Chapter 5: Self and Identity

The Basics of
Communication A Relational Perspective

n Steve Duck
n David T. McMahan

Coming in
August 2008!
 The Basics of
Communication A Relational Perspective
C an an understanding of communication concepts improve relationships with others? Conversely, how
do our connections with others influence how we interact with them? Written in a warm and lively style
and packed with teaching tools, The Basics of Communication: A Relational Perspective offers a unique
look at the inseparable connection between relationships and communication and highlights the roles that
interpersonal connections play in public speaking as well as in casual discussions. This groundbreaking text
offers a hybrid approach of theory and application by introducing students to fundamental communication
concepts and providing practical instruction on making effective formal presentations. The authors
encourage students to employ critical thinking on key topics, to link communication theory to their own
experiences, and to improve their communication skills in the process.

Key Features
• Stresses the vital intersection of communication and relational contexts and how they interact and
influence one another
• Offers a refreshing and original approach that engages students with lively, topical examples that
challenge them and enliven classroom discussion
• Provides up-to-date communication topics in a way that easily fits within a traditional course outline
• Integrates effective pedagogical tools throughout, addressing ethics, media links, and questions for
students to discuss with friends
• Devotes two chapters to the use of media and relational technology such as cell phones, iPods,
Blackberries, MySpace, and Facebook in daily communications

Ancillaries
Includes an Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM that features PowerPoint slides, a test bank, suggestions for
course projects and activities, Internet resources, and more. (Contact Customer Care at 1-800-818-7243
to request a copy.) The robust online Student Study Site (www.sagepub.com/bocstudy) includes
e-flashcards, video and audio clips, SAGE journal articles, a link to a Facebook page for the text, and other
interactive resources.

For more information, please visit:

www.sagepub.com/basicsofcomm
 The Basics of
Communication
A Relational Perspective

■ Steve Duck
University of Iowa

■ David T. McMahan
Missouri Western State University

Coming in August 2008!

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4129-4153-2
www.sagepub.com/basicsofcomm
Supplemental Materials Available

Instructor’s Resources CD-ROM

■ PowerPoint slides for each chapter for use during class lectures
■ A test bank including multiple-choice, true/false, and short-answer/essay questions
■ Chapter summaries, outlines, and objectives
■ Suggested course projects, classroom activities, and discussion questions,
including exercises that incorporate the Internet and other media
■ Internet resources
■ Suggested film resources
■ Sample syllabi
■ Teaching tips

Student Study Site (www.sagepub.com/bocstudy)

■ E-flashcards
■ Self-quizzes
■ Exercises and activities
■ Internet activities
■ Internet resources
■ SAGE journal articles with discussion and writing questions
■ A link to the Facebook page for the book

For more information, visit www.sagepub.com/basicsofcomm

or call Customer Care: (800) 818-7243.
 Preface n 

Brief Contents

About the Authors   

Introduction   

Chapter 1  n   An Overview of Everyday Communication  

Chapter 2  n   Verbal Communication  
Chapter 3  n   Nonverbal Communication   
Chapter 4  n   Listening  
Chapter 5  n   Self and Identity  
Chapter 6  n  Talk and Interpersonal Relationships  
Chapter 7  n  Small-Group Relationships, Leadership, and
Decision Making  
Chapter 8  n   Society, Culture, and Communication  
Chapter 9  n   Technology in Everyday Life  
Chapter 10  n   Relational Uses and Understanding of Media  
Chapter 11  n   Preparing for a Public Presentation  
Chapter 12  n   Developing a Public Presentation  
Chapter 13  n   R
 elating Through Informative Speeches and
Persuasive Speeches  
Chapter 14  n   Delivering a Public Presentation  

Glossary   
Author Index   
Subject Index   

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 About the Authors

Steve Duck taught at two universities in the United Kingdom before taking up the
Daniel and Amy Starch Distinguished Research Professorship in the communication
studies department at the University of Iowa in 1986, where he is also an adjunct
professor of psychology. He has taught several interpersonal communication courses,
mostly on interpersonal communication and relationships but also on nonverbal com-
munication, communication in everyday life, construction of identity, and communi-
cation theory. Always by training an interdisciplinary thinker, Steve has focused on the
development and decline of relationships from many different perspectives, although
he has also done research on the dynamics of television production techniques and
persuasive messages in health contexts. Steve has written or edited 50 books on rela-
tionships and other matters and was the founder and, for the first 15 years, the edi-
tor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. His 1994 book Meaningful
Relationships: Talking, Sense, and Relating won the G. R. Miller Book Award from the
Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association.
Steve cofounded the series of International Conferences on Personal Relationships
that began in 1982. He won the University of Iowa’s first Outstanding Mentor Award
in 2001 and the National Communication Association’s Robert J. Kibler Memorial
Award in 2004 for “dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, con-
cern for others, vision of what could be, acceptance of diversity, and forthrightness.”
He wishes he could play the piano.

David T. McMahan graduated from Vincennes University with an AS degree.

He received BS and MA degrees from Indiana State University and received his
PhD from the University of Iowa. The courses he has taught span the discipline
of communication, including multiple courses in interpersonal communication,
media, communication education, theory, and criticism. David’s research interests
also engage multiple areas of the discipline with much of his research devoted to
bridging the study of relationships and media. This work includes examining the
discussion of media and the incorporation of catchphrases and media references
in everyday communication. A great deal of research has been derived from his

vi n

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 About the Authors n vii

experiences in the classroom and his commitment to education. His early work in
this area focused on communication competence, self-conception, and assessment.
His focus has since shifted toward topics that include both media and relation-
ships, such as contradictions within advisor-advisee relationships and discussions of
media in the classroom. His published work has appeared in such journals as Review
of Communication, Communication Education, and Communication Quarterly, as
well as edited volumes. A member of the National Communication Association,
Central States Communication Association, Eastern Communication Association,
Iowa Communication Association, and Speech Communication Association of
Puerto Rico, David has served numerous roles within these organizations. In addi-
tion, he has received multiple awards for his work in the classroom and has also been
the recipient of a number of public service and academic distinctions. He hopes to
someday become a cattle baron.

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 Introduction

I f you think there is anything important in your life that does not involve communi-
cation, leaf idly through this book and see if it makes you challenge your first thought.
It will take only a couple of minutes, and then you can put the book back on the shelf.
However, we do not think that you will be able to come up with very many activities
in life that are not improved by communication and would not be made better by
your ability to understand communication more thoroughly. We wrote this book partly
because we believe that every student needs to know something about communica-
tion and how to improve life through understanding it, whether you are headed off
to become a dental hygienist, a researcher, a preacher, a businessperson, a nurse, a
physician, a member of a sales force, a parent, or just somebody’s good friend.
We are passionate about the study of communication because it has so many
obvious uses and influences in everyday life, and we believe very strongly that you
too can benefit from knowing more about how communication works. We have
never met a student who did not want to understand more about his or her everyday
life and, in particular, about his or her relationships. We have tried to bind together
these interests by writing this book, which answers questions about how communi-
cation and relationships hang together and connect with other parts of life, such as
listening, culture, gender, media, giving presentations, or merely being you.
The publishers, and probably your instructors, officially call this “a basic text-
book,” and that means something special in the publishing and education world.
Basic communication textbooks have a particular job to do: They must give a basic
introduction to concepts and introduce some theoretical or practical ideas that help
you apply the research and theory. A few of these books deal with issues like inter-
personal communication and media/technology, and a few others try to obtain real
contact with students’ lives. The present book is a “hybrid,” which means it not only
introduces these basic concepts but also serves to instruct you on giving speeches.
The book includes sections on (a) identity construction, (b) interpersonal communi-
cation, (c) group communication, (d) culture and society, (e) technology, (f) media,
and (g) public speaking. We cover all of this with a particular theme in mind—the
way you carry out your everyday life through your relationships with other people—
and how the above are relevant to our theme.
viii n

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 Introduc tion n ix

The phrase relationships with other people draws your attention not only to how
your relationships work and can be improved but also to how they affect you during
the course of other activities that happen in your life. Your relationship with some-
one affects your ability to persuade that person to take your health advice, for exam-
ple, or the media that you use can become topics of discussion between acquaint-
ances. Cell phones and the Internet are forms of communication that have become
relational tools in everyday life, especially if you are in long-distance relationships.
So, in this book, we deal not just with the creation of relationships but with the way
relationships flow into many other daily experiences as effects not only on those
experiences themselves but also on everyday life communication.
We sincerely believe that your daily life as a student, friend, romantic part-
ner, colleague, and family member along with all other aspects can be improved
through the principles of communication theory. One of our purposes is to help you
understand your daily life by making you more aware of how everyday life works
through communication. We believe that all students desire to see, recognize, and
understand their many instances of daily contact with communication research and
theory. Another purpose is to develop your studies by encouraging more eager and
independent thinking about research into such topics as conflict, relationship devel-
opment, gender, culture, technology, and business and professional speaking.
Some of you will be taking the basic course as your only exposure to commu-
nication studies, so we have put in plenty of material that demonstrates the applica-
tions of what we are talking about, for example in developing listening skills, using
technology, understanding nonverbal communication, creating persuasive strate-
gies, or managing group conflict. In this way we hope to make the book relevant to
business majors, to those in training for the health professions, and to many other
students who have an interest in communication studies merely as a sideline or as
a minor part of their degree studies. Others of you will be taking this course with
plans to major in communication studies, in which case this book will provide you
with a strong foundation for your future study and exploration of the discipline.
Whatever your purpose in reading this book, and whatever your ultimate goal
in life, we hope that it will enrich your experience, sharpen your abilities to observe
and analyze communication activity, and make your life a little bit more interesting
because you can understand the processes going on around you. So take us up on
our challenge once again and thumb through the contents and look at a few of the
pictures to see if you now “get” what we think is important about communication
and why you need to learn about it.

How This Book Is Structured to Help Your Learning

Because we are convinced of the importance of the topic and because we are pas-
sionate about helping people learn about it, we have used some special features

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  n The Basics of Communication

designed to make it particularly interesting and relevant to you. First of all, the tone
of this book is somewhat different from other textbooks you may have come across.
We have deliberately adopted an informal and conversational tone in our writing,
and we even throw in a few jokes. We are not attempting to be hip or cool: Trust us;
we are far from either, so much so that we are not even sure if the words hip and cool
are used anymore. Instead, we use a conversational voice because we believe that it
makes this book more engaging to read. Plus, we genuinely like and have a good time
talking about this material, so we want to share our enthusiasm in a way that we
hope is infectious. We have become used to seeing the significance of communica-
tion as if it speaks for itself, but we realize that not everybody else takes that view.
Because we are also deeply committed to the importance of studying communica-
tion, we want to discuss it all in such a way that is clear, understandable, and appli-
cable to your life. We hope that this will make it as exciting to you as it is to us.
Another feature of this book is not what it includes but what it excludes. We did
not want to fill the pages with countless boxes, illustrative cartoons, and graphics
that might be amusing but do not always help you learn. Our experience has taught
us that they offer little value and are often skipped by students and instructors alike.
Instead, in this book, you will come across featured boxes, margin notes, pictures,
and other instructional tools that have been selectively chosen to challenge you.
Every single one of them is here with the purpose of improving your understanding
of communication. Everything that appears in this book—even every picture—does
so for a reason, and that reason centers on increasing your understanding, your
application, and even your enjoyment of the material. For example, the pictures do
not have standard captions, but every one asks a question that you must answer for
yourself, although we provide possible answers at the end of each chapter. The pic-
tures are here not just to make the book look pretty but because they serve a purpose
of teaching you something and making you think for yourself.
Instead of beginning each chapter with focus questions before you know what
the chapter is about, our Focus Questions follow an opening narrative for each
chapter. They are so positioned because we want to ensure that you read them
after you have seen the basic problem with which the chapter deals. We personally
skipped them when we were in school: They appeared at the very beginning of the
chapter, and we did not yet know what they were about. We strongly encourage
you to read them. Because they come after the narrative that sets up the questions
in each chapter, they will guide you through the chapter and provide you with
insight as to what you should focus on as you read. Because they are important,
we will also revisit and answer them at the end of each chapter so that you can see
if your answers match ours. In fact, we do this instead of summarizing the chapter
in the conventional way. The end of every chapter is therefore directly connected
to the beginning.
Although we wanted to limit the number appearing in each chapter, boxes
can have a great deal of value for your learning. Each chapter includes the follow-
ing three types of boxes: (a) Make Your Case, (b) Strategic Communication, and

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 Introduc tion n xi

(c) Listen In On Your Own Life. Make Your Case boxes provide you with oppor-
tunities to develop your own positions or to perform an exercise about the material
that might be used during class discussion. In the language chapter, for example,
you are asked to find out the secret languages that you and your friends speak with-
out realizing it. Strategic Communication boxes help you integrate the material
into your life when influencing others. For instance, the technology chapter asks
you to consider how the purpose of a message and the technological preferences of
the person you are contacting will determine the appropriateness of face-to-face,
telephone, or computer-mediated interaction. Listen In On Your Own Life boxes
ask you to consider the material in relation to your own life and lived experiences.
We want you start recognizing communication in your life and how the material dis-
cussed applies. For example, the listening chapter asks you to consider friends, fam-
ily, classmates, or coworkers you would label as good and bad listeners. You are then
asked to analyze what behaviors led to these evaluations and to determine measures
to enhance the listening skills of others. These exercises, therefore, will also serve to
further your understanding and comprehension of the material.
Two additional features are included within each chapter: margin notes and
pictures. Margin notes provide additional information about the material or open-
ended questions to ponder as you study it. Accordingly, some margin notes provide
unique information, such as when the first “smiley face” emoticon was sent, who
invented the Internet, or what percentage of people believe that they are shy enough
to need treatment. Other margin notes urge you to reflect on the material by posing
questions, such as whether or not families would be considered “groups,” or explain-
ing the technique that President Ronald Reagan used in order to make his speeches
more appealing. Pictures are nothing new to textbooks, but in this book they serve
as instructional tools rather than mere illustrative distractions. Each picture caption
is stated in the form of a question that corresponds with material being discussed.
You will be asked to examine the picture and answer the accompanying question(s)
based on your understanding of the material in the chapter. These are not open-
ended questions; rather, each one has a specific answer (given at the end of each
chapter after you have had a chance to think about the answers for yourself first).
We mentioned above that the focus questions would come up again. Each chap-
ter ends by revisiting the Focus Questions as a way of summarizing chapter mate-
rial using structure rather than as a simple (and usually ignored) chapter summary.
You cannot get by with just reading this section of the chapter, but it will help you
check that you picked up on the key points being discussed.
The very end of each chapter includes features to further enhance your mastery
and comprehension of the material. Once again, we thought very carefully about
what to include here. We did not want questions that asked you to merely memorize
and repeat what you just read but rather to think about it outside of class as you carry
out the rest of your life. We wanted to include features that ask you to go beyond
each chapter’s contents and engage in higher levels of thinking. Accordingly, each
chapter also includes the following features: (a) Ethical Issues, (b) Media Links,
and (c) Questions to Ask Your Friends. Ethical Issues urge you to contemplate and

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 xii n The Basics of Communication

develop a position regarding ethical quandaries that arise in communication. For

example, the technology chapter asks you to consider whether employers should use
material on social networking sites, such as MySpace, when making hiring decisions,
and the relationships chapter asks if it is ever ethical to have two romantic relation-
ships going on at the same time and why (or why not). Media Links ask you to draw
from media in order to further explore the issues discussed in each chapter. You are
asked to watch a TV newscast and discover ways in which the newscasters establish
a relationship with the audience, for example, and to read a newspaper article looking
for examples of logical fallacies discussed in the chapter. The relationships chapter
invites you to examine the Sunday newspaper section of marriages, engagements, and
commitment ceremonies for similarities in attractiveness. Believe it or not, romantic
partners often look alike! Finally, Questions to Ask Your Friends provide you with
questions to ask your friends in order to further increase your awareness of the mate-
rial and integrate it into your life. In the culture and society chapter, for example,
you are urged to ask your friends about favorite children’s stories and connect themes
to cultural ideals. It may initially seem strange to drag your friends into your own
learning, but in fact, just as in everyday life itself, you will learn from them, and you
will be teaching them a thing or two as well. Plus, this activity will help underscore
the significance of relationships in your life. As with the boxes, we are serious about
having you try out these instructional tools to improve your study of the material.
Indeed, our writing style has been chosen to invite students—you and others
you know—into the conversation about the issues we present as basics of commu-
nication. As part of that, we are trying to stretch your capacities to think about a
problem and work through it with us, leaving you with a greater sense of having
mastered the material by thinking through it for yourself, under guidance. Because
we want to increase the discussion of communication generally, we continually men-
tion everyday issues so that you can talk about them with your friends and become
more helpful to them too. You should be able to reflect on your friends’ and your own
lives from time to time and apply to them what you have been reading about here.
“You know, funny you should say that because I’ve just been reading about that exact
same thing, and what the book said was …”
So, overall, we see the advantages of this book as fourfold:

1. It presents a passionate view of communication based on the theme of rela-

tional and everyday experience.
2. It has strong teaching features applied to your own personal experiences.
3. It includes chapters on identity, culture/society, technology, and media that
are becoming more important in people’s lives right now but do not appear
in older textbooks.
4. We believe it offers a more interesting approach to existing topics by bring-
ing your own life under the microscope.

See if you agree.

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 Introduc tion n xiii

Final Thoughts
As we get ready to set out on our exploration of communication, we urge you to
consider the many ways in which communication influences and is influenced by
relationships and everyday life. This book will help you begin to recognize the sig-
nificance of communication and to understand its tremendous impact in your life.
However, it is our hope that you will go beyond what we offer by carefully examin-
ing what has been written and incorporating your own thoughts and experiences
into the conversation. The study of communication can elicit a lifetime of learning,
exploration, and enjoyment. We appreciate you joining us on this journey, and we
hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed writing it for you.
—Steve Duck and David T. McMahan

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 

chapter 5

Self and Identity

W e don’t know you and you don’t know us, but from reading this book, you
probably have some impressions of us. You know who you are, though, don’t you? Not
just name and address but the kind of person you are. You have an identity, and we don’t
just mean an ID that you show people to prove your age. You are an individual, and you
are friends with other individuals, each perhaps quirky in his or her own way and with a
unique personality and identity. You might see these individuals and yourself as persons
deep inside, with a history, a childhood set of experiences that made you who you are.
You know things about yourself that no one else knows. You are you, you-nique!
This chapter will teach you that you have multiple layers to your identity—not
just in the obvious way that some of your own private thoughts are secret, some are
revealed in intimate moments of talk, and some are performed as roles (“I’m your
classmate/sister/boss”). We will look at these but also show how layers of identity
come out through communication in relationships. Some are brought forth and cre-
ated by the situation in which you find yourself or in the company of certain people
but not others. (Do you really behave the same way with your mother as you do with
your best friend?) Some others are the result of cultural symbols attached to “being
gay or lesbian” or “being a go-getter or a team player,” and some are performed for
an audience. In intimate relationships, you can perform and express most of your
true self; in a police interview, you may want to conceal some of what you are; in
a hospice at the end of your life, you may want to hang onto a little dignity as the
skills, performances, and parts of your body and self that used to compose your
identity have ceased to work so well, and you are now physically more dependent
on others.
Identity in all of these forms is partly a characteristic (something that you
possess), partly a performance (something that you do), and partly a construction
of society. For example, society tells you how to be “masculine” and “feminine” and

n 

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  n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

indicates that “guys can’t say that to guys” (Burleson et al., 2005), thus restricting
the way in which men can give one another emotional support. Society also provides
you with the categories for describing a personality, and the media cause you to
focus on some traits more than others. Categories like gluttonous, sexy, short, slim,
paranoid, and kind are all available to you, but they are not all equally valued.
Thus, the ways you express yourself in talk or nonverbal communication and the
way you respond to other people in your social context transact part of your identity,
so your identity is partly constructed through your interactions with other people.
Have you had the experience of being with someone who makes you nervous when
you normally aren’t nervous or who helps you feel comfortable and relaxed when you
feel tense? In these instances, your identity is molded and transacted by the person,
situation, or communication—all features that we will explore. You’ll get used to a
rather odd phrase that is used in communication studies: “doing an identity,” which
is sometimes used instead of “having an identity,” because communication scholars
now pay close attention to the ways in which people’s behavior carries out, enacts,
transacts, or does an identity in talk with other people.

Focus Questions
n Is a person’s identity like an onion, built layer by layer and communicated slowly as
intimacy increases?
n How do daily interactions with other people form or sustain your identity?
n How much of your “self” is a performance of social roles where you have to act out
“who I am” for other people?
n What is meant by a symbolic self, and why do we have to account to other people
for who we are?
n What is the role of culture in your identity experiences?

Who Are You?

Consider this example. A young man kissed his grandmother on the cheek as he left
home one evening to join his friends waiting in a car. As he took his place in the
front seat, he waved goodbye and promised not to stay out too late. The car made its
way up the block; he and his friends laughed as they recounted one friend’s recent
date with a girl from the neighborhood. The laughter stopped suddenly when they
noticed a younger boy standing on the corner. This boy, a member of a rival gang,
hoped to gain a higher rank by hanging out in enemy territory. The young man in
the passenger seat glared at the boy, pulled out a gun from underneath the seat, and
began shooting. One bullet struck the boy in the chest, killing him instantly. Another

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 

bullet hit a nearby elderly woman walking home from the store. The car sped off
as she fell to the ground. His friends in the car congratulated him on defending
the block and then casually returned to their conversation. When the young man
returned home later that evening, he kissed his grandmother on the cheek, checked
Facebook, went into his room, and then drifted peacefully to sleep.
How could he have done that? How can anyone do something so vile as to
shoot two people in cold blood? Your first thought is to blame his personality: He
was an evil person, perhaps with psychopathic tendencies. Or you could put it
down to the identity that had been constructed during his initiation into the gang
when he was trained to accept the importance of defending gang territory. On
the other hand, he probably saw himself in personality terms too, but more favor-
able ones—as a good grandson, a loyal person, devoted to his gang, and someone
unafraid of doing what is necessary. He may have felt a twinge of guilt when the
elderly woman got hit, or he may have shrugged and thought, “Well, that stuff hap-
pens in [gang] wars.” Worse atrocities happened in the Holocaust, in Bosnia, and
in Iraq. Hannah Arendt (1963) pointed out how banal and routine such atrocities
become in wars. The routines of gang membership, war, or bureaucracy make it
all too easy to come to see real human beings (other gang members, Serbs, Jews,
Shias, Sunnis, American soldiers) as just targets, numbers, insurgents, subjects, or
prisoners. They become anonymous elements of the daily routine, part of the job
that needs to be done, dehumanized “others” who just need to be counted, sorted,
and cleaned away. The people lose their personal identity, but so too in a strange
way does the perpetrator (who becomes “just” a gang member, prison guard, or
rifle sharpshooter).
What Arendt missed in her analysis of such perpetrators, however, is the
importance of their daily communicative relationships with other people who act
and think in the same way about these “others.” Comrades implicitly accept the
way that “others” are treated and reinforce the identity of gang member, guard, or
assassin as “OK.” Arendt saw the problem as getting so used to cruel acts because
they happened all the time and became just part of doing the job. Communication
scholars can look deeper and see that all ongoing relationships between people are
what make it easier to carry out bad deeds or to perform an identity that we would
regard as unacceptable from another vantage point.
Of course, you (or your friends) have never done anything that dehumanizes, ste-
reotypes, or depersonalizes others, have you? You have never called anyone “a cheese-
eating surrender monkey” or taken away a person’s uniqueness by calling him or her
“an illegal” or “a frat boy” or lumped someone together with all other “college kids” or
chanted, “Oh, how I hate Ohio State.”
Earlier chapters talked about frames for situations and thinking. Shotter (1984)
sees identity as a frame for interpreting other people’s actions, and Burke (1962)
also saw motives and personality language as nothing more than helpful frames
for interpretation (see Chapter 2). In short, your identity is going to be revealed
in a language that reflects the priorities of a particular culture or relationship and

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  n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

its frames for thinking about how humans should

act and describe themselves. The first point to
On October 26, 2007, a keen soccer fan
recognize, then, is that human beings talk about
was sent to jail in the United Kingdom for
their identities in ways that are steered by social
killing a father of two by stabbing him
norms and conventions in their society and that
29 times after the man had joked that he
they expect other people to present such narra-
hoped the killer’s favorite team (England)
tives and behaviors. Your culture also frames iden-
would lose a soccer game against Brazil
tity as a sense of a stable inner self; it therefore
(“Football,” 2007).
feels quite normal for you to think in those terms,
and you can easily understand the idea that some-
one could let you know about his or
her private self by revealing its layers.
However, you would be thought crazy
Listen in on your own life if you said, “My identity is blue with
an elephant spirit inside.” You’d soon
How would you describe yourself? National identity? be locked up. You have to use terms
Ethnic identity? Gender identity? Sexual identity? and phrases that your audiences rec-
Age identity? Social class identity? Religious identity? ognize as symbolically meaningful in
What else? the culture: “I’m a go-getter but quite
private, ambitious yet introverted.” In
Now check the categories that you can use to other words, you frame your talk about
personalize your profile on Facebook or MySpace. yourself and your identity in the lan-
Are they the categories you would use to describe guage that your culture has taught you
yourself to a child, an employer, or a new neighbor? to use.
People actually are encouraged—perhaps even Although we will start with the
required—to identify themselves in particular common-sense idea that you have a
categories and items, such as favorite videos and true inner self, by the end of the chap-
music, hobbies, and sexual orientation. How would ter we will show that communication
you feel if your instructor composed a slideshow of all studies can teach you much more
the Facebook profiles of the people in your class and about how personal identity is built by
showed it to everyone? relationships with other people. The
Finally, a deeper question: How do the categories that
chapter should make you think about
you are offered relate to products sold by the larger
ways in which identity is connected
companies that own these sites, such as music, DVDs,
to language; to other people; to the
MP3s, and movies?
norms, rules, and categories in society/
culture; and to narratives of origin and
belonging to other relationships. This
identity may be represented by such
statements as “I’m an African American” or, on a bumper sticker, “Proud parent of
an Honor Roll student at City High.” Both of these examples make statements of
identity yet are claiming it through relationships with other people or membership
in groups. Of course, the gang member may not have thought about any of this when
he pulled the trigger, but after reading this chapter you might see his actions in some
new ways.

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 

Identity as Inner Core:

The Self-Concept
You usually think about persons
as having some true inner core
self that stays the same and makes
them who they are—a personal,
private, and essential core, covered
with layers of secrecy, privacy, and
convention. This is known as a self-
concept and is the point of view
from which you talk about people
having an identity. Consequently,
you are alarmed by people who have
multiple personalities or are bipolar
because you believe that someone
should have only one consistent
personality and that people who
have more parts are disturbed or
psychologically irrational. Your per-
Photo 5.1 How do daily interactions with other people form
sonality or identity may be hard for
or sustain your identity? What is being communicated here about
other people to reach, but accord-
gender, identity, and culture? (See page 27.)
ing to many self-help books and
celebrity biographies it is reachable.
Communication serves merely to
help people talk about or express what is inside, perhaps doing so in greater depth
as you get to know one another better. Communication scholars can teach you the
skill of expressing yourself well or helping you be open and honest and let the real
you be heard.
You recognize the usefulness of this idea of self-concept and represent it nor-
mally as a consistent inner self made up of the person’s broad habits of thought
(e.g., someone is kind, outward-looking, introverted, or self-centered). You might
see that self revealed communicatively in styles of behavior (e.g., someone is aggres-
sive, calm, ambitious, reliable, hard-working, or manipulative) or in characteristic
styles of perception (e.g., someone is paranoid, trusting, insightful, or obstinate).
Personality is the label that you would first use to describe someone’s identity if you
were asked about it casually in a conversation by someone who wanted to know what
that person was like.
All the same, it’s a very odd idea indeed, given the fact that people are so com-
plex. A person can simultaneously be many identities depending on your focus. For
example, a person can simultaneously be a loving parent, a loyal friend, a vegetarian,
a conservative, quick-tempered, a good dancer, a bad cook, business savvy, and a
team player. Furthermore, you have a choice in the type of identity that you describe,

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  n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

and you can focus on a relational identity (friend/parent), an interactional identity

(worker/customer/server), a sex or gender identity (male/female/masculine/feminine/
GLBT), a racial/ethnic identity (the boxes to check on government forms), or a
behavioral identity (extrovert/introvert). You have a choice, then, about where to
begin your description of your identity.
Actually, you already know another key point about identity from your everyday
experience. People not only are multilayered but also can have different moods and
be good company on one day and bad on another. You also recognize that people
can fluctuate during the course of the day and that events may happen to them that
cause them to act “out of character.” These fluctuations help demonstrate that it’s
a peculiar idea that somebody could have a fixed inner identity if it can also be so
variable and complex over time. The best you can hope for, then, is that the more
you get to know someone through talk, the more you can understand the person’s
usual self and the events or people that trigger it to spin off into different styles and
forms. You need all the help you can get for such a task, so, right or wrong, you tend
to view it as an especially valuable form of information when other people give you
inside scoop about their identity or self-concept, as if they were peeling away layers.
Indeed, psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor (1973) used the analogy of
peeling an onion to describe the way we get to learn about other people’s identities.
The upshot, though (and we are sorry to spoil it for you), is that all the magazine
articles that offer to tell you about “the real [Brad Pitt/Beyoncé/Jennifer Lopez/
Hillary Rodham Clinton/Adolf Hitler]” are always going to be nonsense. The notion
that someone has a real single inner core is suspect for communication scholars
from the get-go. Also, if identities could not be changed or reviewed, there would be
no therapists or communication textbooks with advice on how to develop your com-
munication and presentation skills.
The Johari window, developed in 1955 by two guys called Joe (Luft) and Harry
(Ingham)—and we’re not kidding—distinguishes between the things that a person
knows about self and the things that others know about the person. As you can see in
Figure 5.1, people have blind spots—that is, everyone but the person in question can
see a particular thing about him or her (for example, that he or she is “a pain”)—and
there are cases where we pretend (façade), concealing from people something that
we know about ourselves (guilty secrets and so forth). The arena is basically where
we openly act out a public identity that everyone else knows and recognizes.

Describing a Self
If you ask people to tell you who they are, they will tell you their name and start
unfolding their self-concept, usually with a narrative that places their self in vari-
ous contexts. “Steve Duck” indicates to someone in your culture that the person is
male and has had to put up with many entirely predictable and very unoriginal jokes.
Although he has lived in the United States of America for more than 20 years, he is
a Brit, and his family comes from Whitby in North Yorkshire, England, where the

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 

Known to Self Not Known to Self

Known
to Arena Blind Spot
Others

Not
Known
to Façade Unknown
Others

Figure 5.1 The Johari Window

Source: From “The Johari Window, A Graphic Model of Interpersonal Awareness,” by J. Luft and
H. Ingham, 1955, proceedings of the western training laboratory in group development, Los Angeles:
UCLA. Reprinted with permission.

first recorded Duck (John Duck) lived in 1288. John Duck and Steve Duck evidently
share the same skeptical attitude toward authority figures, since John is in the his-
torical record because he sued the Abbot of Whitby over ownership of a piece of
land. John was descended from the Vikings who sacked and then colonized Whitby
in about 800 AD, and we know this because “Duck” is a Viking nickname-based
surname for a hunchback. (Have you ever ducked out of the way of anything? If so,
you have crouched like a hunchback.)
Steve Duck is also relatively short for a man, is baldheaded but bearded, likes
watching people but is quite shy, and can read Latin, which is how he found out about
John Duck while researching his family tree. Steve likes the music of Ralph Vaughan
Williams, enjoys doing cryptic crosswords, knows about half the words that Shakespeare
knew, and has occasionally lied. He resents his mother’s controlling behavior, was an
Oxford college rowing coxswain, loves reading history (especially Roman history), and
is wheat/gluten intolerant. He thinks he is a good driver; is proud of his dad, who was
a Quaker pacifist (that antiauthority thing again); and has lived in Iowa for 23 years.
He has had two marriages and four children, carries a Swiss Army knife (and as many
other gadgets as will fit onto one leather belt), and always wears two watches.

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  n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

Notice that some of this information about his identity is self-description. That
is, these words describe him in much the same way that anyone else could without
knowing him personally (for example, short, bald, two watches). Self-description
usually involves information about self that is obvious in public (or on your résumé).
If you wear your college T-shirt, talk with a French accent, or are short, this evidence
about you is available even to strangers who can see your physical appearance or hear
how you sound. “Identity” in this sense, then, is communicated publicly by verbal
and nonverbal means, including skin color and physique, and it parks the individual
in categories or national, racial, or ethnic groups or else lumps them in stereotypes.
It isn’t really an individual identity but more a group membership.

Self-Disclosure
Some points in Steve’s description of himself count as self-disclosure—that is, the
revelation of personal information that other people could not know unless Steve
made it known. In the above example, these are the points that describe particular
feelings and emotions that other people would not know unless Steve specifically
disclosed them. The “resents,” “is proud of,” “enjoys,” and “thinks he is a good driver”
parts give you a view of his identity that you could not directly obtain any other way,
though you might work them out from what Steve says or does. These parts, since
they are openly stated as insights into his thinking, would count as self-disclosure
rather than as self-description. The term self-disclosure, then, is specifically limited
to revelation of private, sensitive, and confidential information that is relevant to
identity, such as your values, fears, secrets, assessments, evaluations, and prefer-
ences, usually revealed to one or two other persons at a time.
Jourard (1964, 1971) wrote about self-disclosure as making your identity “trans-
parent” to others. He felt that people who made the most disclosures were acting in
the most psychologically healthy manner. Early research connected self-disclosure
not only with healthy psychology but also with growth in intimacy. Indeed, classic
reports (e.g., Derlega et al., 1993) found that the more people become intimate, the
more they disclose to each other information about themselves that is both broad and
deep. Also, the more you get to know someone’s inner knowledge structures, the closer
you feel to them. This closeness generally develops only if the information is revealed
in a way that indicates you are receiving privileged information that other people do
not know. For example, if a man lets you (and only you) know the secret that he has
a serious invisible illness (such as diabetes, lupus, or prostate cancer), an unusually
strong fear of spiders, or a significantly distressed marriage, you may feel valued and
trusted as a result of that disclosure, because he let you into his inner life.
But there is an important relational process going on here: When someone tells
you about his or her inner identity, you may feel you are being honored and valued
by someone’s revelation of the inner self, or you may actually not care for what
you are hearing. The important point, then, is that the disclosure itself does not
make a difference to a relationship; the relationship, rather, makes a difference to

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 

the value of the self-disclosure. If you feel the relationship is enhanced by self-
disclosure, it is; if you don’t, no matter how intimate the disclosure, the relation-
ship does not grow in intimacy. Later research has refined this idea (Dindia, 2000;
Petronio, 2002). For example, too much disclosure of identity is not necessarily a
good thing at all times. You’ve probably been bored by somebody constantly telling
you more than you wanted to know about herself—TMI! On the other hand, people
who are closed and don’t tell anything about themselves are usually regarded as
psychologically unhealthy in some way.
In addition, communication scholar Kathryn Dindia (2000) points out that the
revelation of identity is rarely just a simple progression and is certainly not just the
declaration of facts and then—bam!—intimacy. Self-disclosure is a dynamic pro-
cess tied to other social processes that relate to your identity and how you want to
disclose yourself over time. It is a process that can be continued through the life
of relationships and is not a single one-time choice: to disclose or not to disclose.
Indeed, part of your identity is the skill with which you reveal or conceal information
about yourself and your feelings, as any good poker player knows.
In fact, the revelation of your identity, like identity itself, is an open-ended pro-
cess that continues indefinitely in relationships even after they have become deeply
intimate. It is dynamic, continuous, and circular so that it is hard to say where
self-disclosure or identity begins or ends. It is also influenced by the behavior and
communication of the other person(s)—the audience. Self-disclosure and iden-
tity both occur in the context of a relationship that has ups and downs, and all of
these elements are interdependent. For example, José learns more about Juanita’s
identity when he hears her disclose something about herself that makes him feel
more positive about her and their relationship. It also makes him nervous because,
in the past, he did something that her disclosure shows she would not like. So he
tells her what he did and how sorry he is about it. Juanita likes the fact that he
confides in her and feels better about the relationship as a result, but she won-
ders if José is still the same person he was when he did the bad thing or if he is
genuinely sorry and has changed . . . and so on. Thus, identity, self-disclosure, and
relationships are mutually connected transactions, not just simply the peeling away
of layers.
People also place a limit on the amount of information that they reveal to
others, and some choose to remain private, even in intimate relationships. Baxter
and Montgomery (1996) identify a push-pull dialectic tension of relationships.
Dialectic tensions occur whenever you are in two minds about something or feel
a simultaneous pull in two directions. Some communication scholars (e.g., Baxter,
2004; Baxter & Braithwaite, 2008) suggest that there simply is no singular core of
identity but a dialogue between different “voices” in your head. For example, in rela-
tionships, you want to feel connected to someone else, but you do not want to give
up all of your independence. You can see how you—and your identity—can grow by
being in a relationship, but you can also see that this comes at a simultaneous cost or
threat to your identity, independence, and autonomy. The autonomy-connectedness
dialectic is one dialectic tension, but another is openness-closedness, where people

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 10 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

feel social pressure to be open yet also want to retain control over private informa-
tion. This tension leads to people sometimes giving out and sometimes holding back
information about self. Even in the same relationship, a person can feel open and
willing to reveal information sometimes but crowded and guarded at other times.
These tensions are simply part of being in a relationship that has its own flow: A
personal relationship is not a consistent or simple experience any more than identity
is. Each affects the other over time.
In fact, people in relationships negotiate boundaries of privacy (Petronio,
2002). For example, part of the difference between friendship and mere acquain-
tance is that you have stronger boundaries around your identity for acquaintances
than you do for friends. Also, as Jon Hess (2000) notes, you simply don’t like
some people, so you don’t want them to know personal stuff about you, and you
may actively try to limit what they find out about you. Caughlin and Afifi (2004)
have shown that even intimate partners sometimes prefer to completely avoid top-
ics that may annoy or provoke the other person. Petronio (2002) deals with the
inconsistencies in the revelation of information by pointing to the importance of
boundary management of the topics that have specific meanings within different
relational settings. People experience a tension between a desire for privacy and
a demand for openness differently in different
relationships. Couples make up their own rules
Self-disclosure reacts to a norm of for controlling the boundaries of privacy based
reciprocity (i.e., an unspoken rule about on the particular nature of their relationship.
fairness and giving back about as much So, for example, a couple may define, between
as you receive). If I say something self- themselves, the nature of topics that they will
disclosing to you in everyday life, you mention in front of other people and what
should tell me something about yourself they will keep private. A married couple may
in return. If one person keeps telling decide what topics they can discuss in front
information but gets nothing back, the of the children, for instance, and these topics
person will stop doing it. Oddly enough, may change as the children grow older. In other
the norm of reciprocity can actually be words, people show, employ, and work within
used to interrogate people or find out different parts of their identity with different
information about them indirectly. If you audiences at different times.
say something personal about yourself, One of the important points that Petronio
that loads an obligation on the other (2002) makes, then, is that the suitability of
people to respond by saying something something for disclosure is itself affected by
equally personal about themselves. relational context and by agreement between the
partners. She also draws attention to the ways
in which a couple can decide how much to dis-
close. Amount, type, or subject of self-disclosure
can be topics for discussion (often called metacommunication or communication
about communication). In short, in contrast to Jourard’s (1964, 1971) idea that there
are absolute rules about self-disclosure of identity, Petronio strongly indicates that
it is often a matter of personal preference or is worked out explicitly between the
partners in a relationship through communication.

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 11

The upshot of this discussion of self-disclosure as a revelation of layers of self,

then, is that your identity is not just a straightforward layered possession of your
own inner being. Neither is your self-disclosure of that identity just your decision
alone but something jointly owned by you and a partner, so to speak. By now you
are recognizing that there is more to identity than just having or revealing one, then.
The norms of appropriateness and reciprocity and the rules about amount of infor-
mation and the revelation of negative information show that there is a social context
for communication about identity. Identity is revealed within that set of social rules,
cultural norms, and contexts.

Identity and Other People

Saying that there is a social context for identity is basically making two points:

1. Society as a whole broadly influences the way you think about identity in the
first place.
2. The other people who meet a person may influence the way that person’s
identity is expressed.

When you reveal your identity, you often use stories to tell the audience
something about yourself and help them shape their sense of who you are. As with
self-disclosure, so too with stories: They are influenced by both society/culture and
the specific persons or audience to whom you do the telling.

Narrative Self and Altercasting: Transacting Identity by Labels and Stories

People tell stories about themselves and other people all the time and often pay
special care to what they will say, particularly for occasions like job interviews, sales
pitches, and strategic communication of all sorts. You may have noticed that you tell
stories of your identity for consumption by other people in a social context involving
key features of all human stories (see Chapter 2). A report about an identity often
characterizes the self by means of a memory or history in its narrative or a typical
or an amusing instance that involves character (your identity), plot, motives, scenes,
and other actors (see Chapter 2). Therefore, even when you reveal an internal model
of self, it organizes your identity in ways other people understand in terms of the
rules that govern accounts, narratives, and other social reports. As Koenig Kellas
(2008) has pointed out, narratives can be ontology (how I came to be who I am),
epistemology (how I think about the world), individual construction, or a relational
process, such as when a couple tells the story about how they first met.
Reports about an identity have a narrative structure that builds off both the
sense of origin derived from early life and a sense of continuity. The self comes from

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 12 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

somewhere and has roots—“I’m Hispanic,”

“I’m a true Southerner,” “I’m a genuine Irish
McMahan.” Identity comes in part from
narratives of origin, whether personal, cul-
tural, or species. (“Where did I come from?”
“Where did our culture come from?” “How
did humans get started?”) A sense of origin
leads, for most people, straight back to their
family, the first little society that they ever
experienced. The specific context of family
experience is a major and first influence on
a person’s sense of origin and identity, and it
gives the person a sense of connection to a
larger network of others; indeed, in African
American cultures “the family” can be seen
as a whole community that goes beyond the
direct blood ties that define “family” for
some other cultures. The earliest memories
from which you build your sense of origin
are represented in your experiences in child-
hood in some form of family or family-like
environment.
However, your early memories are not
neutral facts. They are loaded, like dice,
by the experiences you had in your fam-
ily. A horrible childhood can make a per-
Photo 5.2 How much of your “self” is a performance son absorb an identity that gives them low
of social roles where you have to act out “who I am” for self-esteem, for example. People who learn
other people? (See page 28.) from their childhood experiences with
parents, teachers, and peers that they are
essentially worthless tend to develop a low
self-esteem and therefore to treat the later
relational world a lot more cautiously and with greater anxiety than do people
who are treated in childhood as interesting, worthy, and good. The latter end up
confident and secure about themselves, whereas those treated by their parents or
caretakers as nuisances not only come to see themselves that way but also become
anxious in relationships or avoid them altogether. A key point, then, is that by
both direct and indirect means, your interactions and communication with other
people shape your views of yourself even when you don’t realize it or necessarily
want it to happen—and this influence is not automatically something you just
grow out of.
Early experiences with other people influence your later life significantly, as a
result of their impact on the thought worlds/worlds of meaning that you develop and
the sense of identity that they create through narratives that you form about yourself

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 13

and your history. The ways they do this range from effects on the way a person ends
up feeling about self and worth as a person, to the goals that people set for life, to
the levels of ability that they feel they have in particular areas, to the ways they relate
to other people, to the dark fears that they hoard all their lives, to their beliefs about
the way to behave properly and appropriately (religious beliefs, rituals about birth-
days, who cares for people emotionally, whether sports “matter”), to whether life is
peacefully cozy or violently conflicted. Early experiences in “the family” lay down
many of the tracks upon which your later life will run.
In part, what you identify as true about yourself relies on you reporting in a
way your audience believes to be coherent and acceptable. It is not just that you
have a self but that you shape the telling of your identity in a way that your culture,
your friends, and your audience will accept. This distinction is like the difference
between the words in a joke and the way someone tells it: The telling adds some-
thing performative to the words, and a person can spoil a joke by telling it badly.
Likewise with identity, it has to be performed or told in appropriate ways. When the
gang member, Purdue fan, or frat boy brags about his achievements to friends, he
probably tells it differently than he would to the police, Indiana University fans, or
the dean of students.
Another way to create and publish an identity is through labeling—that is, by
adopting a particular style of name that labels the characteristics you want to stand
out. If a faculty member refers to himself as “Dr. Dave,” that creates a certain kind
of image, a mixture of professionalism and accessibility and also an amusing cross-
reference to the cultural icon Dr. Phil. These nicknames and labels for the self and
others can be used for creation or reinforcement of a type of identity. In the case
of other people, a technical term used in discussion of communication and identity
is altercasting. Altercasting refers to the how language can force people into a
certain identity and then burden them with the duty to live up to the description,
which can be positive or negative (Marwell & Schmitt, 1967). For example, you
are altercasting when you say, “As a good friend, you will want to help me here” or
“Only a fool would . . .” These direct statements involve a labeling of the listener as
a certain kind of person (or not). The labels position the person to respond appro-
priately (as a friend or not as a fool). More subtly, people can be altercast by some
of the language tactics discussed in Chapter 2. If a mechanic or computer geek uses
technical language (divergence), this altercasts the other person as “nonexpert.”
You could respond by accepting the “one-down” role of a nonexpert and feeling like
a fool, or you could resist by saying something that reasserts your expertise. Even
such small elements of communication transact your identity and the identities of
those people around you.
The idea that you have this onion self revealed in layers is all very well, then,
until you stop to think that you would hardly bother to speak your identity at all—in
fact, there would be no shared language in which to do it—if there were no other
people to be your audience. One absolute requirement for communication is that
someone else hears and understands what you say. When you communicate about
yourself, therefore, it must be because you assume that the audience will understand

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 14 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

you, so you must assume a shared basis for understanding other people. On top of
that, you must assume that some special people—friends, for example—not only
understand your “self” but also do reality checks for you. When people talk about
themselves, then, they assume you, their audience, will be able to comprehend,
interpret, and probably support it to some extent. The above description of Steve, for
example, mentions a Swiss Army knife because that particular item is assumed to
be known in your culture. That means, however, that any description of an identity
is not just a revelation of an inner core but is steered by beliefs about the criteria,
categories, and descriptions that will matter to, or even impress, the relevant audi-
ence. For example, people project a professional identity by wearing smart business
clothes to a job interview, and people can communicate their culture through their
accent and behavior. You have some idea from your own personal experiences about
the ways and categories in which other people experience and expect you to com-
municate “who you are”—and that is a relational point.

Symbolic Identity: Is Your Sense of Self in You or in Your Relationships?

You can already glimpse ways in which your sense of self is influenced by language
frames, culture, origin, membership, and other people’s thoughts about you. But are
you really “who you are” without specific interactions with specific other people?
Don’t you actually do a lot of your identity for other people? You probably do not
behave exactly the same way with your best friend as you do with your mother, your
instructor, or a traffic cop. Most people have a range of identities that they can
turn on as necessary according to circumstances and the other people in the inter-
actions with them. In that case, identity is not so much something that you have
as it is something that you do and communicate to other people in ways that they
recognize. For example, you do not have “Indiana University fan” carved on your
inner core, but you do “Indiana University fan”, for example, by wearing Indiana
University clothing, going to Indiana University games, and making jokes to your
friends about Purdue.
Do you feel like a different person when you are with your friends than when
you’re talking to your mother? Are you the same person all the time, or do you have
good and bad days, and do you ever do things you regret or regard as not typical
of you as a person? Most people have protested that someone has misrepresented
them (and so resisted or contested an altercasting by refusing to accept it). A hostile
or negative person can make you feel very bad about yourself. Have you ever met
anyone who didn’t really “get” what you are about? On the other hand, you may
have had a close relationship with a partner that felt good because you were able
to be your true self around the other person or because the person helped bring
out sides of you that other people could not. Did you struggle to assert an identity
independent from your parents when you were a teenager? If you have had any of
these experiences, you must already be asking yourself how that is possible if “you”
are really one identity. You may also have started to think about how advertising,

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 15

religion, and social fashions influence the ways you dress and act. Other people can
affect what you regard as important, the values you aspire to, the choices that you
make, and how these feed into your sense of identity. Your culture and your identity
at the very least interact with one another, and at most culture accounts for quite a
lot of who you are and how you act.
The lesson is simple: Your identity is shaped by the people you interact with
because you can reflect that your “self” is an object of other people’s perceptions
and that they can do critical thinking or listening about you as well. In short, your
identity is a symbolic self, a self that exists for other people and goes beyond what it
means to you; it arises out of social interaction with other people. As a result, when
and if you reveal yourself, you do so in the terms that society at large uses to explain
behavior. We fit identity descriptions into the form of narratives that your society
and your particular acquaintances know about and accept. Hence, any form of iden-
tity that you present to other people is partly connected to the fact that you buy into
a bank of shared meaning that the particular audience or community accepts as
important in defining a person’s identity.
For example, part of the gang member’s identity is a result of the fact that he
talked with his gang every day, greeted them each day, asked about their families,
and joked around with them. He also probably discussed rival gangs with them, saw
himself as dutiful and good by his/their standards, and knew that his fellow gang
members, at least, would be people he would meet again the next day for conver-
sation and laughter. In short, he was living in a cultural context that tolerated his
actions and, more important, was in a series of repeated relationships with the same
people who shared his values. Tomorrow he would have to preserve and project his
identity to his gang, and he would do this in his conversation, his everyday connec-
tions with them, and the sheer banality of his everyday experience of being alive in
their company—just being the sort of dutiful gang member that he was in his own
eyes and the sort of reliable guy he was in their eyes. If you cheer for Purdue or
Indiana University, you do it in a group of people who share your views and probably
are your friends, people you talk to. You act out your loyalty to your team among your
fellow fans.
Another way of thinking about someone’s identity, then, is in terms of how
broad social forces affect or even transact an individual’s view of who he or she is, a
set of ideas referred to as symbolic interactionism. In particular, George Herbert
Mead (1934) suggested that people get their sense of self from their dealings with
other people and from being aware that other people observe, judge, and evaluate
your behavior. Think of how many times you have done or not done something
because of how you would look to your friends if you did it. Has your family ever
said, “What will the neighbors think?” Mead called this phenomenon the human
ability to adopt an attitude of reflection, to think about how you look in other
people’s eyes, or to reflect on the fact that other people can see you as a social object
from their point of view. Guided by these reflections, you do not always do what
you want to do but what you think people will accept. Or you may end up doing
something you don’t want to do because you cannot think how to say no to another

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 16 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

person in a way that looks reasonable to other people (“SHAN’T!” won’t do). Your
identity, then, is not yours alone. Indeed, Mead also saw self as a transacted result
of communicating with other people: You learn how to be an individual by recog-
nizing the way that society treats you. You come to see yourself (your identity) as
representing someone who is a meaningful object for other people. People recog-
nize you as who you are and treat you differently from other people, so you come
to see yourself as distinct not only in their eyes but also in your own. For example,
physically attractive people often act confidently because they are aware of the fact
that other people find them attractive. On the other hand, unattractive people have
learned that they cannot rely on their looks to make a good impression and may
therefore adapt and develop other ways of impressing other people (for example,
by developing a great sense of humor; Berscheid & Reis, 1998). You come to see
yourself, to some extent, as others see you. You come to see yourself as having the
characteristics that other people treat you as having, and in many cases you play to
those social strengths.
You can, therefore, go further in connecting identity through relationships to
communication. If other people treat you with respect and you come to see yourself
as a respected individual, self-respect becomes part of your inner being. If your par-
ents treat you like a child even though you have now grown up, they evoke from you
some sense that you are still a child, which may cause you to feel resentment. If you
are intelligent and people treat you as interesting, you may come to see yourself as
having different value to other people than does someone who is not intelligent. You
get so used to the idea that it gets inside your “identity” and becomes part of who
you are, but it originated from other people, not from you. If you are tall, tough, and
muscular (not short, bald, and carrying a Swiss Army knife), perhaps people habitu-
ally treat you with a bit of respect and caution. Over time you get used to the idea,
and identity is enacted and transacted in communication as a person who expects
respect and a little caution from other people. Eventually, you will not have to act
in an intimidating way in order to make people respectful. Your manner of com-
municating (whether in talk or nonverbal behavior or both) reflects their approach
to you, and their way of communicating reflects it back. Yet your identity began in
the way you were treated by other people, and it eventually becomes transacted in
communication.
Another way of thinking about this is to see how “society” gets your friends to do
its work for it. You have never met a society or a culture, and you never will. You will
only ever meet people who (re)present some of a society’s or a culture’s key values
to you. This contact with other folks puts them in the role of society’s secret agents.
These people you meet and talk with are doing your culture’s and your society’s work
and are enacting the way in which that culture represents the sorts of values that are
desirable within it. In short, when you communicate with other people in your cul-
ture, you get information about what works and what doesn’t, what is acceptable and
what isn’t, and how much you count in that society—what your identity is “worth.”
For example, the dominant culture in the United States typically values ambition,

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 17

good looks, hard work, demonstration of material

success, and a strong code of individuality, and
people stress those values in their talk with one When you go home from college where
another or else feel inadequate because they don’t you are “an adult,” you may end up being
stack up against these values. treated in the family back home as “a
Of course, you cannot escape the influence kid” or, at the very best, “a grown-up
on your self-concept of people with whom you kid.” What communicative styles and
are forced to interact whether you like them techniques can you identify as bringing
or not (coworkers, professors, or relatives, for this about?
example), but the principle is the same even
though you most often think of the influence
of your friends and relatives or key teachers on
yourself. Nonfriends may challenge aspects of your sense of identity and make
you reflect on the question, “Who am I?” Sometimes this reflection results in your
confidence in your opinions being reinforced, and sometimes it results in them
being undermined, reconsidered, or modified, but even the challenges and discus-
sions of everyday communication transact some effect on your view of self, your
identity. Your sense of self/identity comes from interactions with other people in
society as a whole.

Photo 5.3 What is meant by a symbolic self, and why do we have to account to other people
for who we are? (See page 28.)

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 18 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

Transacting a Self in Interactions With Others

In keeping with this book’s theme, you can’t have a self without also having rela-
tionships with other people—both the personal relationships you choose and the
social relationships you reject. More than that, it’s impossible for a person to have a
concept of self unless he or she can reflect on identity via the views of these other
people with whom he or she has social or personal relationships. Your identity is
transacted or constituted in part from two things: First, you take into yourself—or
are reinforced for taking into yourself—the beliefs and prevailing norms of the soci-
ety in which you live. Second, you are held to account for the identity that you project
by those people you hang out with. The gang member would have lost status in the
gang if he had not shot his target. As a Purdue fan, you lose face if you don’t know
the score during your game with Indiana University or cannot name your own team’s
quarterback. As a student, you are expected to know answers about the book you are
reading for your class.
Let us rephrase this point: Because individuals acquire individuality through
the social practices in which they exist and carry out their lives, they encounter
powerful forces of society that are actually enforced on the ground by society’s secret
agents, their relationships with other people that affect their identities. (That “raised
eyebrow” from your neighbor/instructor/team fan was actually society at work!) Your
“self” is structured and enacted in relation to those people who have power over you
in formal ways, like the police, but most often you encounter the institutions within
a society through its secret agents: public opinion and the people you know who
express opinions about moral issues of the day and give you their judgments. You,
too, are one of society’s secret agents, guiding what other people do and thinking
just as they do.
Again, your identity is a complex result of your own thinking, history, and expe-
rience and of your interaction with other people and their influence on you, both as
an individual and as one of society’s secret agents. Behind all those things that you
think of as simply abstract social structures, like “the law,” individuals are acting in
relation to one another (you and the police officer). These social relations get inter-
nalized into yourself, and you slow down at speed-limit signs not because you want
to but because you saw the police car and don’t want a ticket.
It is important to note how the routine banality of everyday-life talk with friends
who share the same values and talk about them day by day actually does something
for society and helps make you who you are. Such routines reinforce people’s per-
spectives and put events in the same sorts of predictable and routine frameworks of
meaning through trivial and pedestrian communication with one another in every-
day life (Wood & Duck, 2006). But—here’s the point of this section, so remember
it well—you do your identity in front of the audiences, and they might evaluate and
comment on whether you’re doing it right. Although we used the extreme case about
the gang member as an attention grabber, the same kinds of processes are going on
in interaction when you profess your undying allegiance to one football team and

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 19

Strategic Communication

Look at your Facebook profile. How do you think you look? Take a closer look, this
time at the profiles of the members of your class. How do you think they are trying
to present themselves as individuals? Take notes and discuss it in class.

your supposed hatred of the opposing team. The people around you do not resent it
but actually encourage you and reinforce your expression of that identity. They share
it and support it. Just as the gang member accepted his identity with all its disturb-
ing implications, so do you when you categorize the opposing team as some kind of
enemy. The underlying idea—that a group of people can be treated as nothing more
than depersonalized, dehumanized others—runs through team loyalty and rivalry,
town versus college kids, and any other kind of stereotyping.

Performative Self
So now that you know the importance of other people in influencing who you are,
you are ready to move on to look more closely at the curious idea that you don’t just
have an identity; you actually do one. Part of an identity is not just having a symbolic
sense of it but doing it in the presence of other people and doing it well in their
eyes. This is an extremely interesting and provocative fact about communication:
Everyone does his or her identity for an audience, like an actor in a play. Facework is
part of what happens in everyday-life communication (Chapter 2), and people have
a sense of their own dignity and image—the person they want to be seen as. That is
part of what gets transacted in everyday communication by the person and by others
in the interaction who politely protect and preserve the person’s “face.” We can now
restate this idea for the present chapter as being the performance of one’s identity in
public, the presentation of the self to people in a way that is intended to make the
self look good.
Erving Goffman (1959) dealt with this particular problem and indicated the
way in which momentary social forces affect identity portrayal. Goffman was partic-
ularly interested in how identity is performed in everyday life and how people man-
age their image in a way that makes them “look good” (Cupach & Metts, 1994). You
will already have worked out for yourself that the concept of “looking good” means
“looking good to other people.” It is therefore essentially a relational concept, but it
takes you one step closer to looking at the interpersonal interaction that occurs on
the ground every day. Rather than looking at society in the generalized and abstract
way that George Herbert Mead did, Goffman focused on what you actually do in
conversations and interactions.

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 20 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

As you recall, your portrayal of yourself is shaped by the social needs at the
time, the social situation, the social frame, and the circumstances surrounding
your performance. Remember the server from Chapter 1? She does not introduce
herself that way to her friends (“Hi, I’m Roberta, and I’ll be your server tonight . .�����
 ����
.”)
except as a joke, so her performance of the server identity is restricted to those
times and places where it is called for and appropriate. Goffman differentiated a
front region and back region to social performance: The front region/front stage
is where your professional, proper self is performed. For example, a server is all
smiles and civility in the front stage of the restaurant when talking to customers.
This behavior might be different from how he or she performs in the back region/
backstage (say, the restaurant kitchen) when talking with the cooks or other serv-
ers and making jokes about the customers or being disrespectful to them. That
means the performance of your identity is not sprung into action by your own free
wishes but by social cues that this is the right place and time to perform your “self”
in that way.
An identity is a person making sense of the world not just for him- or herself
but in a way that makes sense within a context provided by others. Any identity con-
nects to other identities. You can be friendly when you are with your friends, but you
are expected to be professional when on the job and to do student identity when in
class. An individual inevitably draws on knowledge that is shared in any community
to which he or she belongs, so any person draws on information and knowledge that
are both personal and communal. If you change from thinking of identity as about
“self as character” and instead see it as “self as performer,” you also must consider
the importance of linguistic competence in social performance, and that includes
not doing or saying embarrassing or foolish things.

Performing Self Badly: Embarrassment and Predicaments

Embarrassment is one of the big problems of social life and involves you actually
performing a behavior that is inconsistent with the identity or face that you want
to present. Cupach and Metts (1994; Metts, 2000) have done a large amount of
research on this topic. Someone who wants to impress an interviewer but instead
spills coffee on her lap will be embarrassed because her “face” of professional com-
petence is undercut by clumsiness; someone who wants to present a “face” of being
cool but who suddenly blushes or twitches will probably feel embarrassed because
the nonverbal behavior contradicts the identity of being cool. In both cases the
actual performance of an identity (face) is undercut by a specific behavior that just
does not fit that presentation of face.
People can be embarrassed by dumb acts that undercut their performative
self, the doing of the identity that they have claimed for themselves (such as pro-
fessional competence), momentarily like this, or they can get into longer-term
predicaments that present a greater challenge to the performative self. Think of

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 21

predicaments as extended embarrassment. If you go to a job interview and your

very first answer makes you look stupid, you know you are still going to have to
carry on through the interview anyway, with the interviewers all thinking you are
a hopeless, worthless, and unhireable idiot. You’d rather jump into a vat of boiling
sulfur right now, but you cannot; you have to sit it out watching their polite smiles
and feeling terrible.
Predicaments, like standing up to give a speech and realizing you brought
only Page 1 of your 10 pages of notes can be a real test of character (it was for
one of us authors, anyway), but predicaments test the performative self and chal-
lenge the person to live up to the claims presented in the symbolic identity that
the face set up. Of course, predicaments are modified by relationships. As people
become closer and more intimate, they are allowed to breach the presentation of
one another’s face to a greater degree than strangers may do (Metts, 2000). Part
of knowing someone well is that you can cross the normal social, physical, or psy-
chological boundaries that exist for everyone else who does not know him or her
so well.
Mock putdowns are quite a common form of intimate banter in English-speak-
ing countries but not in Eastern cultures, which suggests that the notion of face and
identity is a culturally influenced one on top of everything else that influences it.
However, the idea that people work together in relationships to uphold one another’s
face through politeness is an important one, called teamwork by Goffman (1971).
Direct challenges to another person’s competence (“You are a failure!”) are openly
offensive in most circumstances, although, the more intimate the relationship is,
they are tolerated to a greater degree. Friends are permitted a great deal more lati-
tude in making such comments than strangers are, and less offense is taken when
a friend says such a thing than would be taken if a stranger or relatively distant and
unknown colleague at work said it. Bosses may say it directly to an inferior because
they have social power to break normal social rules, but it can still hurt. A worker
who said it to a boss would be seen quite unambiguously as stepping outside the
proper relational and hierarchical boundaries. This very fact makes a point that both
context and relationships serve to define the sorts of communication about identity
that are accepted, and vice versa. Except in live standup comedy shows where audi-
ence members attend expecting to see someone (preferably someone else) humili-
ated, the open attack on someone’s identity management is a relational communica-
tion with great power and shock value.

Make Your Case

What was your most embarrassing experience, and why was it embarrassing? What
did it say about you? What did you do about it?

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 22 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

How the Self Is Constituted/Transacted in Everyday Practices

Although this chapter has been about personal identity, we have seen that identity is
molded by the ways in which the surrounding culture influences its expression, the
way that you do your identity and are recognized as having one. Once you recognize
that your identity is not just an internal structure but also a practical performance,
the relevant communication involved in “being yourself” is affected by the social
norms that are in place to guide behavior in a given society. People judge your iden-
tity performance and expect you to know about the same practical world and explain
or account for yourself.
Your identity is done in a material world that affects who you are. For example,
the fact that you can communicate with other people more or less instantaneously
across huge distances by mobile telephone materially affects your sense of con-
nection to other people. This practical self—and how the ability to do practical
things affects your sense of self—is illustrated by the importance to many young
people of learning to drive a car. When you can drive, not only do you go through
the transformation of self as “more of a grown-up,” but you can actually do lots of
things when you have a car that you cannot do when you do not have one, so your
sense of identity expands. Part of your performance of self is connected to the prac-
tical artifacts, accompaniments, and “stuff” that you use in your performance. If
you have the right “stuff” (professional suit, bling, or a sports car), the self that you
project is different from the self you perform when those things are not influencing
your performance.
An important element of doing an identity in front of an audience is that you
become an accountable self, which essentially allows your identity to be morally
judged by other people. What you do can be assessed by other people as right or
wrong according to existing habits of society. Any practical way of performing iden-
tity turns identity itself into a moral action—that is, identity as a way of living based
on choices made about actions that a person sees as available or relevant but that
others will judge and hold to account. This point moves the discussion about social
construction of identity on from interaction with other people through the force
of society and its value systems. Society as a whole encourages you to take certain
actions (do not park next to fire hydrants, protect the elderly and the weak, be a good
neighbor, recycle!)
Moral accountability (which is related to the moral context for narratives) is a
fancy way of saying that society as a whole makes judgments about your actions and
choices and then holds you to account for the actions and choices that you make, but
it also forcefully encourages you to act in particular ways and to see specific types
of identity as “good” (patriot is good, traitor is bad; loyalty is good, thief is bad; open
self-disclosure is good, passive aggression is bad, for example).
The identity that you thought of as your own personality, then, is not made up of
your own desires and impulses but is formed, performed, and expressed within a set
of social patterns and judgments built up by values and practices in a community or

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 23

Photo 5.4 How is your identity transacted in everyday practices? (See page 28.)

culture through the relationships that people have with one another in it. The gang
members did not call the shooter to account; the Indiana University fan is not asked
why she is cheering for Indiana University by other Indiana University fans.
For all of these reasons, it makes sense to see a person’s identity as a complex
and compound concept that is partly based on history, memory, experiences, and
interpretations by the individual, partly evoked by momentary aspects of talk (its
context, the people you are with, your stage in life, your goals at the time), and
partly a social creation directed by other people, society and its categories, and your
relationship needs and objectives in those contexts. Your performance of the self
is guided by your relationships with other people, as well as your social goals. Even
your embodiment of this knowledge or your sense of self is shaped by your social
practices with other people and your sense of their valuing your physical being. Your
self-consciousness in their presence and the ways you deal with it also influence
the presentation of yourself to other people. Although a sense of self/identity is
experienced on the ground in your practical interactions with other people, you
get trapped by language into reporting it abstractly as some sort of disembodied

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 24 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

“identity,” a symbolic representation of the little practices and styles of behavior

that you actually experience in your daily interactions with other people. Once
again, then, another apparently simple idea (identity, personality, self) runs into
the relational influences that make the basics of communication so valuable
to study.
The following table summarizes what we’ve learned in this chapter about iden-
tity and relationships.

Table 5.1  Some Ways to See Identity Communication and Relationships

Psychic/Reflective Self Habits of thought/of behavior/of perception/“personality”

What you normally think of as identity a priori: Your communicative behavior just
expresses the inner self.

Symbolic Self Broad social forces affect self differentiation/characterization.

Self arises out of social interaction and not vice versa; hence it does not “belong to
me.” You are who you are because of the people you hang out with, interact with
and communicate with; you can be a different identity in different circumstances

Performative Self Present social situation affects self-portrayal.

Selves act themselves out in a network of social demands and norms; you do your
identity in front and back regions differently and try to present the right “face” to
the people you are with.

Practical Self Material world affects self/how you think of self.

Practical aspects of materiality transform the concept of self. Your identity
is represented by objects that symbolically make claims about the sort of
person you are.

Accountable Self Social context influences broad forms of portrayal.

Personality is just an abstract concept. People act within a set of social ideas
and habitual styles of thinking, allowing other people to comment and steer how
we behave.

Improvisational There is a rhetorical spin to this and how “self” is presented.

Performance Ideology affects the manner of presentation of terms, characteristics, and so on. We
try to narrate ourselves in the way that our society expects us to represent identity.

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 25

Focus Questions Revisited

n Is a person’s identity like an onion, built layer by layer and communicated slowly
as intimacy increases?
For some reasons and purposes, it makes sense for us to see identity this
way, but it really is not the only way that “identity” actually works in the
everyday encounters of relationship life.
n How do daily interactions with other people form or sustain your identity?
In at least two ways: Their responses to us affect the way we feel about
ourselves; also they act as society’s secret agents in innocently enforcing
society’s norms and beliefs through their comments on our own styles of
behavior and identity performance.
n How much of your “self” is a performance of social roles where you have to act out
“who I am” for other people?
Much of what you do in everyday life is steered by your awareness of
yourself as a social object for other people—hence, your performance
for them of the roles and styles of behavior that are appropriate in the
circumstances. Your “inner self” may be constrained by this awareness.
n What is meant by a symbolic self, and why do we have to account to other people
for who we are?
Your “self” is presented to other people as a symbol, and you have to
describe yourself in terms and phrases that your audiences recognize
as symbolically meaningful in the culture. You are also able to take an
attitude of reflection that recognizes that you are an object of other people’s
perceptions and judgment. You will remember from Chapter 1 that people
can observe your behavior and “go beyond” it to its symbolic meaning.
n What is the role of culture in your identity experiences?
Culture has multiple roles in identity experience. For one thing, cultures
regard “individuality” differently; for another thing, your origin from a
particular culture steers the way you think about people and their styles of
behavior; for still another thing, your culture is part of your identity, and
people proudly claim their cultural heritage as part of “who they are.”

Key Concepts
accountable self dialectic tension
altercasting front region
attitude of reflection identity
back region labeling

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 26 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

moral accountability self-disclosure

norm of reciprocity symbolic interactionism
performative self symbolic self
predicaments teamwork
self-concept

Questions to Ask Your Friends

n Discuss with your friends or classmates the most embarrassing moment
that you feel comfortable talking about, and try to find what about the
experience threatened your identity. What identity were you projecting at
the time, and what went wrong with the performance?
n Look at how advertisers sell the image of particular cars in terms of what
they will make you look like to other people; the advertisers recognize
that your identity is tied up in your material possessions. Include in this
consideration the following topics: How is your identity affected by your
preferences in music, the Web, fashion magazines, resources, or wealth?
n Get a group of friends together and ask them each to write down what sort
of vegetable, fish, dessert, book, piece of furniture, style of music, meal,
car, game, or building best represents their identity. Read the responses
out loud and have everyone guess which person is described.

Media Links
n Watch the movie Sideways and fast-forward to the veranda scene where
Miles talks to Maya about his preference for wine and it becomes
apparent that he is using wine as a metaphor about himself. He projects
his identity through his interest in and knowledge about the subtleties of
wines, and he uses it to describe himself and his hopes that Maya will
learn to understand him.

Maya: You know, can I ask you a personal question, Miles?

Miles: Sure.
Maya: Why are you so in to Pinot?
Miles: [laughs softly]
Maya: I mean, it’s like a thing with you.

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 Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y n 27

Miles: [continues laughing softly] Uh, I don’t know, I don’t know. Um, it’s
a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It’s uh, it’s thin-skinned,
temperamental, ripens early. It’s, you know, it’s not a survivor like
Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when
it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You
know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little,
tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient
and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who
really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can then
coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors,
they’re just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and
subtle and . . . ancient on the planet.

n Bring examples to class from magazines or TV shows that demonstrate

how media representation of ideal selves (especially demands on women
to be a particular kind of shape, but try to be more imaginative than just
these images) are constantly thrown in our path.
n How do media shows encourage us to be open, honest, and real? Does The
Jerry Springer Show and the like teach us anything about the “right” ways
to be ourselves?

Ethical Issues
n If your identity is partly constructed by other people, how does this play
out in relation to diversity, cultural sensitivity, and political correctness
versus speaking the truth?
n Analyze the difficulties for someone “coming out” in terms of performance,
social expectations, norms, and relationships with those around the
person.
n If you have a guilty secret and are getting into a deep romantic relationship
with someone, should you tell him or her early on or later? Or should you
not tell him or her at all?

Answers to Photo Captions

n Photo 5.1 n Answer to photo caption on page 5: There are messages about
identity both “inside” the picture and “outside” it: The performance of
femininity and womanhood are being communicated to the girl, a sense
of the importance of looks and the enhancement of natural appearance in

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 28 n Chapter 5 n Self and Identit y

private. The picture also communicates to outsiders the role of personal

hygiene in personal identity.
n Photo 5.2 n Answer to photo caption on page 12: On special occasions
we adopt prescribed roles, dress in prescribed ways, and enact prescribed
rituals and behaviors in order to “do the right thing.” A wedding is a classic
example of how two individuals can temporarily lose control over their
relationship as other people tell them how to perform and pressure them
into acting as others want them to.
n Photo 5.3 n Answer to photo caption on page 17: Your identity represents
something symbolic to other people, and they may respond to aspects
of yourself that trivialize and humiliate you. The African Americans are
being driven off a “Whites only” beach in 1963.
n Photo 5.4 n Answer to photo caption on page 23: Interactions and
experience with other people give us a sense of our own identity and
what it means to hold certain values and carry out certain types of action.
This boy is learning how to “be a man” in his local community.

References
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