4.1: Identity and Performance as Communication Practice

In Modules 1-3 we’ve looked at the reasons to study communication, the long history of rhetoric, and have some understanding of the three major perspectives through which we view communication practices. Now we need to take a look at what communication tells us about ourselves and our lives. We communicate, in some fashion, every moment of every day. We communicate with ourselves, Intrapersonal Communication, and with others, Interpersonal Communication. At the center of both of these forms of communication is identity: we communicate our identities as part of every communication act with ourselves and others.

Communicating and Performing Identity

You may wonder just how much of our communication involves communicating identity. A person’s identity is expressed and maintained as part of their social life. How we self-identify, and how we express our identity to others, is something that is constantly communicated. As humans, we have a tendency to define ourselves, and others, by placing people into categories of expected behaviors and stereotyped characterizations. We then label ourselves and others as determined by these categories. Once we’ve self-identified in this manner, we begin to act out the characteristics of the categories. This becomes even further complicated when we apply concepts of intersectionality, and there arises a dissonance between who we are and what we want to be or promote to others.

This type of acting—or role play—based on the stereotypes associated with each category, is the basis of how we use communication to perform our identities. We apply symbols to our “selves” and our choice of performance and communicate those symbols to ourselves and others. For example, if we self-identify as part of “Goth” culture, we choose costumes, tattoos, behavior patterns, hairstyles, and even speech patterns that match that culture or category (Gregory, 2002; Hopkinson, 2016; Koller, 2008; Lunceford, 2010; Sweet, 2005). In fact, scholars of subcultural studies and visual communication studies argue that the commodities we associate with subcultural identity are a common means of communicating the self as a part of a systemic whole. In other words, subcultures reflect the way that people communicate identity characteristics through nonverbal performance as a means of trying to belong to a specific category or group of people (Gregory, 2002; Hopkinson, 2016; Koller, 2008; Lunceford, 2010; Sweet, 2005). And the communication used to adhere to these categories is not limited to nonverbal communication—verbal communication is also stylized to meet the goals and needs of the identity categories to which a person is drawn (Vaisman, 2016; Wagner, Kunkel, & Compton, 2016).

One of the core actions of verbal communication is a speech act (Austin, 1952; Searle, 1962).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "Meyer London giving a speech" by Kheel Center, Cornell University Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Once speech acts are coded to cultural and subcultural norms, they become aspects of performed selves.

Subcultures then develop as examples of the commodification of identity as fashion industry agents adopt and then sell the clothing, accessories, and other markers of subcultural identities and how those identities become performative choices. (Baldwin, 1999; Rakow, 1986). By choosing the costumes, attitudes, and characteristics for communicating our identities each day we literally embody ourselves through our performances—through the way that we choose to communicate our identities. We literally present messages defining who we are to our personal audiences, and this is an audience that includes ourselves. These messages are symbolically constructed: we encode the communication of our identities with symbols that match the categorizations and attitudes we wish to convey. Then our audience decodes the message and interprets our symbolic selves (Hall, 1974; Halualani, 2017; Wagner, 2017; Wetzstein & Huber, 2016).

It’s important to understand that these multiple performances of identity are not, necessarily, lies—they are varied aspects of our selves and the way we can communicate these aspects to others. While there is a clear opportunity for us to change the identities we perform, we need to remember that we are all connected to the normalizing patterns of social structure and standard behaviors. We’ve learned to perform these identities, based on scripts that are already out there. But we can, if we choose, edit the script as we go along. This is because, ultimately, the performance of identity is tied to the rhetorical construction of reality.

Take a look at the following spoken word (a stylistic type of public speech) performance:

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): "Spoken Word" by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

How does spoken word performance challenge notions of identity? How does it challenge notions of the physicality of identity?

One of the key questions to come out of studies of performance and identity is whether identity is given to us by nature, or if our identities are completely constructed by society. This “nature or nurture” question, especially in regard to gender, remains a central debate in performance and identity studies. While most scholars today agree that there are possibilities for changing our identities, many continue to argue that some characteristics are assigned at birth, and the identity messages that evolve from these traits come from a person’s natural tendencies. Regardless, performance and identity theories show us that basic assumptions about identity are not fixed.

Theories about identity provide us with possibilities—the possibility to change who we are, and the possibility to become more aware of our selves and our roles in society. These theories are not new, and they are not all specific to the realms of Communication. We examine them in Communication Studies because they involve message construction—because identities are transmitted through communication processes. And we examine these messages of identity in order to understand them, predict behaviors, and advocate for possibilities and social change. Thus, we examine identity and the performance of self as communication practices.

References

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Gregory, G. (2002). Masculinity, sexuality and the visual culture of glam rock. Culture and Communication, 5, 2, 35-60.

Hall, S. (1974). The television discourse - encoding and decoding. Education and Culture, 25, 8-14.

Halualani, R.T. (2017). Critical approaches to identity: Critical intercultural communication: Theories, issues, and concepts, 1-5. DOI: 10.1002/9781118783665.ieicc0204

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Searle, J. R. (1962). Meaning and speech acts. The philosophical review, 71(4), 423-432.

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Wagner, P.E., Kunkel, A., & Compton, B.L. (2016). (Trans)lating identities: Exploring discursive strategies for navigating the tensions of identity gaps. Communication Quarterly, 64, 3, 251-272.

Wetzstein, I., & Huber, B. (2016). Debating “alternative” gender identities: The online discourse created by 2015 Life Ball advertising posters. International Journal of Communication, 10, 432-450.