Analysing Identities in Discourse Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies. General Editors Ruth Wodak and Greg Myers University of Lancaster Editorial address: Ruth Wodak, Bowland College, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster University, LANCASTER LA1 4YT, UK [email protected] and [email protected] Advisory Board Hayward Alker† Teun A. van Dijk Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles Barcelona Denmark Irène Bellier Konrad Ehlich Christina Schäffner Maison des Sciences de Ludwig-Maximilians Aston University l’Homme, Paris, France Universität, Munich Ron Scollon Michael Billig Mikhail V. Ilyin Louis de Saussure Loughborough University Polis, Moscow University of Genève Jan Blommaert Andreas H. Jucker Tilburg University University of Zurich Paul Chilton J.R. Martin University of Lancaster University of Sydney J.W. Downes Luisa Martín Rojo University of East Anglia Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Volume 28 Analysing Identities in Discourse Edited by Rosana Dolón and Júlia Todolí Analysing Identities in Discourse Edited by Rosana Dolón Júlia Todolí Universidad de Valencia John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Analysing identities in discourse / edited by Rosana Dolón, Júlia Todolí. p. cm. -- (Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, ISSN 1569-9463 ; v. 28) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis--Political aspects. 2. Ethnicity. 3. Nationalism. 4. Identity (Psychology) I. Dolón, Rosana. II. Todolí, Júlia. P302.77.A55 2008 401'.41--dc22 2007046496 isbn 978 90 272 2719 5 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents Preface vii Rosana Dolón and Júlia Todolí Part 1. Introduction Identities in discourse: An integrative view 3 Héctor Grad & Luisa Martín Rojo Part 2. Discursive construction of identity in educational contexts Imposing and resisting ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms 3 1 Luisa Martín Rojo The construction of patriotic discourse in Chinese basal readers 57 Yongbing Liu The denial of Palestinian national and territorial identity in Israeli schoolbooks of history and geography 1996–2003 77 Nurit Peled-Elhanan Part 3. National and cultural identity The discursive building of European identity: Diverse articulations of compatibility between European and national identities in Spain and the UK 111 Hector Grad 9–11 Response(s): Three Arab-American groups respond discursively to the attacks of September 11, 2001 131 Lutfi M. Hussein  Analysing Identities in Discourse Part 4. Identity construction and human suffering Sexual assault trials, discursive identities and institutional change 159 Susan Ehrlich The representation of PLWHAs and the dangerous ‘other’ 179 Lean, Mei Li & Lee, Stella Meng Hui Index 201 Preface Rosana Dolón and Júlia Todolí The motivation for the conception of this monographic volume was twofold: in the first place, we were aware of a social, cultural and anthropological need for re- search into the discursive construction of identity that considers the individual’s dynamic exposure and participation in the current life scenario – a need eloquent- ly illustrated by Triandafyllidou & Wodak (2003: 208): “Today more than before, identity is dynamic and constantly in evolution as people are more exposed to new stimuli and challenges and perhaps more in need of an identity/a set of collective identities that may provide important “anchors” in a world that is constantly in flux.” The second factor was our belief that this research very clearly demands a critical approach. When Wetherell (2001: 187) noted that identity is understood as “a set of culturally available performances sanctioned through power relations”, she was emphasising the fact that power and domination not only restrict the in- dividual’s performances, but that the discursive construction of identity is often under the control of the dominant forces and therefore it is often the result of forms of manipulation and abuse. This concern was apparent in the celebration of our First International Confer- ence on CDA, held in Valencia in 2004. The conference was attended by over three hundred academics who contributed to debates and critically engaged in discus- sions on a variety of topics, subjecting their findings from different contexts to their own analysis and, perhaps most importantly, to the critical lens of the other participants. The seven articles included in this volume have been carefully se- lected from the colloquium. The aim of this issue is to focus on specific contexts where the discursive con- struction of identity is circumscribed by various forms of power abuse and domi- nation. The contextual orientation is by no means random; there were two main criteria involved: firstly, we chose those areas that were most representative of the conference in that they occupied most intellectual attention. Secondly, the selec-  Analysing Identities in Discourse tion was based on those areas of human experience that are especially in need of a critical analysis. The introduction attempts to make this need clear and evident. The papers presented here share the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, where critical means not just setting out to unravel linguistic and textual traces – the so-called ‘proof’ of dominance and power abuse; it begins with a specific re- search attitude which necessarily integrates the reflexive reader. Critical analysis does not assume or take anything for granted, it unwinds or rather rewinds, gen- erating new questions where the answers are apparently given and accepted, prob- lematising in an endeavour to engender compromise and commitment (see the introduction by Martín Rojo & Grad). Our objective is to encourage this reflexive attitude in the scholar in particular, and the discourse reader in general. We would also like this book to serve another purpose: When Habermas (1984), Freire & Macedo (1987) put forward the concept of emancipatory dis- course (with the meaning of what could be defined as counter-ideological repre- sentations acting and articulating interests in transformative ways), they antici- pated what Luke (2002) explicitly claimed to be a need: the need to go beyond ideological critique and to develop a powerful thesis about the productive uses of power, a thesis which would capture an affirmative character of culture, with dis- course being used aesthetically and for emancipatory purposes. We attempt to base ourselves on Luke’s reflection, whilst not specifically placing research in the productive, aesthetic use of discourse, we would like the critical studies in this volume to trigger and encourage social responses and forms of social comprehen- sion which could eventually result in social change. This is where the commitment of the critical analyst should lead us. We hope that this selection of articles will encourage the consciousness of the reader to move in that direction as well. Contents of this issue This volume is made up of three, interlinked sections: the first deals with the dis- cursive construction of identity in educational contexts, and includes the papers authored by Luisa Martín Rojo, Yongbing Liu and Nurit Peled-Elhanan; the sec- ond section presents articles by Héctor Grad and Lutfi Hussein, and considers the construction of national and cultural identity, while the third part is devoted to identity construction and human suffering with contributions from Susan Ehr- lich and Mei Li Lean & Stella M.H. Lee Martín Rojo’s study represents a critical analysis of the discursive construction of social identities (class, national and ethnic identity). The author explores the link between identity construction in discourse and processes of domination, where domination is seen as enacted by the imposition of social categories, repre- Preface  sentations, roles and their internalisation. Though domination relationships imply power asymmetries, these may be challenged by processes of resistance and more specifically, the production of identitarian counter-discourses. The author focuses on both the social implications and conflicts between imposed and conquered identities, concentrating on the imposition of and resistance to ethnic categoriza- tion and prejudices. Her corpus comprises ethnographic fieldwork studies in mul- ticultural schools in Madrid. Liu, on the other hand, has investigated discursive practice as a construction of selected versions of China for child readers, who are positioned in terms of loyal citizens to manipulated ideological forces. To combat what is described as “a profound identity crisis”, the cultural elites have begun to construct a new version of Chinese nationalism that also serves to legitimatise the status quo in an increas- ingly divided society. Thus, instead of embodying a patriotic discourse by promot- ing sustainable economic development or by solving social problems, the Chinese government portrays Chinese people as living happily in a unique and beautiful land, by means of metaphors, specific lexical choices and grammatical categories. The corpus has been retrieved from standardised textbooks aimed at basal Chi- nese language readers. Peled-Elhanan, relying on the concepts of hypertext, hypotext (Genette), elite racism (Reisigle and Wodak) and representation of social actors (vanLeeuwen and Kress), examines the ways in which Israeli schoolbooks represent the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied territories of the West Bank. The paper does not only examine texts but also the use of visuals and the special function of captions to reveal that Israeli schoolbooks’ discourse responds to all the criteria of a racist discourse, as it uses strategies of passivation, objectivation, categorisation, assimilation and exclusion when referring to Palestinians. Her cor- pus relies on a multimodal analysis of history and geography textbooks. Section two opens with Grad’s analysis of the discursive construction of Euro- pean identity and its compatibility or conflict with national identities in the UK and Spain from the perspective of social psychology. His research reveals Carte- sian (automatic) and subjective (non-automatic) construction mechanisms of compatibility and contradiction between European and national identities. The implications for classical Social Identity Theory (Brewer 1991, Tajfel 1978 and Turner et al. 1987) are discussed, as well as the implications for identification with the European Union as an imagined community, and identification with this so- cial category. The corpus used by the author contains in-depth interviews with young adults. The data were obtained from the ‘Youth and European Identity’ project, funded by the European Commission. Hussein has studied the case of Arabs that have lived in the USA for decades and how they negotiate their political, religious and ethnic/racial identities. As an