2.1.1 Defining identity and identity construction
Identity and identity construction defined in the previous studies
Identity is concerned with who we are in general. According to Tracy(2002, p. 17), identity refers to the “core aspects of selfhood” and “something each person possesses.” Identity is also “an accomplishment, not a thing”(ibid.). Similarly, Simon (2004, p. 71), taking a socio-psychological approach,points out that identity is the outcome of a self-interpretation process that“takes shape at the meso-level” of the immediate interaction context.
In an approach similar to but different from Tracy’s and Simon’s, Antaki and Widdicombe (1998, p. 1) treat “identity as an achievement and as a tool.”They argue that identity is something used in talk-in-interaction. If identity is a tool and can be used in interaction, it has some functions to perform. Simon(2004) proposes several functions of identity: identity can provide people with belongingness, distinctiveness, and respect, and help people locate themselves in a social network and can serve as a marker for people to recognize themselves. It is clear that these functions are related to socio-psychological aspects of an individual.
Zimmerman (1998, p. 87) considers identity as “an element of context for talk-in-interaction.” He argues that “identity as context” relates to the development of conversation. From an anthropological perspective, Kroskrity(2000, p. 111) defines identity as “the linguistic construction of membership in one or more social groups or categories.”
Kroskrity’s definition makes salient the fact that identity is mainly linguistically constructed. A similar claim is also made by Thornborrow (2004,p. 158):One of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity, and of shaping other people’s views of who we are, is through our use of language. Identifying yourself as belonging to a particular group or community often means adopting the linguistic conventions of that group, and this is not just in relation to the words you use, but also in relation to the way that you say them.
The view that identity is mainly linguistically constructed is also reflected by the claim that language and identity are inseparable (Edwards,1985, 2009; Joseph, 2004; Tabouret-Keller, 1998) and language acts are acts of identity (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).
Kroskrity (2000, p. 111) also points out that “language and communication are critical aspects of the production of a wide variety of identities expressed at many levels of social organization.” Like Kroskrity,Hecht (1993) takes a communicative approach to identity and argues that“identity is inherently a communicative process” (Hecht, 1993, p. 78) and it possesses the following various aspects (ibid., p. 79):
(1) Identities have individual, social, and communal properties; (2)identities are both enduring and changing; (3) identities are affective, cognitive, behavioral, and spiritual; (4) identities have both content and relationship levels of interpretation; (5) identities involve both subjective and ascribed meanings; (6) identities are codes that are expressed in conversations and define membership in communities; (7) identities have semantic properties that are expressed in core symbols, meanings, and labels; (8) identities prescribe modes of appropriate and effective communication.
Some of these properties of identity are also found in literature in the field of sociolinguistics. For example, Omoniyi and White (2006), who have collected recent discussions on identity in sociolinguistics, point out that the focus of the sociolinguistics of identity is on the ways that people position or construct themselves in socio-cultural situations through the use of language and with reference to various identity markers in those certain socio-cultural situations. They have summarized some important views on identity in sociolinguistics as follows (Omoniyi & White, 2006, p. 2):
Identity is not fixed; it is constructed within established contexts and may vary from one context to another; these contexts are moderated and defined by intervening social variables and expressed through language(s); identity is a salient factor in every communicative context whether given prominence or not; and it informs social relationships and therefore also informs the communicative exchanges that characterize them; and more than one identity may be articulated in a given context in which case there will be a dynamic of identities management.
It is clear that identity is dynamically constructed. Furthermore, the relationship between identity, context and the use of language is highlighted in the sociolinguistic studies of identity. Omoniyi also argues that identity is multiple and multilayered and further claims that in any context, participants’identity options are “hierarchized with great dynamism based on decisions of appropriateness in the moments of choosing between identity options in relation to evaluations of the state of affairs in terms of relationships and dispositions” (Omoniyi, 2006, p. 20). That is, there are various possible identities, which a participant can opt to construct dynamically in terms of a particular context.
As far as the dynamics of identity and context are concerned, Bucholtz and Hall take a socio-cultural linguistic approach, defining identity as “the social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 586), and arguing that identity should be analyzed as “a relational and socio-cultural phenomenon that emerges and circulates in local discourse contexts of interaction rather than as a stable structure located primarily in the individual psyche or in fixed social categories” (ibid., pp. 585-586). Bucholtz and Hall’s(2005) view highlights the dynamic interaction between identity and context.Identities are locally and dynamically constructed in certain contexts.
Based mainly on the discussions of identity by Antaki and Widdicombe(1998), Bucholtz and Hall (2005), Kroskrity (2000), Tracy (2002) and Zimmerman (1998), Yuan (2011a, p. 12) defines identity as “the communicator’s social positioning of self and other to satisfy communicative needs.” He then points out that “the identities used by communicators to satisfy communicative needs are pragmatic identities” (ibid.). That is,identity has certain functions and can be pragmatically used in interaction(Chen, 2004a; Simon, 2004). In Yuan’s definition, the pragmatic nature of identity is made salient by discussing how identity is related to communicative needs. Based on his definitions of identity and pragmatic identity, Yuan (ibid.,p. 13) further argues that “the communicator’s use of linguistic symbols to dynamically construct one online identity can be called identity construction.”
The above discussions on identity and its construction have uncovered various characteristics of identity. For instance, identity is multiple; identity is dynamic; identity can be linguistically constructed; identity is contextually constrained and identity can be pragmatically used. However, identity is a rather complicated phenomenon and one definition cannot encompass all possible characteristics of identity. Generally, one or some of the features of identity is/are highlighted by different approaches.
Identity and identity construction defined in this study
Identity
Identity has been defined from different perspectives to display its main intrinsic characteristics, as shown by the above discussions. Meanwhile, it is observed from Ex.(1-1) that participants do not always speak as they are expected to in some institutional interactions. Since identity is mainly linguistically constructed in verbal interaction, deviation in the ways they speak reflects the deviation of the identities to be constructed. They can thus portray who they must be, who they can be and who they might be, in verbal interaction.
At this point, based on the previous discussions on identity and its construction and the observation of real academic interaction, this study attempts to give a working definition of identity: identity is who we must be /can be / might be, which is linguistically constructed for the moment, in a social and communicative network, to satisfy communicative needs in a dynamic interaction. It is communicative in essence no matter whether it is personal or social.
In addition, to make the present discussion easier and to make clearer what identity is in this study, it is necessary to make a distinction between identity and role, though the two terms are often used interchangeably in literature (Dippold, 2007; Marra & Angouri, 2011).
Goffman (1974) makes a distinction between role and identity by claiming that role is a part of personal identity. Goffman (1974, p. 129) views roles as specialized capacity or function and views personal identity as a set of characteristics. Weizman (2006, p. 158) follows Goffman’s (1974) distinction and further points out that “the conflict between identity and role is potentially there for every institutional setting based on pre-determined role-expectations.” He also argues that role is, in nature, heterogeneous and makes a distinction between social roles and interactional roles. Social roles“have to do with the obligations pertaining to the speakers’ status and activities,” while interactional roles “have to do with the speakers’ rights and obligations within the interaction” (Weizman, 2006, p. 158).
It is clear that role is related to the speaker’s obligation in an interaction.As far as the institutional interaction in question is concerned, the members of the committee are obligated to ask questions and give advice to the PhD students in dissertation proposal presentation meetings (see Section 4.1.1 for more details). Therefore, the roles of the members of the committee are those of questioners and advice-givers, while the roles of the PhD students are as answerers and advice-seekers or advice-receivers in this specific context.This indicates that role is related to discourse type or activity type in interaction. In the institutional interaction in question, asking questions and giving advice are two major activities. This is evidenced by the remarks of the chairperson from one of the PhD dissertation proposal presentation meetings:“我想主要是建议，有问题的话可以问一问，回答回答，因为开题报告主要是提一些建议，然后有利于你将来论文写作，是吧？我是这样一种想法。” (I think giving advice is the main task. If you (the committee members) have any questions, you (the committee members) can ask him (PhD candidate); and he(PhD candidate) can answer the questions. A proposal presentation is mainly advising-oriented. The main purpose is to benefit your (PhD candidate’s) thesis writing. That’s my opinion.).
Therefore, advice-giver is the main role of each member of the committee in their advice-giving activities. Since this study will focus on the advising sequences where advice-giving activities are carried out, the role of the advice-giver will remain unchanged in the whole process of advice-giving.This is another characteristic of the role in the present study.
However, in advising sequences, advice-givers can give advice through making linguistic choices, which indicates the multiple identities to be constructed by advice-givers in this context. That is, what advice-givers must be, can be or might be is made salient through the linguistic choices made in their advising sequences.
Making a distinction between identity and role does not mean that there is a clear demarcation between them. Rather, they are interrelated with great complexity. The roles of advice-giver and advice-receiver, questioner and answerer in the present discussion are actually the discourse identities in Zimmerman’s (1998) classification. Generally, identity is usually treated as a broader term than role, in studies on identity and its construction. They are sometimes different but interrelated. While role is mainly related to discourse activities and is relatively constant in one type of activity, identity can be changeable because it is often temporarily constructed to achieve certain communicative purposes in the dynamic process of the activity. The identities constructed by advice-givers in their advising sequences are the focus of this study.
Identity construction
Previous studies have used different words to describe the formation of identity in a process of verbal communication. For example, identity can be“enacted,” “displayed,” “asserted,” and “constructed” through language or“emerged” in the process of discourse production. The different words used reflect different views on identity. For instance, the use of words such as“enacted,” “displayed” and “asserted” often indicates that identities are already there, while the use of “constructed” and “emerged” means that identities are formed in the dynamic process of verbal interaction. The difference between the former and the latter group of words, in general,corresponds to two perspectives of viewing identity. One is the essentialist view, which sees identity as “completed before an individual enters into any particular interaction” and the other is the post-modern social constructionist view, which sees identity as “an ongoing process during the course of interaction” (Ho, 2010a, p. 2253). This study mainly uses “construct” and“construction” since these two words indicate the dynamic characteristic of identity in verbal interaction and highlight the discursive property of identity.This also means that the exploration of identity in the present study will be based on a constructivist view.
Taking the constructivist view of identity and based on Tracy’s (2002)notion of identity-work, the present study argues that, in verbal communication, identities are dynamically constructed through discourse production or the making of linguistic choices. What mean by “identity construction through discourse” embodies three layers: first, in verbal communication, an identity is constructed mainly through discourse production; second, the discourse produced and the ways of producing discourse are both important to construct identities; third, identities to be constructed through discourse include not only newly “emerged” ones, but also “pre-existing” or “default” ones.
According to the present study, whether identities are default or deviational, they are constructed through the making of linguistic choices in the dynamic process of interaction. The discourse that participants produce and the way they produce discourse are the representations of their identities.