Characteristics Of Identity In Education

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Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004) concentrate on five characteristics of identity which I see a valuable source to interpretation and analysis of my data, despite the fact that those researchers were not talking about educational settings. Those characteristics of identity link Poststructuralism and Social Constructionism in productive means. I will shortly discuss them. First of all, Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004) pick the Social Constructionist interpretation that “identity options are constructed, validated and offered through discourses available to individuals at a particular point in time and place” (2004:14). What I recognize from this is that identity options are rooted in language ideologies and situated discourse and they are not completely …show more content…

In fact, everyday spoken or written language vary accordingly based on people’s age, gender, cultural background, etc. and their motivation varies as well. Though, Bourdieu has presented that the area of education recreates relationships and discourses that vary from those external to education and which undertake a particular ordered structure which students turn to acknowledge. I am not into the idea that students accordingly acknowledge ‘legitimate discourses’ very easily. I would rather reason that students work out and govern their own way till the end so as to fulfill and match their aims and goals. Bakhtin’s concept of ‘appropriating’ words of others appears to match what I believe based on my …show more content…

In search of Bhabha (1990), availability of new identities possibilities became at hand as a result of fragmentation, shifts in course of identification and multiplicity. The concept ‘third space’ seems to be relevant to my study since the classroom offers different possibilities of identity to participants, as they establish innovative linguistic repertoires, expressly, participants can acquaint themselves and be recognized in means that were not available to them before. Choosing to analyze classroom discourse in connection with identity is due to reason that classrooms are places of tensity among what Bakhtin (1981: 272) calls ‘centripetal’ and ‘centrifugal’ forces which offer possibility for alternation and