Identification


 * Definition**

The concept of identification appeared in the 1640s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from the French “identifier,” originating from the French term “identité”, which stemmed from the fifth century Latin “identitatem,” meaning “sameness.” The term is closely related to the term “identity.”

As the noun of the action word “identify,” the term “identification” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “the making, regarding, or treating of a thing as identical with (to) another, or of two or more things as identical with one another.” It is also “the becoming or making oneself one with another, in feeling, interest, or action; especially in psychology, the adaptation of one's ideas and behavior to fit in with those of a person or group seen as a model.”


 * Identification as a rhetorical tool**

Identification has been an important concept in communication, especially in the field of rhetoric. According to Day (1960, p. 270-271) Kenneth Burke added greatly to the field of rhetoric when he proposed a “new” rhetoric that involved identification, as opposed to the “old” rhetoric which involved persuasion. Day (1960, p.272) summarizes Burke’s theory of persuasion as a speaker giving signs to an audience through language (linguistic strategies), indicating that the speaker’s “properties” are like or identical to the audience’s “properties,” thereby gaining identification and ultimately ending in persuasion.

To Burke, identification was a rhetorical tool to through which persuasion can be achieved. If a speaker identifies with the audience, the audience is more likely to be persuaded. Burke expounds upon his theory of identification in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950). In it, he argues that identification is critical to joining the interests of two non-identical individuals (1950, p20). Burke uses the concepts of "consubstantiality" and "division" to navigate the use of identification as a rhetorical term. Consubstantiality refers to the sharing of substance between two individuals; "[i]n being identified with B, A is "substantially one" with a person other than himself.... he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another" (Burke 1950, p21).

To Burke, the concept of identification is also critical to "confront the implications of division" insofar as "[i]dentification is conpensatory to division" (Burke 1950, p22). Because individuals are not connected within one substance, they need some means by which to communicate with each other. Burke argues that rhetoric therefore "is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall" (1950, p23) and "implied in every turn" of identification is "its ironic counterpart: division" (1950, p23).

Beyond Burke, some scholars associate identification with epideictic rhetoric, arguing that epideictic is a "rhetoric of identification and conformity that functions to conserve an existing community and... is noted for its capacity to reinforce traditional values, sustain orthodoxy and preserve social order" (Richards 2009, p2). Jasinski notes that epideictic rhetoric can allow people to "create an identity for [their] community through a process of exclusion", emphasizing the Burkean tradition of division and identification as intrinsically linked (Jasinski 2001, p212).


 * Identification and Politics**

Rhetorical scholars have also noted that politicians often try to use identification with voters to gain votes. Nelson (2009) uses a case study of presidential candidate George W. Bush and the Republican party’s campaign in 2000, in which 25 percent of the votes garnered by Bush were from gay and lesbian voters, thanks to the outreach of the party to that particular demographic, despite the fact that Bush had not supported gay rights as governor of Texas. Scholars have found that politicians are more successful when they convince the voters that their values are similar or the same; if they appear to be similar, the logical facts may be overlooked (Nelson, 2009, p.57-58).


 * Identification and Organizational Communication**

Within organizational communication, identification is usually concerned with employees identifying with their organization or corporation. Organizational identification can be defined as “a feeling of oneness with a defined aggregate of persons, involving the perceived experience of its successes and failures” (Mael & Tetrick, 1992, p. 814). Identification with an organization is how a member of the organization feels similar to other members in the group and how they perceive being involved with shared experiences. As individuals identify with an organization, they create corporate identification (Cheney, 1983, p.145). Corporate identities are formed partly through organizations creating common ground, uniting against an “enemy” or competitor, and using the term “we” to create a sense of togetherness, in many ways emulating the Burkean concept of identification (Cheney, 1983, p. 148-149).

Identification is an important concept within an organization, because “the more an individual identifies with the organization, the more the individual’s self-concept is tied to the organization” (Van Knippenberg, Van Dick & Tavares, 2007, p. 461). The more an individual’s self-concept is tied to an organization, the more productive and positive they are likely to be at work.


 * Identification and Media Studies**

Identification is also important in the field of media studies in communication. Muller (2009) completed a media effects study to see if identifying with characters of the same ethnicity or if identifying with characters of a different ethnicity played a role in intercultural attitudes through watching a multicultural drama or a traditional soap opera, and found that identification with the characters had a mediating effect: those who identified with characters had less of a perception of ethnic threat (p. 251-253). This highlights the effect of identification as portrayed through the media: viewers can either be allowed to identify with other ethnicities, or they can be shown stereotypical or scary images of other ethnic groups.

From another media angle, identification can be used to create identities; Wolfe, Loy and Chidester (2009, p. 71-73) claim that music (more specifically in this study, the music of John Cougar Mellancamp) can create cultural identification for listeners; “mass communicated song-recordings can influence the on-going process of listener identity construction, because these texts present characters that rhetorically invite listener identification. The more a song character's values invite the listener to think they accord with the listener's values, the more likely the listener will identify with that character — and with the identity or cultural identification that the listener is invited to assign to that character,” (p.74).

Moderate revisions by David Tokarz (August 2012).

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**References**

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