Katherine writes:
> i begin with identity as being relational, being constructed _from_ some
> other (thing, person, group, belief, past experience, story, etc),
> constructed _like_ or _unlike_ an other, _for_ an other, _against_
> another, and so on.
I think that there's an interesting tension between identity and roles. Roles
could be associated with "division of labor" on the lower right side of
Engestrom's triangle. The roles, are prototypes within the activity to be
assumed or assigned, often in terms of presumed expertise with certain tools.
In a political campaign the role of the advertisement person is to employ
images/narratives/genre as tools to promote the candidate. Roles are "out
there" in the activity to be adopted, resisted, or rejected.
Identities may differ from roles in that they are actually achieved through uses
of language, genres, narratives. The unit of analysis becomes what did the
actant actually do with the tools to achieve an identity. For some interesting
work on how identity is achieved through language, see Sue Widdicombe and Robin
Wooffitt, The Language of Youth Subcultures: Social Identity in Action,
Harvester, 1995. The look at how punks categorize themselves in their talk
within the activity of hanging out in pubs. To quote them: "identity is not
seen as a thing the we are, a property of individual, but as something we
do...through the detail of language use" (p. 133). "Identities are said to
motivate action in the service of fulfilling goals, hopes and fears which are
related to self-conception."
Rick Beach, Professor of English Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
359 Peik Hall, 159 Pillsbury Dr., S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455 612-625-3893
rbeach who-is-at maroon.tc.umn.edu