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Identity In Literature: Tajfel's Social Identity Theory

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Recommended: Theme of identity in literature

1.2 Identity in literature
Identity may be considered as the variety of personal and behavioral characteristics that describe one as a member of particular group therefore, individuals can differentiate themselves from other groups of individuals and create their own understanding of who they are depending on race, religion, culture, ethnicity and language (Fearon, 1999). On the other hand, and as a result of the geographical and social movement and the keenness of belonging to a certain social and community, individuals possibly will acquire more than a single culture (ibid).
Identity in literature might be the way that is used by the authors to express themselves by presenting a new culture and language after the exile from homeland to another …show more content…

Abrams and Hogg (1988) had exerted to spotlight the minimum conditions that make individuals discriminate in the favour of the in-group they belong to and against an out-group aiming to achieve self-esteem and self-confidence (ibid).
In social identity theory and identity theory, the self is reflexive in that it can take itself as an object and can categorize, classify or name itself in particular ways in relation to other social categories or classifications. This process is called self-categorization in social identity theory (Stets & Burke, 2000: 224). Tjfel and Turner claim that social identity theory confirms that the in-group or (self-categorization) is built by the group membership in ways that the in-group is preferred at the expense of the out-group. They proposed the example of (minimal group paradigm) by which they argue that the mere individuals’ categorization is sufficient to lead them to the in-group favouritism. In that experiment, groups were randomly categorized (Trepte, …show more content…

Tajfel (1979) considered “a group” as a cognitive component, an evaluative component and an emotional component. Thus, he suggested four main basics of social identity theory which are social categorization, social identification, social comparison, and self-esteem achievement (Trepte, 2006).

2.1.1 Social categorization
Tajfel (1979) claims that one can only facilitate the process of decoding and encoding messages by defining information into schemes and categories, and it is the same with the other entities in our environment, we divide people into groups to build and comprehend a social interaction (Trepte, 2006).
Tajfel and Turner state that social categorizations are conceived here as cognitive tools that segment, classify, and order the social environment, and thus enable the individual to undertake many forms of social action; these tools create and define individual’s place in society (Tajfel & Turner, 1979: 40).
2.1.2 Social

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