Role In Identity Construction Research Articles

Indian Cinema: A Bridge of Identity for Indian Diaspora with Special Reference to Bollywood Movie Pardes

Films have always been a common source of education, entertainment, and information across the world. Here Beard states “films are among the most common artifacts of modern popular culture that generate and reflect diverse cultures and the traditional values of a society. Consequently films have become a major part of modern society, through which people are becoming aware of different cultures from all over the world”. The paper aims to study the cultural studies and seeks to explore the role of Bollywood movies especially with special reference to movie Pardes (1997), directed by Subash Ghai. These kinds of movies played an important role in identity construction of Indian diaspora across the world. Diaspora may use media products as a form of cultural maintenance for their roots. The interesting fact is that though sociological factors such as friends, family and peer groups always play an important role in making the Indian identity. Bollywood movies not only act as a bridge between home, homeland and diaspora but they also help them to transmit the values, culture and traditions. All these together play a significant role in maintaining their ‘Indianness’, in Abroad.

What Does It Meme? English–Spanish Codeswitching and Enregisterment in Virtual Social Space

This project investigates English–Spanish codeswitching in internet memes posted to the Facebook page, We are mitú (mitú), and analyzes how lexical insertions and quotatives contribute to the enregisterment of linguistic patterns and the construction of collective identity among U.S. Latinx millennials in virtual social spaces. Data include instances of lexical insertion (n = 280) and quotative mixed codes (n = 114) drawn from a collected corpus of 765 image–text memes. The most frequent lexical insertions included food items (e.g., elote and pozole), kinship terms (e.g., abuelita and tía), and culturally specific artifacts or practices (e.g., quinceañera and lotería), which reflect biculturalism and rely on a shared set of references for the construction of a group identity. Additionally, the quotatives in the data construct Spanish-speaking characterological figures that enregister a particular brand of U.S. Latinx millennial identity that includes being bilingual, having Spanish-speaking parents, and having strong ties to Latinx culture. Overall, this work highlights not only internet memes as a vehicle for enregisterment, but also, and more importantly, how the language resources employed within them work to enregister linguistic and cultural norms of U.S. Latinx millennials, and thereby, play a role in identity construction in virtual social spaces.

A Study on Identity Construction of First Person Pronouns in Academic Papers from the Perspective of Evidentiality

The first person pronoun plays an important role in identity construction, however, there is few study on it from the perspective of evidentiality. This paper took the first person pronouns as evidentials, and conducted a comparable analysis on the frequency of them and the identities they constructed in academic papers between soft and hard sciences, aiming to find the differences between different discourse communities and explore their preferences for academic identity construction. The results showed that both fields prefer to use plural and subjective cases of first person pronouns, and they both prefer to construct the authorial identity of “researcher”, but scarcely construct the authorial identity of “responsible person”. Researchers in hard science use less evidentials than researchers in soft science, and they prefer to use evidentials “we” and “statement”, which weaken the authorial identity. Evidentials that embody authorial identity, including singular first person pronouns and “participation” evidentials, account for higher proportion in soft science than those in hard science.

Multilingualism and its role in identity construction: a study of English students’ perceptions

ABSTRACT This study aims to explore how university students of English as a foreign language perceive themselves as multilingual agents, how they practice their languages, and how this affects their identity. The study is based on Kramsch’s notion of third place (1993) which considers foreign language learning as an opportunity for the construction of interculturality, thus causing learners to redefine themselves as they hybridise their cultural identity. Data is gathered through an interview and a focus group discussion with 32 English language learning students at a public university in Morocco. The data is thematically analyzed and discussed. Findings indicate that multilingual learners think positively of multilingualism and avail themselves of their languages, using all of them but in different contexts. They also claim they experience identity shift, thus sustaining and developing multiple identities flexibly thanks to the languages they use. Such findings indicate that multilingual students are defining and redefining their cultural identities as modern, global, open and intercultural citizens under the impact of multilingualism. In light of the results obtained, some implications are discussed.

Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism by Sarit Kattan Gribetz (review)

Reviewed by: Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism by Sarit Kattan Gribetz Deborah Barer Sarit Kattan Gribetz. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. 391 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000179 Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism examines how the demarcation of time plays a role in identity construction. Structurally, the book progresses from the broad to the particular, moving from a study of the yearly calendar to the weekly cycle (with an emphasis on the Sabbath) to different ways of marking time within a single day. That trajectory is paralleled by a shift in focus from the external to the internal; while the first two chapters examine how time is used both to construct and reinforce distinctions between Jewish and non-Jewish communities (both Greco-Roman and Christian), the latter two chapters focus on the construction of difference within a Jewish framework (between women and men, as well as between humanity and God). These two progressions are closely related: when the focus is external, Kattan Gribetz emphasizes structures of time that would be visible to all participants, since the rabbis were aware of Greco-Roman holidays and vice versa, but when the focus is internal, her analysis shifts to less visibly time-based rituals, such as the way a woman's daily checking of her niddah status creates gendered experiences of time. The first part of the book, which looks at how time is used both to construct and to reinforce distinctions between Jews and non-Jewish Romans, as well as between Jews and Christians, offers a rich comparative historical analysis that will be of interest to many students of late antiquity, not just those who study rabbinic culture. The first chapter, "Rabbinic and Roman Time," provides an accessible explanation of the Roman calendar and its festivals, while also providing a rich analysis of the ways that rabbis reimagined those festivals and their significance. As Kattan Gribetz persuasively shows, the rabbis were deeply embedded in Roman society, even using Roman festivals to demonstrate the truth (and superiority) of Jewish holidays. The evidence demonstrates direct intercultural awareness and engagement. In the second chapter, "Jewish and Christian Time," Kattan Gribetz wades into more highly disputed territory, arguing that from as early as the third century, rabbinic discussions of Shabbat are in implicit dialogue with Christian writings about (and against) Jewish Sabbath observance, although they do not engage with Christian texts or thinkers explicitly. [End Page 442] Such a claim is, by its nature, more difficult to prove, but Kattan Gribetz advances a plausible and nuanced argument through her study of the Mekhilta's treatment of Shabbat and acknowledges possible alternative explanations, noting that the text repeatedly "struggles with ideas firmly based in second- and third-century anti-Jewish Christian theological works, though it is difficult to definitively conclude whether it was responding to such claims" (117). The second part of the book, which looks at how time is used to construct distinctions within the Jewish community (predominantly between men and women) and to understand the relationship between humanity and God, shifts to focus exclusively on rabbinic sources, and thus will be of particular interest to students of rabbinic literature and culture. The third chapter, "Men and Women's Time," draws a novel comparison between the daily practice of reciting the Shema, which comes to be gendered as male (although women may also recite it), and the daily practice of checking one's bodily purity status, which comes to be gendered as female and associated specifically with menstrual purity. This comparison is especially provocative because the recitation of the Shema is halakhically categorized as a time-bound commandment, a category of obligations that are triggered at specific times of day and from which women are considered exempt under Jewish law. Why, then, is the process of checking one's niddah (menstrual purity) status, which also happens every morning and night, not considered a time-bound commandment? Kattan Gribetz argues that although "it is not clear why rabbinic sources do not understand menstrual purity laws also as positive timebound commandments," the effect of this category and its gendered distinctions was "the bifurcation of time for men and women, as...

Hijabers' Identity Construction as Muslimah through Consumption Structures in Food Lifestyle

The choice of a person's adopted lifestyle can define his social identity through the consumption structure. This research aims to describe how consumption structure in food lifestyle plays a role in identity construction of Muslimah by referring to Pierre Bourdieu's theory. This study discusses the construction of identity as Muslimah carried out by the Hijabersmom Community as one of the biggest Islamic-based communities in Indonesia. This study used a transformative paradigm by online questionnaires and interviews for data collection. The results show their identity as a Muslimah is represented through the consumption of halal-labeled food, paying attention to the composition of foods other than those containing pork and those forbidden by Islam, choosing places to eat that are comfortable for discussing and good for taking pictures, wearing fashionable outfits by using dress codes. The construction of Muslimah identity through this consumption structure is formed due to several factors such as habitus, ideology/religious structure, and this community doctrine. For further research, the researcher suggests conducting research related to the construction of identity as indicated by the expansion of the object of research which is not limited to a religious perspective.

Constructing “Behavior Problems”: Race, Disability, and Everyday Discipline Practices in the Figured World of Kindergarten

This article examines everyday disciplinary practices in three kindergarten classrooms and their role in identity construction. Taking a “figured worlds” perspective, I show how racialized and ableist discourses mediated processes of surveillance, escalation, and physical restraint, leading educators to disproportionately position Black students, particularly boys and those with disabilities, as “behavior problems.” This analysis points toward opportunities to disrupt routine practices that marginalize or reward children’s behavior in ways patterned by race, gender, and disability.

Forest Dialect

The Forest of Dean (henceforth Forest) is one of the lesser known English Royal Forests. The area is considered locally to be a special place with a distinctive dialect. The Forest lies at the intersection of three regions: South East Wales, West Country, also known as the South West, and the West Midlands. The Forest is situated between two rivers: the River Severn to the East separates it from the rest of Gloucestershire; the River Wye to the West separates it from Wales. National borders and physical boundaries seem to play an important role in identity construction. ‘Identities matter most’ (Llamas & Watt, 2010: 17) to those communities ‘at the physical margins of the nation state’ (Llamas, 2010: 225). Such communities may engage in practices that differentiate their dialect and situate it at the centre of their own region.

Mekânsal Kimlik ve Alansallık Davranışı Bağlamında “Check-in” Kavramını Sorgulamak

One of the important consequences of contemporary technological developments is about the changes in our communication socialization experiences. Location and place-sourced connections are seen as the most common usage of social network in mobile platforms. Accordingly, the notion of “check-in”, which can be conceptualized as the sharing of our locations in different places and their notifications through different social networks, becomes significant to discuss varied behavioral experiences within places. Territoriality behavior is an important discussion field, which might be related to the concept of check-in. Moreover, one of the prominent concepts that might be interconnected to the term territoriality is the place identity, which is defined as the relationship between an individual and a place where there is the existence of information transmission from the environment to the individual, so that the self-identity of the person is affected and influenced. Accordingly, territoriality behavior with its role in identity construction and support is determinant in formation of the place identity. Within this framework, the aim of this study is to discuss the territoriality behavior by focusing on the concept of place identity through an analysis of “check-in” location on social networks.

« Le pays c’était comme la femme d’un autre » : reconceptualiser la masculinité des immigrés de l’Afrique occidentale dans Le Ventre de l’Atlantique de Fatou Diome et Tels des astres éteints de Léonora Miano

Fatou Diome and Leonora Miano, both born in Africa and living in France, are part of the growing number of diasporic West African writers seeking to transform the landscape of African literature. In this article, I will examine the emerging notions of masculinity in relation to West African migrants in Paris to gauge the extent to which the women writers are reconceptualising masculine identity, and thus debunking erstwhile notions of masculinity. This article analyses how Miano and Diome reshape and reconstruct African masculinities in post-colonial, contemporary France, where nationalism and the need to assert French identity is becoming more prominent. The concept of nostalgia and its implied hope for a return are examined to determine whether the return is ever completely possible and how this shifts the conceptualization of masculinity. Moreover, the tension between the new home and the original home and their role in identity construction is analysed to demonstrate whether the emergent Black masculinities depicted display a new way of reshaping masculinity.

Plus qu’une langue: the construction of identity via French as an additional language in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT There is a great deal of research literature that treats language learning as a process of identity construction, but relatively few studies have investigated so-called additional languages. This article presents interview and other narrative data from a single language learner studying French as an additional language in Hong Kong. Using the methodological approach of narrative inquiry, it explores the relationship between additional language learning and identity. The data show how additional language learning plays a significant role in identity construction, and the discussion highlights three aspects of this relationship. First, the process of learning is revealed as being one of growing intercultural awareness. This is seen as an identity-related disposition that can be used to deal with certain aspects of the learner’s own cultural environment. Second, the creative appropriation of an additional language is an affordance for identity construction, despite limited levels of conventional proficiency. Third, the significance of particular languages and their associated cultures is constructed in relation to other languages in the language ecology. In addition to illustrating these aspects of language learning in the age of globalisation, the article briefly considers the pedagogical implications of taking an identity-based perspective on language learning.

‘The rez accent knows no borders’: Native American ethnic identity expressed through English prosody

AbstractIn many Native American and Canadian First Nations communities, indigenous languages are important for the linguistic construction of ethnic identity. But because many younger speakers have limited access to their heritage languages, English may have an even more important role in identity construction than Native languages do. Prior literature shows distinctive local English features in particular tribes. Our study builds on this knowledge but takes a wider perspective: We hypothesize that certain features are shared across much larger distances, particularly prosody. Native cultural insiders (the first two co-authors) had a central role in this project. Our recordings of seventy-five speakers in three deliberately diverse locations (Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North/South Dakota; Northwest Territories, Canada; and diverse tribes represented at Dartmouth College) show that speakers are heteroglossically performing prosodic features to index Native ethnic identity. They have taken a ‘foreign’ language (English) and enregistered these prosodic features, creatively producing and reproducing a shared ethnic identity across great distances. (Native Americans, prosody, ethnicity, ethnic identity, English, dialects)*

“God, I have so many ashtrays!” Dependences and dependencies in consumer–possession relationships

Tourist souvenirs are a typical example of special possessions that may convey deep meanings to consumers' life. Prior studies assume that consumers have enduring and stable relationships with such possessions resulting from their role in identity construction. They tend to neglect the influence of passing time and moving spaces and fail to provide a network perspective, predominantly focusing on the consumer—possession's dyad. This research aims to bring a holistic and dynamic perspective to the relationships between consumers and their special possessions, referring to Hodder's concepts of entanglement (dependence) and entrapment (dependency). In a naturalistic interpretive perspective, we examine the three stages of the consumption cycle, namely acquisition, consumption, and disposal. The findings suggest that consumers may not only develop enduring relationships with their tourist possessions but also liquid ones, depending on whether they are in entangled or entrapped situations. Relationships are ‘liquid’ in the sense that they are temporary, more detached, and less special.

“You Look Like A Boy”: Gendered Representations of Hair Loss in Books for Pediatric Cancer Patients

“You Look Like A Boy”:Gendered Representations of Hair Loss in Books for Pediatric Cancer Patients Alexandra “Sasha” Coles Hair plays an integral role in identity construction for children as well as adults. Hair carries a significant social and cultural importance relative to normalcy, physical outward appearance of health, and positive self-identity. The importance of hair extends to processes of social negotiation outside of the arena of health and medicine. The process of cancer treatment and chemotherapy often causes hair loss, or chemotherapy-induced alopecia,1 which can complicate identity construction and threaten an individual’s ability to associate with social groups of which they previously felt a part. Some children’s books are designed to help young pediatric cancer patients understand and grapple with the impact of cancer on their bodies and lives, and most specifically chemotherapy-induced alopecia. This essay explores how books currently targeting children with cancer do more than tell a story. Through the text and illustrations, the books consistently identify hair loss for girls as damaging to social identity and social status. On the other hand, the books depict hair loss for boys as providing an opportunity for identity exploration and discovery as opposed to a severe social disadvantage. Thus, these books maintain gender ideology that upholds a form of hegemonic or ideal femininity that encourages girls and women to measure their self-worth by their appearance. Contrastingly, ideal masculinity is constructed as related to courageousness and strength as opposed to dependent on outward appearances. Cancer, Hair Loss, and Gendered Beauty Hair possesses meaning beyond its biological, organic properties. In Rapunzel’s Daughters, Weitz asserts, “Our hair is one of the primary ways [End Page 126] we tell others who we are and by which others evaluate us, for it implicitly conveys messages about our gender, age, politics, social class, and more” (xiii). Hair as a physical marker establishes connections with other social groups, whether intentional or not. Individuals who identify as female have a more complicated relationship with their hair than individuals who identify as male due to numerous outside pressures originating from family, peers, media, and other sources, concludes Weitz. Weitz’s research shows that these sources of pressure instruct girls and women to “center [their] self-worth on [their] looks” as opposed to other qualities, whether they be internal or external, for which men and boys are more likely to enjoy praise and accolades for (33). As a result, she writes, “controlling our [referring to women and girls] hair helps us control our lives,” and loss of control over our hair (through aging, illness, disability, religious commitments, imprisonment, or anything else) can make us feel we’ve lost control over our lives” (xvii). Thus, the apparent failure to maintain “normal” hair means that the same element that previously established effective, working connections with peers, family, community, and even femininity also severs those ties. Therefore, gender is implicated. A disjunction occurs, and a part of a girl’s or woman’s identity goes missing when she loses her hair. Hair signals individual identity, of which gender plays an integral role. The social construction of gender incorporates arbitrary ideas about “appropriate” hair for sexed bodies.2 Lorber argues that gender signs and signals, one of which is hair, are so pervasive that they cannot usually be identified until they are either missing or not immediately apparent. So it may not be immediately obvious that it is “normal” for girls and women to have hair that looks different from that of men and boys until someone surpasses these boundaries. Lorber explains that when a gender marker is missing, or even ambiguous, “Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated” (64). In terms of gender, people can associate or disassociate with hair ideals of femininity and masculinity. “Ideal” gender association can be achieved at least partially with the “right” hair style. Hair serves as a gender marker, and since a person’s gender is incorporated into his or her identity, hair loss threatens to disassociate an individual from socially expected gender expression. As Weitz notes, loss of control over hair could result...

Konstruowanie tożsamości – czynniki społeczno-kulturowe

We współczesnym świecie tożsamości ludzi nie są gotowe, lecz są w dużym stopniu konstruowane przez jednostki i grupy w procesie życia społeczno-kulturowego. Praktycznie wszystkie przejawy tego życia – postrzeganie własnych cech fizycznych, psychicznych i społecznych wraz z autorefleksją nad nimi, kontakty z innymi ludźmi, pamięć społeczna, władza, kultura masowa – mogą oddziaływać w procesie konstruowania tożsamości. Artykuł poświęcony jest wyodrębnieniu i scharakteryzowaniu tych czynników biorących udział w konstruowaniu tożsamości.

State, Myth, and Agency in the Construction of Chinese South African Identities, 1948–1994

AbstractBased on the author's PhD research, this article focuses on the fluid and contested nature of the identities — racial, ethnic, and national — of people of Chinese descent in South Africa in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. The research focuses on the approximately 12,000-strong community of second-, third-, and fourth-generation South African-born Chinese South Africans. It reveals that Chinese South Africans played an active role in identity construction using Chinese history, myths and culture, albeit within the constraints established by apartheid. During the latter part of apartheid, movement up the socio-economic ladder and gradual social acceptance by white South Africa propelled them into nebulous, interstitial spaces; officially they remained “non-white” but increasingly they were viewed as “honorary whites.” During the late 1970s and 1980s, the South African state attempted to redefine Chinese as “white” but these attempts failed because Chinese South Africans were unwilling to sacrifice their unique ethnic identity, which helped them to survive the more dehumanizing aspects of life under apartheid.

Mein Nick bin ich!Nicknames in a German Forum on Eating Disorders

This article demonstrates how nicknames that are used by participants in a German forum on eating disorders can be read as identity displays and how they may be related to eating disorders. A qualitative analysis of 83 nicknames of the Hungrig-Online forum reveals that denotational and stereotypical features, along with well-known referents of the names, interdependently characterize participants. Persona attributes such as smallness, weightlessness, childishness, negative self-evaluation, and depression, but also arguably self-confidence, are shown to be apparent in the nicknames; many of these attributes can be linked to multifaceted femininity. These findings are then related to general characteristics of eating disorders. In concluding, the far-reaching rules for registration of nicknames in the forum are taken into account and questioned, for it may be that in sensitive online groups, nicknames play an especially important role in identity construction.

An Ever Further Apart Union? National and European Attachments in the European Union

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens’ political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of ‘civic’ identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching ‘civic’ identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained.

An Ever Further Apart Union? National and European Attachments in the European Union

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens’ political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of ‘civic’ identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching ‘civic’ identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained.
 
 Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i4.179

Fragmented in Space: The Oral History Narrative of an Arab Christian from Antioch, Turkey

AbstractThis study uses the case of Can Kilçiksiz, an Arab Christian refugee youth from Antioch, Turkey, to argue that globalization may result in fragmented families and subjectivities and can also accelerate processes initiated by modernity and the construction of national identities. Can Kilçiksiz and his siblings now live in Turkey, Germany, France and Finland. His life history suggests that males of Arab Christian origin from Antioch who had access to schooling are more likely to be involved in politics whereas females tend to be drawn to evangelical Christian organizations. The case also suggests that sibling ties might prove more durable in the course of transnational migration than conjugal ties. The case of Can Kilçiksiz shows that the time/space linked to childhood through memory can play an important role in identity construction of subjects circulating in transnational space.