Week 15: Discourse, Gender n Identity

Identity in discourse is a complex issue which goes beyond the question of either the social or personal identities of the participants. Intercultural communication as a field has long recognized that while individual participants may work with the best of intentions, because of culturally structured differences in discursive frames, participants in a discourse may not successfully interpret the intentions of others. News reports of international negotiations, for example, often say that talks have broken down because one side has accused the other of insincerity. 

Social constructionists employ discourse analysis as a method for research on gender identity. Discursive psychology is one of most important approaches within discourse analysis in the field of social psychology. In contrast to traditional cognitive psychology which treats language as a resource, providing clues as to what is going on inside people’s minds or brains, discursive psychology sees language as its topics, examining the ways in which people talk about or construct things like attitudes, memories and emotions.