Identity, Language and Culture

1

• lecture 4
• Identity, Language and Culture
• Douglas Fleming PhD Associate
  Professor Faculty of Education
  University of Ottawa

2

• Identity would seem to be the garment with which
  one covers the nakedness of the self in which
  case, it is best that the garment be loose, a
  little like the robes of the desert, through
  which one's nakedness can always be felt, and,
  sometimes, discerned James Baldwin (1976)
• Lynd once observed that, the search for identity
  has become as strategic in our time as the study
  of sexuality in Freuds (1958, 14).
• The importance of identity theory has been
  increasingly felt in social science research
  generally (Mathews, 2000), in overall education
  research (Cummins, 1996 Bernstein, 1996), and
  second language education (SLE) more particularly
  (Norton, 2000 Block, 2007 Davison, 2001).
• Identity is a concept derived from western
  philosophy and has become much more of
  sociological concept, in great contrast to the
  related term of personality that is used in
  psychology.

3

• Francis Galtons Lexical Hypothesis (1884) was
  the first modern attempt to categorize
  personality traits. He argued that the various
  personality traits exhibited by a person would
  eventually be encoded in their language use,
  right down to single word choice.
• By sifting through dictionaries current In the
  early 1930s, Franziska Baumgarten created the
  first full taxonomy (in German) of 1,093
  personality types.
• Using similar methods, Gordon Allport and Henry
  Odbert decided that there are 4,504 terms used in
  English to describe personality traits.
• In the 1940s, this list was refined and
  updated by Warren Norman to 2,797.

4

• In the early 1980s, Dean Peabody and Lewis
  Goldberg used these lists as the basis for their
  taxonomy of Big Five Personality Traits
  (sometimes known as the Five-Factor Model), the
  most influential in psychology today.
• openness,
• conscientiousness,
• extraversion,
• agreeableness, and
• Neuroticism.
• Note the differences between these categories of
  personality traits and the ones theorized by
  Freud
• id, ego and superego.

5

• Criticisms
• Simplistic how can single lexical items
  encompass or adequate describe complex
  personality traits?
• Culturally specific how can generalizations be
  made about personality based on interpretations
  of a standardized language as codified in
  dictionaries?
• Myopic less demonstrative personality traits are
  ignored such as religiosity, honesty, sexuality,
  political and ideological beliefs, humor, sense
  of irony, risk-taking and gender identification.
• Lack of theoretical underpinning how can one be
  certain that the categories have validity when
  they are (supposedly) derived solely through
  empirical observation and factor analysis?
• Overly static how can one account for changes in
  personality over time and in different contexts?

6

• so, what does the word identity mean?
• the word identity was "first used to mean
  personal identity by the empiricist philosophers
  Locke and Hume, who used the word identity to
  cast doubt on the unity of the self" (Langbaum,
  1977 p. 25)
• It is important to note the individual self has
  not always been a significant preoccupation in
  European cultural history
• From the late 12th to the 14th centuries a number
  of dramatic events shifted European outlook
  towards individualism (Tuchman,1978), including
• the black death,
• new challenges to the sanctity of dynastic rule,
• and the first elaboration of the modern
  scientific method.

7

• Identity is NOT the same as personality.
• Personality has been criticized as a static
  notion that doesnt take social context into
  sufficient account.
• Dilthey the essence of being human can only be
  grasped historically experience is a collection
  of events that have a unity of meaning identity
  is the human quality that which unifies this
  experience across time for individuals.
• Durkheim social control mechanisms are as much
  mental (ritual) as physical these help create
  collective representations and solidarity, shape
  personality, identities and behaviors.

8

• Relevant big names and concepts
• George Mead generalized other
• Cooley looking glass self
• Dewey experience/regulatory function of imagined
  reaction
• Bourdieu cultural capital
• Giddens identity as narrative
• Said the other in post-colonial discourse
• Althussar Ideology
• Friere pedagogical tasks and activist critiques
  of civil society
• Foucault governmentality and micro-processes of
  power
• Vygotsky social constructionism/thought through
  language
• Lave and Wegner mentorship/ communities of
  practice

9

• Psychology places an emphasis on the importance
  of the integrated and autonomous self. Motivation
  is central to this.
• Motivation is quite clearly a psychological term,
  influenced by Freuds conception of the mind into
  id, ego and superego, Piagets constructivist
  conception of personality development and
  Maslows hierarchy of needs.
• Motivational psychologists generally hold that
  there are two basic types of motivation
  intrinsic and extrinsic.
• However, where does one start and the other
  begin?

10

• R.C. Gardners concept of integrative motivation
  the desire to learn the target language based on
  positive feelings for the community to which that
  language belongs.
• J.H. Schumann's acculturation model outlines the
  factors involved in whether or not groups of
  learners, principally ethnic minorities, have a
  propensity (social distance and psychological
  distance) to learn the language of the majority
  population.
• social distance and psychological distance is
  influenced by
• attitudes toward social dominance/ resistance
• desires for assimilation/ preservation
• enclosure (isolation)
• cohesiveness of the minority group size of the
  minority group
• and individual factors such as intended length of
  residence.

11

• Unlike the broad sociological perspectives that
  inform the concept of identity, the factors that
  Schumann identifies focus on the barriers created
  by minority groupings. As Norton (2000) points
  out, the barriers erected by dominant language
  and cultural groups are not taken into account in
  his model.
• In SLE, Norton uses the term identity "to
  reference how a person understands his or her
  relationship to the world, how that relationship
  is constructed over time and space, and how the
  person understands possibilities for the future"
  (2000, 5).
• Norton contrasts the concept of identity to that
  of motivation and develops the notion of
  investment.

12

• Investment, which draws on Bourdieu's concept of
  cultural capital, "signals the socially and
  historically constructed relationship of learners
  to the target language, and their often
  ambivalent desire to learn and practice it"
  (p.10).
• Learners make a decision as to whether or not the
  target language is worth investing time and
  effort in acquiring. By committing themselves to
  learning the target language, " they do so with
  the understanding that that they will acquire a
  wider range of symbolic and material resources"
  (p.10).
• The identities of language learners are not
  static or one-dimensional. They often contain
  contradictions, change over time and space, and
  most importantly, show the impact of power
  relations.

13

• Culture, is an anthropological term that
  describes the relationship between individuals
  and society.
• Comprised of symbolic structures
• Marked by ritual
• Passed down to succeeding generations
• Subject to change and interpretation
• According to Malinowski a culture serves three
  needs
• basic needs of the individual
• instrumental needs of society
• the symbolic and integrative needs of both the
  individual and society
• These cultural traits are marks of ethnicity.

14

• Whereas Race is a construction based on
  socially-selected physical traits,
• Ethnicity is a construction based on
  socially-selected cultural traits.
• As with race, dominant groups will often claim to
  have no ethnicity. The term ethnic group, for
  example, is commonly applied to those people who
  belong to those who are NOT British or French.
• In Canada, ethnic markers are often defined
  linguistically.

15

• Humboldt (19th c. linguist) suggested that
  language categories impose certain ways of
  organizing knowledge,
• Sapir (1921) argued that we see and hear and
  otherwise experience very largely as we do
  because the language habits of our community
  (culture),
• Whorf (1956) claimed that language organizes all
  experience,
• These ideas were developed by their followers
  into the Whorf/Sapir hypothesis
• weak different language systems will greatly
  influence the cognitive attributes of its native
  speakers,
• strong the structure of a ones native language
  will determine ones overall world views
  (paradigms).

16

• Fishman (1972) summarized the criticisms of
  these notions in this way
• languages primarily reflect rather than create
  sociological regularities in values and
  orientations,
• languages across the globe share far more
  similarities than have been previously
  recognized,
• languages and social processes interact with each
  other (what is the chicken what is the egg?)

17

• what do you think?
• Is identity or personality the more useful term?
• Is personality a solid thing?
• Do you agree that linking language and
  personality in the ways described above is
  simplistic, static, culturally specific, myopic
  and lacking in theoretical underpinnings?
• Which (if any) of the big names and concepts do
  you like?
• Is Nortons notion of investment really different
  from Schumann's acculturation model or Gardners
  concept of integrative motivation?
• How is culture linked to language and thought?
• How (if any) of all of this is related to
  concrete teaching practice?