Conversation Analysis: Creation of Social Identity Among Ha Speakers

Social identity is a complex construct that is continually shaped and reshaped through interactions, including casual conversations. It is during these seemingly inconsequential exchanges that individuals negotiate and create their social identity, often subconsciously. In the discursive negotiations of the creation of social identity, various conversational features are employed. This paper explores the features that Ha speakers use to create social identities by adopting a qualitative approach with which it uses ethnographic design to collect the data. The data gathered were casual conversations. It qualitatively analysed the conversations captured from different contexts to find out how interactants use conversation as a resource to create their social identities. The findings of this paper include a range of interactional devices that Ha speakers employ to create their social identities. These include repair mechanisms, distribution of turns, turn length, code switching and code mixing, membership categorisation, and unfolding of the assumed silent great social identity. The paper demonstrates how interactional devices used in conversations are potential resources when the user of the language is socialised to use them intentionally to gain an advantage over the conversational counterpart. The paper recommends that, since the interactional devices are potential resources that can be used profitably to gain an advantage from the conversational counterpart or an audience, they should be exposed and interactively socialised to the members of the society from childhood.