Appunto su discourse analysis

Genre Analysis

We have started from identity to reach then the definition of genres. As we have seen when we were talking about discourse and culture, typically us as individuals may have a number of identities. Each one of them is more important, more appropriate to the context of use at different points in time and in specific contexts. This means that given identities raise to the occasion, that is to say that we are different people according to the context we're in. Think of being a woman: sometimes being a woman might also mean being a mother, a partner of someone, being an office worker. All these identities are inside an individual, and they show off at different times and in different contexts, therefore they're more relevant in different contexts than others. The way we are who we are, the way we adopt the identities we want to include, the way we use language and the way we interact with people by language, using language. When we say we refer to the semiotics,

or the semioticelements we use to convey meanings. For instance, today I’m wearing a jacket, a shirt,and this is the identity I’m wearing today for this context; if I go to my mother wearingsomething like this, she would look at me like “What’s going on? What’s happening?Why are you dressed up like that for a family dinner?”. That’s why sometimes it is veryawkward when teachers see students when they are having a drink with friends,because the students will see them in another context and they’re behavingdifferently, they are another identity. “AnAn interesting definition of identity comes from Benwell & Stokoe. They say thatalternative understanding of identity is as a public phenomenon, a performance orconstruction that is interpreted by other people. This construction takes place indiscourse and other social and embodied conduct, such as how we move, where weare, what we wear, how we talk and so on. ” An interesting

part of this interpretation is not only the performance and construction of identity, but also that it is interpreted by other people, the recognition of identity. So, remember that identities are not just constructed, they are not just created, but they are also interpreted. We behave linguistically in specific ways so as to make others recognize us in that specific moment. So, the linguistic choices that sometimes we make are also our way to make others recognize who we are in that specific context. That's why sometimes when you write an email and you disregard the type of linguistic inventions that should be adopted in writing emails, we get that feeling that something's wrong because I'm not recognizing you as a student who should know how to write an email, who should know how to represent their identities in an email.

So, remember that identities are not out there, they are not preconceived elements, they are always constructed, and this is in large parts done through

The use of discourse allows us to build identities. Identities are not fixed, and they don't remain the same throughout a person's life, they are constantly constructed and reconstructed but they are also negotiated as we interact with other people. What do we mean that they are negotiated? It means that if the linguistic cues that I use build, convey, a specific identity, you will respond to that identity in your own way, you want to be recognized as being appropriate to the context of use, so you will shape your identity according to the signals that you receive. So, for instance, if in Italian I use the "lei" pronoun, if you want to establish that type of relationship, of course I will use the "lei" too. But if we want to renegotiate our relationship and we want to bring it into an informal type of level, you might see me switch to the "tu" pronoun and you might tentatively use the "tu" also to check whether it's alright or not.

If I don't say anything, then it means we have successfully renegotiated our relationship. I have used this example to exemplify this but there are other things that you do unwarily that allow you to negotiate your identity when you interact with people.

Part of having a certain identity is that it is not only constructed, but it is also recognized by others, so always remember that identity construction is a two-way process, it's a construction and reconstruction process but it's also an identification process, a recognition process. That's why discourse and the identity are built through discourses are socially constructed so they're not natural. Discourses are neutralized but they're not natural. An example is the perfect family traditional portrait – that is not something natural, it is naturalized, it's made natural by people that are in power because they use that status to represent how society is structured. So, these identities are socially constructed.

Rather than being out there, they are constructed and reconstructed on a daily basis.

According to Cameron, who is another important scholar in discourse analysis, she has worked on discourse and identity construction, she has written this beautiful paper on the identity construction of straight men watching sports, how their identity is constructed in the environmental watching a football match. She made one of her students record the interaction between these men watching sports events and people studied how their identity is constructed in this specific setting. She said that are who they are because of, among other things, the way they talk not because of who they already are. This means that typically identity is a linguistic performance, it's a linguistic construction that we, on a daily basis, affirm and reaffirm. We are not who we are because of some inner being but according to Pennycook, because of what we do: it is in the doing that the identity is produced, reproduced, and recognized.

So, we see how there is a focus on identity performance rather than identity being already something that is inside of us. So typically, these scholars highlight those identities first – this is something that we’ve already seen with Gee - created in a family environment, you learn to be who you are because you interact with your parents, you learn a specific way of being in that family context, then you go to school, you start interacting with other people, you start to develop other identities, other social, institutional identities. Those identities are then also merged with other types of identities, you start to create friendship, so you start to recognize other people and you start to create and shape who you are in that type of friend environment, which is different from your family identity or your institutional identity. You see how every identity, every you, is part of a given context and use even cues to make yourself apparent to the others and most of this is done through

Language. Social identities are not pregiven: they are formed in the use of language and in various other ways we display who we are, what we think, the values and the feelings we experience, and so on. We need to highlight these three elements: identity construction, identity recognition and social identity as something that is displayed and not pregiven.

About the field of investigation, early studies in how identities are constructed (in the relationship between discourse and identity) were based on a variationist approach. They simply focus on the relationship between social variables (e.g. social class, gender, etc.) in terms of variation in the use of linguistic variables, so for instance The use certain features of pronunciation are typical of this social group and identity: of non-standard grammar is representative of this social class, so it represents this identity. However, this view of the relationship between discourse and identity is a post-structuralist perspective.

By this, we mean

The study of gender and discourse and how gender is represented in discourse. According to her, identities are a social accomplishment that operates as a repertoire of styles, or ways of doing things that are associated with culturally recognized social types. She's intrigued in something else - it's not just language as it is, for instance, the vocabulary that we use that is indicative of who we are, we select repertoire of styles, we adopt even lexical grammatical patterns of the language in use to be recognized as that individual.

The identities that people establish represent also a way of belonging to specific groups or communities through their use of language (and other visual devices) that may, in some cases, be separated and distinct from other identities they build in other contexts. Those types of language might change and be applied to the given community we want to be recognized as belonging to, so we are introducing something else in this, to the study of identity.