Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 15:40:38 -0500
To: seminar-13-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Preeti Anissa Gholap <pghol-AT-ctp.com>
Subject: Re: Identity and Language 


Hi people - just picking up where we left off on a particular thread...
(apologies if this has already been worked through - I missed posts while I
was away and havnt caught up on them yet)

At 01:25 PM 11/13/95 -0600, John Muthyala wrote:
>You ask if speech patterns can be changed to suit audiences? Perhaps, to 
>a certain extent. But I am wondering if we possess the ability to switch 
>on and off our accents, word choices, the whole gamutof language use, so 
>to speak, whenever, wherever and however we want to.

We sure do! Some (e.g. actors who have to train for a part) are more
sophisticated at doing this than others. To me the more interesting question
is - why? Why are some of us able to control this switch better than others.
Why do some people's speech patterns _never_ change, regardless of how many
cultures/environments they've lived in. Do these people have a stronger
sense of "self" or a stronger affiliation to their primary "national identity" ?

>When we ask a student to write personal essays,we implicitly assume that 
>the writer  possess a coherent, expressible self that can express itself 
>through language. The unity of human consciousness and the transparency 
>of representational systems are affirmed unproblematically. Does the self 
>exist apart from language? Is it an epistemological object that yeilds 
>itself to language?

I have to think the "self" exists apart from language. I think of language
as a relatively "outer" layer of myself. Inner layers would be things like
"visualization" (how we picture things before we even begin applying
language as a method to describe) and "gut instinct/feeling" (how we respond
"biologically" to an event or thought before we can consciously picture,
hear or verbalize it).  
 
>To extend Preeti's analogy, how fixed is this bucket? How fixed can it 
>really be? To ask a differnt question: instead of the bucket and its 
>fixedness, can we look at the positinality of the subject/speaker. 
>Perhaps, it is our situatedness, our locationness, that determines not 
>our identity, because an identity is never whole, stable and coherent, but 
>determines the processual strategies, methodologies, and  linguistic systems 
>we use to represent and articulate  our sense of the world, our ideas, 
>beliefs, cultures, etc.

Thought provoking comment. I always thought of my essential or core identity
as "absolute" - a given. To think of it a relative, constantly shifting
concept is...well...disturbing!  Must go off to chew this over...

Preeti
_______________________________________
pghol-AT-ctp.com
Preeti Anissa Gholap
Cambridge Technology Partners-Benelux
Apollo House, Apollolaan 15
1077 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Fax: 31-20-5750500 Tel: 31-20-5750575
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