Discursive Negotiations: Ideologies of Practice and

Strategic Potential in Identity Construction

Introduction:

Identity is a concept which has always been treated heterogeneously in the social

sciences. In interactional analysis, however, and in linguistic anthropology in particular,

it has shifted in recent times towards a more practice-oriented philosophy. While identity

is constituted by clear symbolic categories such as place, language, and ethnicity, the

validity of such constitutions is being challenged on the grounds of their essentialism. In

other words, while each may be valid in terms of classifying someone as belonging to a

particular group, negating one’s inclusion based on non-compliance to a rigid set of

criteria is naïve at best. It masks the identity category’s negotiation at local and

individual level. Furthermore, it offers a discursive power to these categories which

achieves legitimacy only ideologically.

In this essay, my concerns will be twofold: first, to delineate the processes

involved in identity construction more generally through theoretical discussions of

language as a device of semiotic and strategic potential, and through a foregrounding of

language’s expressive capacity in theories of linguistic relativity. Following this, I will

propose ideology as the means through which the dialogical negotiation process of

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identity can be understood in specific social groups between higher discursive

constructions of identity on the one hand, and local ideological operations on the other.

Ethnographic examples will be used to foreground this analysis. By emphasizing this

compliance between higher (global) and lower (local) discursive contexts, I aim to

empower what I call ideologies of practice, defined as an extension of Silverstein’s

linguistic ideologies (defined below), including in this case those practices which are

non-linguistic in nature but nonetheless are legitimated (or rationalized) linguistically.

Overall, I aim to present identity as operative both in conjunction with Foucauldian

models of discourse (henceforth Discourse) as well as in opposition to them, in favour of

localized approximations and transformations of those discourses in light of the strategic

potential they afford.

I – Identity, Language, Relativity

I.I – Identity: a General Overview

Jan Blommaert’s account of identity offers a concise account of its complexities within

an increasingly globalised world. He postulates, as expected, that identity is multiple, and

that it operates within particular contexts for contemporaneous interactional purposes.

This requires various “situating processes”:

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situating the individual in relation to several layers of (real,

sociological) ‘groupness’ and (socially constructed) ‘categories’ (age

category, sex, professional category, but also national, cultural, and

ethnolinguistic categories), situating this complex in turn in relation to

other such complexes (young versus old, male versus female, highly

educated versus less educated, and so on), and situating this

identification in relation to the situation at hand, making selections that

result in ‘relevant’ identity (Blommaert 2002: 204)

Such a model emphasizes not the preformed identity categories upon which we draw as

essential. Rather, it stresses their potential in particular contexts, as well as their

‘relevance’ to our individual strategies. They operate indexically through the principles of

semiotics, but this Peircean model shifts according to the stratums operant above the

discourses in current use. Grander categories such as nationhood, culture, and society in

general “cannot be used a priori any more” (ibid.: 204). They are hegemonic, yes, but

only in situations which legitimate their power. Identity, treated in this way, is a

repertoire of these discourses upon which we draw. Group dynamics are thus properly

dynamic—they change according to the uptake and use of approximated forms of these

discursively constructed “stereotypes” by individuals. Through projecting a set of

orientations towards both the situation at hand and the typical construction of that

situation socio-linguistically, one’s identity is “recognized” and accepted (ibid.: 205).

One’s access to that repertoire is confirmed as successful on grounds of adequate

approximation. If not, then participants’ knowledge of other repertoires may be used to

ascribe a particular identity onto you, emblematic of failure. This provides, Blommaert

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indicates, sufficient evidence for a stratification of identities “conditioned by unequal

forms of access” (ibid.: 207). As Blommaert notes:

[B]y taking this position in which we see identities as forms of semiotic

potential, we avoid the reduction of identities to static, established

categories that are in themselves, in all likelihood, discourses of

identity produced by particular actors. We are in a position to replace

such imposed categories with a fine-grained analysis of how people

practically identify themselves and others, and how they do so through

the deployment of whatever means they have at their disposal (ibid.:

210).

Identity is thus defined oppositionally in relation to others, in terms of access. Again,

however, it must be noted that there is not any single breakthrough point. Classes of

practices are what are drawn upon, but their treatment varies. Language, I feel, rests at

the top of these, precisely because it is the medium through which practice in any other

form becomes legitimate. Non-verbal identity practices may elicit new lexicons or ways

of thinking about a projected collective, but such projections are realized via language. I

will discuss the significance of this below.

I.II – Language as a Signifier of Identity: Cognitive Processes, Relativity

A qualification at the outset: language for Blommaert, as well as a host of others, is no

longer simply a tool for communication, nor can it be traced as such. A tool implies a

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limited set of uses, according to a set structure, a set of governing principles or historical

traditions, and so on. Because of any language’s transformative capacities in the abstract

realms of indexicality, denotative studies offered by linguists are inadequate if trying to

offer an interactional taxonomy. While the “tools” in this case can be provided, their

applications cannot. Language, nonetheless, is the medium through which repertoires are

brought into play in the first place, albeit in a fragmented fashion, and through which

their shifts can be traced and negotiated. Furthermore, because of identity’s semiotic

potential, language is essentially a fulfillment of that potential. Ergo, any language—or in

this case any semiotic code, so as not to unitize specific languages—can be used to

generate meaning according to local interactional norms, but can also be symbolic of

higher contexts, its own history, and so on (ibid: 216).

Boas and his successors viewed language itself as an extension of a universally

shared cognitive structure amongst humans. Boas maintained that such a capacity is

afforded to the individual regardless of cultural, ethnolinguistic, or racial orientation

(Leavitt 2006: 61-2). It is the web of significations—phonological, morphological, etc.—

into which we enter which necessitates the inherent complexity we observe in languages

cross-culturally. Relativity, then, is defined by Boas as a set of obligations built into the

linguistic artifact itself, much like a wave having a series of cascading effects. As Leavitt

summarises:

Boas’s point here…is that the key difference among languages lies less

in what they allow you to say—any language will allow you to say

anything you want—than in what a given language obliges you to refer

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to. Different languages have different obligatory grammatical

categories. (ibid.: 61)

To “obligatory grammatical categories,” Boas adds other structural features such as

lexicon and phonetics (ibid.: 62). Sapir and Whorf take this further by empowering the

cognitive process itself as an arbiter of linguistic change. Sapir’s model for grammar and

its prescriptive capacities exemplifies this. What Whorf does, however, is reconstitute

linguistic determinism in terms of linguistic “seduction” (ibid.: 65). In other words, if a

cognitive path is easier to follow in a given language, it is followed. This removes

stigmatizations of superiority on an objective, structural level. However, it forges

political and moral biases on a relativistic one.

In light of the above, interactional analysis must address the comparative potential

of moral and political weighting between languages, analyzable via language ideology.

Because of its reflexive quality, it acts as a signifier of divergent modes of thought,

particularly if held about another language. For linguistic anthropologists, this culminates

in analyses of identity. Identity, as stated, emerges practically. However, it is legitimated

ideologically. The obligatory ‘filters’ through which one must pass in a given language

afford it a strategic potential according to individual interests. Still, however, agency in

this case must contend with Discourse in a grander sense. What must be understood, then,

is that sources of higher discursive ideologies—those of a hegemonic character such as

the state—trickle down into everyday discourse, to the extent that the denotative function

they project is ideologically weighted and naturalized. Ideology is thus the inevitable end

result of language’s obligation to reproduce and transform in everyday social interaction.

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I.III – Language Ideologies

Language ideologies have been defined variously by Kroskrity. For my purposes,

however, I align myself with Silverstein’s definition: “sets of beliefs about language

articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure

and use” (Silverstein 1979: 193 [497]). Kroskrity summarises this as “beliefs, or feelings,

about languages as used in their social worlds” (ibid.: 498). Significantly, emphasis is

placed on the individual speaker. He rationalizes his use of his language. Furthermore, it

implies strategic impetus or potential. Kroskrity outlines several features of ideologies

which characterize their form and use. Importantly, he establishes them as “layers of

significance,” suggesting a hierarchy or degree of overlap:

(1) Group or individual interests

(2) Multiplicity of Ideologies

(3) Awareness of Speakers

(4) Mediating Functions of Ideologies

(5) Role of Language Ideology in Identity Construction (ibid.: 500)

The ethnographies discussed throughout this essay will identify implicitly with these

types. As a composite of the first four, it is the last of these which is of primary concern

to me, while not excluding the others.

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II – Ideologies in Practice

II.I – Modernity, “Modern” Identity and Discursive Circulation

Debra Spitulnik’s example is ideal in its presentation of Discourse (in this case of

modernity) on a grand scale trickling down into local transliterative practices. Her

analysis of Zambian constructions of modernity incorporates both denotational references

to modernity as concept or linguistic adjective and the semiotic appropriation of that

concept for contemporaneous, local purposes. Pertinent to my argument is its

resemblance to strategic potential: the use of specific ideologies of practice in light of

current identity politics.

The circulation of the concept itself can be attributed to the increasingly

globalised telecommunications networks now operant across Zambia, as well as to the

colonial history of Zambia itself. The European influence is significant, in fact, because it

represents the source of emanation (in a Silversteinian sense) of “Modern” Discourse—

particularly in reference to its capacity to self-generate. The modern as discursive concept

has been incorporated in Zambia in a very different way than its Western significations:

so as to denote and index ethnolinguistically the specific configurations of “modernity” in

Zambia amongst its population. These resemble by degrees, but not in their totality, the

original concept.

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Linguistically, it appears as a set of ideologies: use of Bemba variations,

incorporation of English words into Bemba—known in this case as Town Bemba

(Spitulnik 2002: 203). Terms such as the “good life,” “up to date,” “up to the minute” are

used in order to orientate the modern as abstraction spatio-temporally (ibid.: 200). The

verb “to enlighten, to dawn” in Bemba, ukuca, even extends its meaning to incorporate

this new aspect of their history: the coming of the Europeans and “Europeanness.”

Operant ideologies are not only ethnolinguistic, however. They also relate to the source

of modernity itself, the West, and alongside that, Zambia’s colonial history. Zambians’

use of hybridized English is thus a form of adaptation to larger processes of globalization

—including treatments of time, work, efficiency, progress, etc.—as well as an

intertextual reference to their colonial history and their negotiations with it. In neither

case is an essential identity presumed. Rather, the Discourse of modernity and Zambia’s

history relative to it are linguistic marks, assimilated eclectically by active agents. While

“the nexus of cultural dualisms” once rampant in Zambian culture was, in effect, that

through which they experienced the world, now their experiences are hybridized by the

West in a dialogical fashion (ibid.: 209). As Spitulnik summarises, “[w]hat was once a

way of describing modernity from the dominant European colonial perspective is now

one of the most pervasive ways of describing modernity among Zambians” (ibid.: 209).

In this way, grander discourses, historically weighted though they may be, can only

operate locally for specific communities.

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IV – Ali G example

A natural extension of this also happens to be a curious reversal of its categorical poles.

Sacha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as ‘Ali G,’ rather than adapting a grand discourse

such as modernity to his own indigenous dialect, rejects it in favour of a hybridized

English. Mark Sebba’s article classifies judgement of his identity on the grounds of his

ethnicity, but because it is so heavily indebted to performance and to the media through

which he is regularly projected, the identity which emerges is a set of exaggerations—de-

approximations of any single identity. Ali G’s language, combining non-standard

Southern British English with variations of Jamaican creole, makes his identity

ambiguous. He is essentially making use of language ideologies which directly connect

the use of hybridized forms of English to ‘black’ identity (Sebba 2007: 364). He

recognizes, Sebba notes, that “it is possible to characterize someone as ‘black’ even if

they have light colored skin” (ibid.: 364). This reinforces the ambiguity.

“Acts of identity” contribute to the emergence of new language variations based

on Jamaican creole. Sebba emphasizes their processual, practical nature—echoing

Bucholtz. The first was the emergence of ‘Black British’ and ‘London Jamaican’ dialects.

It led to the creole variations heard in London today which entirely defy their origins. A

“multiracial vernacular” appears in conjunction with black adolescent uses of creole

(ibid.: 369). By virtue of the latter’s symbolic power and the former’s lack of any

indexical relationship to its user, ethnicity’s connection to language is destabilized. Both

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sets of users attach different ideological weight to the dialect’s use. Different strategic

potentials are being enacted, more of affiliation than essential or symbolic.

These variations soon appeared on the internet—the final act of identity. People

began to electronically affiliate themselves with Ali G’s style of speech, thereby

bypassing questions of ethnicity or legitimacy of usage. As Sebba notes, “[i]n computer-

mediated communication, certain information about interlocutors which might form the

basis for ascribing identities to individuals is self-evidently lacking” (ibid.: 378).

Curiously, the dialect forged by Ali G himself has now come into existence on the streets

of London. It has become an ideology attached to London itself, whereas before it was

merely a negotiation on Sacha Baron Cohen’s part, a series of potentialities. “[M]ass

respelling of words,” non-standard verb and pronoun forms, use of insults as well as a

host of other changes characterize and develop a language once emanating from a single

source (ibid.: 374). Cohen’s focus, Sebba notes, is on the features “above the level of

awareness”—those which cannot be traced empirically due to their mixing of origins.

Competence—Blommaert’s “situating process”—is performed in a “virtual ghetto,”

designed to continually distance this variation of creole from its stereotypical ‘black’

users (ibid.: 375).

In such an arena, distinct identities can be enacted: that of serious online

participant and playful mimicry of Ali G:

‘Ali G language’ is used largely to contextualize contributions that are

intended to be playful, inconsequential, ‘unreal’. The use of Standard(-

like) English adds gravitas and sincerity, making it more appropriate

for serious messages, or serious parts of messages (ibid.: 377).

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Use of the language, or a claim to it, is the strongest possible index in this case. Identities

(ethnicities) are formed through use. Sebba illustrates this through users who switch

continually between standard formal English and Ali G-style language. The latter uses an

ethnic category, the former validates the authority of the individual speaker, and thus

legitimates his claims beyond stereotypes or informal registers. Due to the length of

Sebba’s examples, I will not quote them, but sufficed to say they are built on practices of

oscillation. It is this oscillation which characterizes such identity politics as ideologies of

practice, a term I will address below.

V – Nerd Girls example: Local construction through practice: language ideologies

and identity

Mary Bucholtz’s article on nerd girls offers an analogous example. The article

theoretically orientates itself towards practice theory from the outset. Its emphasis is upon

“the community of practice” as a space in which one can practically constitute one’s

identity relative to one’s individual agency on the one hand, and dominant social forces—

for my purposes, higher discursive contexts—on the other. As she emphasizes, “[i]n

communities of practice, unlike speech communities, the boundaries are determined not

externally by linguists, but internally through ethnographically specific social meanings

of language use” (Bucholtz 1999: 214). She extends this to all essentialist categorizations

by linguists: centralizing the group, the peripheral participant as unworthy of analysis,

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prioritizing consensus, and so forth. Individuals and groups are considered, as well as the

marginal, in communities of practice.

Her ethnographic work focuses on a group of nerd girls who define themselves in

opposition to Jocks and Burnouts whilst asserting their own identity. This is done through

an orientation towards the practice of being “cool” in a way which deviates from other

groups, but which is equally as valid in a specific group. She outlines a series of

phonological, syntactical, lexical and discursive shifts which characterize their linguistic

practices—for my purposes, properly ideological in their rationalization. Yet for her,

these all function alongside other practices. For nerds, for instance, the display of

knowledge (via the formal register) acts as a kind of symbolic capital for them which

wholly replaces and opposes the more physical practicality associated with Jocks.

Positive identity practices are based upon quality—competence at performing an

identity here and now. These are sourced from the stereotypes alluded to above, but also

individually relevant to the current situation. Negative identity practices, unlike positive,

oppose the identity category itself, fluid though it may be, by blatantly drawing upon

stereotypical constructions of other identities e.g. a participant’s use of the term

“Bootsy,” a known slang term, the use of which is entirely rejected by nerds in favour of

the formal register (ibid.: 218). For my purposes, however, these strategic uses and

misuses of language constitute ideologies of practice. Like language ideologies, they are

rationalizations of language use, only in this case they stress not the set of higher contexts

from which linguistic appropriations emerge, but the practical applications of those

contexts to contemporaneous circumstances.

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What I find problematic, as noted above, is the very segregation made by her—

and which she agrees with—between language and other social practices. The “culturally

shared resources” of which language are a part are themselves legitimated by ad hoc

interactional discourse, textual records or globalised media for circulation. In what sense,

then, can language in use be separated from other identity practices, if those practices are

only ever brought into play—given strategic potential—in interaction? Ideologies of

practice, on the other hand, prioritize the treatment of language in light of classifications

of practice. In light of her rejection of the speech community, I simply wish to re-insert

language as the primary transformative mechanism in interaction. To assume a class of

practices as central would be to devalue the social par excellence, as the arena in which

identity negotiations are performed.

The example I will address below shows how conflation of larger discursive

frameworks with a single language can often obscure the lived reality of that language.

VI – Woolard and Language Policy Example: Bilingualism, conflicting ideologies

Bilingualism, according to relativity principles, is defined by the co-presence within a

larger identity category of two distinct sets of linguistic codes. As stated, these (as

semiotic sets of potential) are both equally as capable of generating meaning, only they

have different sets of obligations. Woolard’s example, however, addresses not the

integration of these languages for the purposes of local cohesion. It deals with the

problems associated with the reification of a language in support of institutional

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discourses of voting and/ or monolingualism. Such reification is created via a status

politics: “a political movement in which a once-dominant social group, perceiving its

cultural values as dishonoured by social change and rejected by other groups, seeks to

reaffirm symbolically its declining prestige” (Woolard 1989: 268-9). In this particular

example, Anglophiles are opposing bilingualism on electoral documents through

Proposition O, in order to reaffirm their status. In essence, a battle between higher

discourses (federal, electoral, national) and lower discourses (experiential use of

language, local identity) is occurring.

Woolard addresses the different sets of reasons behind support for the campaign,

and how rhetoric transformed the reality of the languages themselves into an eventual

relationship of equivalence with political motives. By making a myth out of language,

paraphrasing Barthes, English becomes a signifier and can represent metaphorically and

metonymically a whole set of concepts, abstract and institutional, while simultaneously

transforming its constitution. Minority languages, conversely, are re-spatialized in

Blommaert’s terms in opposition to English (and the U.S.) (Blommaert 222).

The “semantic units” of the campaign show this, the most important of which ties

the ability to vote in an informed fashion and to understand the campaigns to the

proficient English-speaking citizen; citizenship itself becomes an exclusionary “semi-

citizenship” as a result of this condition of non-participation (ibid.: 272). Campaigners

allegedly engage in bossism, or bloc voting, which essentially victimizes those minorities

unable to understand their policies (ibid.: 275). One inferential chain summarizes the

above: “(1) that English is the language of political information, and specifically; (2) that

candidates themselves campaign in English; (3) that print is the medium of such

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information, or, alternatively; (4) that lack of literate proficiency in English entails a lack

of aural proficiency” (ibid.: 272). The language as prison builds on this, a suggestion by

supporters of the campaign that the minority language spoken by Chinese, Spanish

immigrants, and so on, is preventing them from living a “full life” in that they cannot

contribute; also, that the option of bilingual voting will only hinder them further (ibid.:

274). These views, then, are both ideologies about languages themselves and about

language policy, and its connectedness as metonym to ideas of electoral bossism,

livelihood, and nation. They classify the English language, and an ability to speak it, as

positive and progressive. Unification is proposed in the rhetoric of pluralism, while

curiously rejecting the original components of said pluralism in the state of California:

namely multilingualism.

The appearance of ideology is abundant here. Yet, as observed, Anglophile

configurations obscure the local realities of the minority speakers themselves, and how

they treated their own languages. Language difference here is essentialized and made

equivalent to a fundamental difference in identity. While language as difference is

recognized, it is a difference strategically associated with a whole assortment of personal

characteristics on the one hand, and grander collectivizing strategies on the other. This, I

feel, is the sine qua non of Woolard’s thesis which, I should add, aligns firmly with my

own.

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III – Concluding Remarks

It should be clear from the above ethnographies that identity is not essential any longer.

Given that identity can no longer be classified as a fixed category of analysis—once

firmly within the bounds of group dynamics—in linguistic anthropology this opens up an

entire ream of possibilities once attributed in their effectiveness to Discourse as

determinist. The individual agent, context-bound, can now formulate an indexical

relationship with not just the interactional norms of a given situation, but the tenuous

foundation upon which those norms are built. A fortiori, identity becomes a projection, a

mediation between internal desires and external repertoires. Ideology, rather than

resembling earlier Althusserian determinism, becomes the practice of difference which

simultaneously and necessarily configures Discourse according to local concerns, and in

response to the strategic potential of the environment.

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REFERENCES CITED:

Blommaert, Jan. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Bucholtz, Mary (1999). ““Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls.” Language in Society 28: 203-223. Print.

Kroskrity, Paul. “Language Ideologies.” From: Duranti, Alessandro (ed.). A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. London: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 496-517.

Leavitt, John. “Linguistic Relativities.” From: Jourdan, Christine and Tuite, Kevin (eds.). Language, Culture, and Society: Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 47-81.

Sebba, Mark. “Identity and language construction in an online community: The case of ‘Ali G’.” In Auer, Peter (ed.). Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 362-387.

Silverstein, Michael (2009). “The Elementary Forms of Culture in a post-‘culture—al world: Signification—circulation—emanation.” *Publisher Unknown*. pp. 1-50.

Spitulnik, Debra. “Accessing ‘Local’ Modernities: Reflections on the Place of Linguistic Evidence in Ethnography.” From: Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002: pp. 194-219.

Woolard, Kathryn (1989). “Sentences in the Language Prison: The Rhetorical Structuring of an American Language Policy Debate.” American Ethnologist 16: 2, pp. 268-278.

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