Identity


 * Definition**

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (Identity, 2012a), “identity” was first conceptualized in the 1560s from the French term “identité,” which stemmed from the fifth century Latin “identitatem,” meaning “sameness.” “Identity” is also related to the Latin “idem,” meaning “the same,” which was abstracted from “identidem,” meaning “over and over.”

The modern definition of the term identity, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (Identity, 2012b), is: “the quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or in particular qualities under consideration; absolute or essential sameness; oneness.” Another definition, which ties in more closely with the etymology of identity is: “the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.”


 * Historical Transformations**

As a concept, identity has gone through several transformations in history. According to Robins (2005), the question of identity “centers on the assertion of principles of unity, as opposed to pluralism and diversity, and of continuity, as opposed to change and transformation” (p. 172). Drawing on the OED’s first linkage of the concept of identity with the individual in C17, Robins (2005) points out that this is when a sense of “personal identity” enters society. The concern for the continuity of the individual occurs at the same time as the emergence of what Stuart Hall calls the “Enlightenment subject,” or the idea that “the essential center of the self was a person’s identity” (Hall, as cited in Robins, 2005) informed by an understanding of the human person as a rational, reasoned actor. Organized around the individual’s character, personality, experience, social position, and lifestyle, among other cultural attributes, the idea of an autobiographical identity persisted throughout time with a continued emphasis on principles of unity.

Similar logics of coherence and continuity, according to Robins (2005), inform another dimension of identity—that of conceptions of collective culture and group belonging, a collective identity. The development of the modern nation-state is an example of how in this framework identity is limited to notions of belonging. Having a collective identity is thought to locate individuals, providing conditions for self-fulfillment. At the same time, Robins (2005) argues, we should consider the rationale for collective units as serving the interests of state-makers, for the ability to “have an identity” is the product of historical processes.

Additionally, Robins (2005) outlines two prevailing discourses on identity: the essentialist thought and the anti-essentialist thought.
 * **The essentialist thought ** views identity as something natural and eternal within a person. It is something that a person inherently has and is something that endures throughout a person’s lifetime and does not change.


 * **The anti-essentialist thought ** views identity as something that is socially constructed and made relevant in particular social and historical contexts . Identities are seen as constituted through the “play of difference, constituted in and through their multiple relations to other identities” (p. 173).

Finally, the question of identity has become increasingly relevant in an era of globalization, raising concerns of an identity crisis. The sense is that as societies are becoming more culturally fragmented, there is a destabilization of particular points of inference from which people have constructed their identities, creating new possibilities and an emphasis on the multiplicity of identifications brought about by homogenizing global markets. Co-occurring is a reaffirmation of traditional identities, emphasizing identity as sameness.


 * Identity and Culture and Communication Studies **

As a concept in communication studies, identity is often linked with the cultural aspect of communication. A search for the term “identity” on the National Communication Association (NCA) and the International Communication Association (ICA) websites (http://www.natcom.org, and http://www.icahdq.org, respectively) returns hits to articles and calls for papers that consistently connect identity with culture, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion and society, as well as personal versus group identity. For example, Tajfel & Turner's (1986) investigation of social identity theory revealed that adhering to cultural norms may signal in-group membership. Scholars of communication and culture have also investigated how cultural identity can be communicated nonverbally (Burgoon, Guerrero, & Manusov, 2011).


 * Identity and Rhetorical Studies**

In rhetorical studies, identity can be created for an audience by a speaker (through ethos, which is connected to collective identity). For example, national identity is constructed through the U.S. presidency, where presidents seek to shape a national identity in a diverse country using fairly similar rhetorical devices (Stuckey & Hoffman, 2006). Through discourse and rhetorical strategies, audiences are constituted as particular types of people. Stuckey & Hoffman (2006) argue this is because “presidents include and valorize certain sets of people, and claim a specific national identity based on those people, eliding or ignoring those who do not fit into those groups, or into the nation thus defined” (p. 72). Therefore when it comes to presidential rhetoric on national identity “questions of inclusion and exclusion” (Stuckey & Hoffman, 2006, p. 72) are at the center.


 * Identity and Health Communication**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Identity is also an important concept in <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">health <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> communication. One way that identity shows up in health communication scholarship is through identity role reversals, where the caregiver becomes the cared-for, or vice versa. Stone and Jones (2009) studied identity reversal with children caring for parents with Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, parents who were used to caring for children were forced to change roles with their children so that they are now the ones receiving care (Stone & Jones, 2009). Health communication scholars have also investigated social identity challenges when individuals are diagnosed with an illness. Specifically, Harwood and Sparks (2003) demonstrated that people diagnosed with cancer can experience a conflict when their group identity becomes associated with a disease (i.e., “cancer patient”). Individuals who chose to conceal the part of their identity labeling them as sick led to avoiding treatment and lower levels of <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">social support <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (Harwood & Sparks, 2003).


 * Identity and Media**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Identity can be influenced through varying forms of <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">media <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">. Wolfe, Loy and Chidester (2009) claim that music can create cultural <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">identification <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 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). <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">media <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">scholars, identity construction can also occur through other mediated sources. Levine (2001) showed that a change in the ownership of Telemundo, the Hispanic television station in America, brought about a change in the characters and programs offered on the channel. This can be seen as trying to create a new, different identity for the demographic of the station: the young, Hispanic-American bi-cultural demographic (mainly to appeal to advertisers). This was done by remaking American shows into Hispanic shows (Levine, 2001).


 * Identity and Organizational Communication**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In the <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">organizational <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> setting, sometimes role conflicts can occur, challenging a person’s identity. For example, telecommuters (individuals who work from home) may experience difficulty differentiating between their work and home identities (Shumate & Fulke, 2004). Communication is needed to establish roles and role boundaries, so the identity of worker, parent, friend, and spouse don’t get too intertwined.


 * Identity and **** Family **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Identity has also been studied in the context of family. Family has been identified as “generally the most salient in-group category in the lives of individuals” (Lay et al., 1998, p. 434). Having a shared family identity leads individuals to commit more resources to in-group members (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and intergroup boundaries help to define family membership (Shepard, Giles, & LePoire, 2001). For example, families sometimes regulate their social in-group identity through the decision of to whom they will disclose private information (Derlega & Grelak, 1979). Specifically, family members preserve their group identity by being selective about which information to disclose and how to present it when they do so. Family identity has also been studied in terms of family roles. For example, Maurer, Plech, and Rane (2001) designed a study of maternal and paternal identities to investigate appraisals of caregiver and breadwinner identities.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Greater attention will likely be paid to family identity due to the gradual advance from structural to transactional definitions of the family. This means that, rather than seeing the family as composed of individuals connected primarily through legal and biological ties, scholars increasingly define family as a group of intimates who generate a //group// //identity// (Wamboldt & Reiss, 1989). For example, Soliz & Harwood (2006) studied family identity by assessing the degree to which family members felt connected to each other within the family unit. Similarly, Soliz (2007) found that social support and reciprocal self-disclosure were predictors of a sense of shared family identity for grandchildren and their family-of-origin and step- grandparents. Stronger family identity was measured by items such as “I am proud to be in the same family as my grandparents.”

Moderate revisions by Kimberly Pusateri (August 2012).

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 * References**

Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., Manusov, M. (2011). Nonverbal signals. In: M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), //The SAGE handbook of interpersonal communication 4th edition// (pp. 239-280). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Derlega, V. J., & Grelak, J. (1979). Appropriateness of self-disclosure. In G. Chelune (Ed.), //Self-disclosure: Origins, patterns, and implication of openness in interpersonal relationships// (pp. 151-176). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Harwood, J., & Sparks, L. (2003). Social identity and health: an intergroup communication approach to cancer. //Health Communication, 15//(2), 145-159.

Identity. (2012a). In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from [].

Identity. (2012b). In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from [].

Lay, C., Fairlie, P., Jackson, S., Ricci, T., Eisenberg, J., Sato, T., et al. (1998). Domain-specific allocentrism–idiocentrism: A measure of family connectedness. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29, 434–460.

Levine, E. (2001). Constructing a Market, Constructing an Ethnicity U.S. Spanish-language Media and the Formation of a Syncretic Latino/a Identity. //Studies in Latin American Popular Culture//, 2033.

Maurer, T. W., Plech, J. H., and Rane, T. R. (2001). Parental identity and behavior: A contextual model. //Journal of Marriage and Family, 63,// 1173 – 1191.

Robins, K. (2005). Identity. In T. Bennett, L. Grossberg & M. Morris (Eds.), New keywords: A revised vocabulary of culture and society (p. 172-175). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Shephard, C. A., Giles, H., & LePiore, B. (2001). Communication accommodation theory. In: W. P. Robinson & H. Giles (Eds.), //The new handbook of language and social psychology// (pp. 34-51)//.// Chichester: Wiley.

Shumate, M., & Fulk, J. (2004). Boundaries and role conflict when work and family are colocated: A communication network and symbolic interaction approach. //Human Relations, 57//(1), 55-74.

Soliz, J. (2007). Communicative predictors of a shared family identity: Comparison of grandchildren’s perceptions of family-of-origin grandparents and stepgrandparents. //Journal of Family Communication, 7,// 177-194.

Soliz, J. & Harwood, J. (2006). Shared family identity, age salience, and intergroup contact: Investigation of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. //Communication Monographs, 73,// 87-107.

Stone, A., & Jones, C. (2009). Sources of Uncertainty: Experiences of Alzheimer's Disease. //Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 30//(11), 677-686. doi:10.3109/01612840903046354.

Stuckey, M., & Hoffman, K. (2006). Constituting “The People”: National identity under William H. Taft and Richard M. Nixon. //Congress & the Presidency, 33//(2), 69-95.

Tajfel, H. & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior. In S. Worchel & L. W. Austin (Eds.), //Psychology of Intergroup Relations//. Chicago: Nelson-Hall

Wambolt, F., & Reiss, D. (1989). Task performance and the social construction of meaning Juxtaposing normality with contemporary family research. In D. Offer & M. Sabshin (Eds.), //Normality: Context and Theory// (pp. 2-40). New York: Basic Books.

Williams, R. (1985). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. (p. 153-157). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Wolfe, A., Loy, M., & Chidester, P. (2009). Mass Communication and Identity Construction: Theory and a Case Study of Song-Recordings by a Popular Musician. //Journalism & Communication Monographs, 11//(1), 67-113