Discursive construction of social identity: a conceptual model for the linguistic analysis of language markers

The context-dependent nature of the social meaning of linguistic resources complicates the development of criteria for determining when such resources can be treated as markers of social identity. The article aims to develop a conceptual model for the linguistic analysis of social identity markers by specifying functional categories and criteria for their analytical identification in discourse. The study is theoretical and methodological in nature and draws on an analytical-thematic review of scholarship in the sociology of identity, sociolinguistics, and sociocultural linguistics, combined with conceptual analysis and modelling. The model distinguishes between a linguistic resource and its analytical status as a marker of social identity, with marker status established on the basis of the resource’s function in a specific discourse context and the relevance of that function to processes of social identification. Five operational categories are distinguished on functional grounds: nomination, attribution, identification, positioning, and relationality. They refer, respectively, to the categorical designation of social actors, the attribution of socially significant characteristics, the establishment of membership or non-membership in a social category or community, the construction of an actor’s position in interaction, and the construction of socially significant relations between actors or groups. The categories are parallel rather than sequential and are not assigned a priori to specific linguistic forms. The methodological contribution of the model lies in establishing an operational link between theoretical accounts of social identification and the context-dependent nature of social meaning, on the one hand, and the functional categorisation of linguistic data, on the other, without directly converting theoretical principles into coding categories. The model captures discursively accessible manifestations of social identification but does not warrant conclusions about social identity beyond the discourse under analysis. Further empirical validation is required to assess the discriminability of the functional categories and the robustness of the criteria used to identify them.