The Grammar of Identity

Abstract

The selves of individuals abhor vacuums and find themselves constituting identities with which to fill them. Such identities are either conferred by others or chosen by the agents themselves and cultivated and processed and presented. The processing of identities is best described by using Kenneth Burke's dramatistic grammar. He asked, “What is involved when we ask what a man is doing and why he is doing it?” and he answered that the individual will be performing an act as an agent by using one agency or another in defined scenes while displaying one attitude or another, in order to fulfill one purpose or another. In the current essay, these Burkean arguments are applied to the constitution; the processing (that is, choosing one among the multiple identities that an agent bears); and the performing of an identity. It is claimed that identities are constituted in one way or another and performed by processing them according to the Burkean grammar. Identities are not ways of being but ways of doing, by taking one road rather than another.

Citation

Perinbanayagam, R. (2024), "The Grammar of Identity", Denzin, N.K. and Chen, S.-L.S. (Ed.) Essential Issues in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 59), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 125-144. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620240000059007