2.2.1 The Prominent Theoretical Approaches to Iden...
The linguistics research has been slowly but steadily moving to position the function of identity at the central part of the discussion of language use.There seems to have limited space to argue that language is an ‘identity marker’ (Joseph, 2010), because it is the fundamental and central manifestation of people’s very sense of ‘who we are, where we belong and why, and how we relate to those around us’ (Joseph, 2010, p.9).Identity research in linguistics is extraordinarily complicated and tends to become multitheoretical and multidisciplinary, and the recent research moves the focus onto the developmental trajectory of the individual in ‘micro’ groups.However, the current prominent theoretical approaches to identity still stem from structuralism, social constructionism and post-structuralism.Structuralism views identity in the static or essential sense.That is, identity is a pre-existent category, distributing individuals and groups into social classes (Labov, 1966; Trudgill, 1974).Social constructionism, on the other hand, proposes a sociolinguistic approach to studying identity as a product of social action rather than a pre-existent entity (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).Post-structuralism recently is advocated in framing the research of identity and language learning (Bourdieu, 1990; Weedon, 1997).Its notion of identity in relation to the construction of motivation in SLA is particularly theorised by Bonny Norton (Norton, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001).
The current study argues that a new method is needed to explore the realisation of disciplinary identities in the current changing world.Seeing the increased frequency of mobility and the mixture of people gathering in groups, it seems to be more interesting to identify their identities in the ‘micro’ groups.To fulfil this research motivation, it is not appropriate to adopt an approach such as the abovementioned essentialist or constructionist ones (Joseph, 2004).Rather, a more technical and applicable theoretical and methodological framework should be taken for specificity in the research.