a shift in thinking about the sources of reasoning and morality, ‘reason [came] to be understood as rational control, the power to objectify body, world and passions … the sources of moral strength [could] no longer be seen as outside us … certainly not in the way they were for Plato’ (Taylor 2006: 151). In Cartesian dualism, the mind was conceived as functioning independently of its corporeal body and the material world. The shift to an intrapsychic, first-person viewpoint emphasized the importance of ‘cogito’ – thought and reasoning – in ordering ideas, gaining knowledge and developing insight into God. The ‘self’ was positioned as innately and methodically cognizant, rational agent, capable of ‘radical reflexivity’ (Taylor 2006: 130) and deduction, and of developing a system of knowledge by reflecting on its own awareness and experiences. Irrational desires did not intrude on the understanding of the self. In this frame the subject was viewed as in control, as ‘disengaged’ from God, sensations and perceptions of the physical, corporeal body and from habitual practices or traditions. Instead the subject was capable of objectification, of transcending physical/sensual experience and ‘first-person stance’ to theorize about how things exist or work (Taylor 2006: 163). Descarte’s philosophy was revolutionary; instead of conceiving of ‘truth’ as an external reality, or as given by God, he conceived of it as under the control of the subject, the human agent, the ‘sovereign self’. The ‘I’ (in echoes of the Ancient philosophers) was therefore self-determining, not determined by nature or God. ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, first written in French by Descartes in 1637, until appearing in his later work in 1644, has become a symbol of this doctrine. This Latin phrase, often translated as ‘I think, therefore I am’, served to underpin Western philosophy and laid the foundation for modernist thinking, that is, should one question one’s existence, proof can be found in one’s ability to ‘think’. Thought provides the material for the self and also constructs the product of a unified, essential identity.³

Like Descartes, John Locke (1632–1704), a British philosopher, subsequently appropriated the dualism of disengagement and reflexivity in his writing; however, for him, knowledge did not arise from ‘innate ideas’ (Taylor 2006: 164) but through lived experience and social engagement, and crucially through the setting down of memories. Unlike previous philosophers, Locke drew on psychological criteria in defining personal identity as ‘knowledge’. He proposed that it could be formed and reformed instrumentally through disciplined scrutiny and reflection. Agency in Locke’s doctrine was recognized as contingent on experience, consciousness and self-control – distinct however from tradition and authority. Echoes of his work continue to resonate in some recent theories and writings of identity which conceive of it as under the control of the individual and as seated in memory, although its contingency on social forces is recognized (Giddens 1991).⁴ Riley (2008: 71) observes how shared memories are often cited as fundamental to the construction of minority collective identity and ‘movements’ of identity politics, in addition to the maintenance of personal relationships. The condition of disrupted or lost memory/ies (e.g. following trauma or dementia) is often cited as an experience of identity/personal loss on the part of the individual experiencing the memory loss or those close to them (see Chapter Three for further discussion).

Towards the end of the eighteenth century and into the first half of the nineteenth, Romanticism emerged as a rebellion against neoclassical formal strictures and traditions imposed on such cultural forms as art, literature and music, and the social and political conditions of the time, including the impact of the Industrial Revolution. ‘[T]‌he Romantics affirmed the rights of the individual, of the imagination, and of feeling’ (Taylor 2006: 368ff), defining identity in terms of rational choice and self-expression. In contrast to the scientific empiricism of the Enlightenment, Romantics viewed the ‘self’ and ‘truth’ as emerging in response to feelings, sentiments and impulses, stressing the importance of nature as the source and ‘locus’ of life and goodness (Taylor 2006: 349). They theorized the importance of the individual in achieving self-fulfilment and self-determination. For example, reinforcement of Cartesian dualism continued in the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who defined the self in similar terms to Descartes: as unified, consistent, self-determining and autonomous. For Kant, self-autonomy depended on a rational, conscious self-governing will, which was guided by universal principles independent and unencumbered by social influences.

A political and moral thrust of collective identity also appeared at this time and had a long-term effect on the development of nationalism. Rousseau (1712–1778) and Herder (1744–1803) both argued for the ‘sovereignty’ and self-definition of a people defined ‘by a common purpose or identity’. A consequence of ‘Romantic expressivism’ was the constructed nature of national identity through narrative, which is resonant even today (Taylor 2006: 415–416; also see Chapter Eleven).

By the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, scholars, from different disciplines, began to destabilize modernist notions of the rational, centred, self-determining whole subject, unencumbered by the influences of the social. Among these the ‘Masters of Suspicion’ (Ricoeur 1970), Marx, Freud and Nietzsche,⁵ questioned what was deemed to be given and ‘natural’, viewing individuals as embedded in social and cultural systems which influenced the nature of their agency (beliefs/moral/practical agency). Self-knowledge, it was argued, was not achieved simply through introspection but rather through the mediating actions of therapy (in the case of Freud) and political and social parties/movements. Their work and that of others throughout the twentieth century (Adorno 1981; Adorno & Horkheimer 2002) led to a deconstruction, a questioning, of the foundations of Western psychology, culture and civilization laid down historically in religions, philosophies, social, political and economic structures. Structural social theories began to undermine the former modernist accounts of self, as individuals were recognized as part of cultural and social systems.

Marx (1818–1883) argued that one’s sense of self arose from one’s social and politico-economic situation and ‘consciousness’, even ‘false consciousness’ brought about through the dominant ideologies of the ruling classes in society which served to naturalize the subordination of the working classes. One’s sense of self in his view was not self-determining, not a centred consciousness, that is, a psychic state unified by universal principles of truth, as argued by Descartes or Locke, but rather determined by one’s position within the social order: ‘[i]‌t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness’ (Marx 1859/1971: 3). His work influenced later philosophical writing, such as Gramsci (1891–1937) and Althusser (1918–1990). Althusser (1972, 2012) introduced the concept of ‘interpellation’ which he defined as subjects’ recognition of themselves and their own complicity in their domination through ideology. Both ideology and interpellation, he argued, were fundamental to the construction of individuals by such state institutions as education, media, law and the family. Indeed, the notion that identities can be interpellated (tacitly or otherwise) has subsequently been debated by many researchers who investigate the positioning⁶ of subjects through various media.

The idea that one is shaped by external influences was also expressed in psychoanalytic theory developed initially through the influential work of Freud (1856–1939) (1920/2015, 1923/2010) and later Lacan (1977). Freud rejected the notion that the self is centred by a single self-conscious, self-defining identity. For him, identity was not rational, unitary or stable but rather dislocated (outside of the self) and conflicted. Through his structural model of the human psyche, he decentred the subject by illustrating...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Historical and Theoretical Overview
• 2 Linguistic Idiosyncrasy
• 3 Clinical Studies
• 4 Forensic Studies
• 5 Youth Studies
• 6 Workplace/Professional Identities
• 7 Social Media and Identity
• 8 Ethnic and Religious Identities
• 9 Gender and Sexual Identities
• 10 D/deaf Identities
• 11 Space, Place and Identity
• 12 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright Page