Global Perspectives on Prostitution and Sex Trafficking by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Our identity is constructed from our first appearance in the world and is done so in large measure through language. Although each person is born with a number of innate qualities, character, and personality traits and characteristics, the individual is also shaped and molded by outside influences and sources. Taylor refers to the premise that our identities are derived from “the accumulated ideas, images and associations which make up the wider social and cultural contexts of our lives.”15 Blommaert points out that most identity experts agree that identity is not something that people have, but that identity is something that is constructed in practices which produce, enact or perform identity. In essence “identity is identification, an outcome of socially conditioned semiotic work.”16 Early views of identity regarded it as that which resided within the individual’s mind. However, as Bucholtz and Hall argue, one needs to approach identity “as a cultural phenomenon that emerges and circulates in local discourse contexts of interaction rather than as a stable structure located primarily in the individual psyche or in fixed social categories.”17 For them, identity is viewed as the social positioning of self and other wherein identity is a discursive construct that emerges through interaction. It is through interactions with others and society that one’s identity is created, altered, maintained, and reacted to or against. Likewise Taylor believes that identity is the end product of conversations we have with significant others. He states that we are introduced to the language needed to construct self-definition and identity not on our own but through interactions with those who matter to us and that this process is a lifelong occurrence.18 In essence, identity ultimately is constructed by what others think and then say about us and what we come to say and think about ourselves, drawing on both external and internal sources of linguistic and discursive input and data.

Identity undergoes continuous construction and that construction is a lifelong process. As identities are believed to be anchored around moral propositions that regulate our values and behavior, identity construction also involves elements of dualistic perspectives such as good/bad, right/wrong, helpful/harmful. Within this system it is argued that there exists a hierarchy of behavior norms which require people to condemn or approve. Language plays an important role not only in the construction of identity but, as Schöpflin notes, in the articulation of identity:

The articulation of identity, of collective norms, of the value hierarchy and its criteria are encoded in various discourses. These modes of expression are specific to the community that has generated them and are simultaneously a form of recognition and an instrument of cultural reproduction. In complex communities, the number of discourses will be considerable, they may well be contradictory and as a rule they will be marked by gaps, leaving space for innovation. Discursive fields, therefore, are a means of maintaining collective existence; discourses that are alien to us can be troubling or meaningless and all collectivities seek implicitly to make theirs unchangeable because they articulate moral values.

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