28.5294, Review: English; Modern Greek; Discourse Analysis: Georgalou (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-5294. Wed Dec 13 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.5294, Review: English; Modern Greek; Discourse Analysis: Georgalou (2017)

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Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 17:04:47
From: Sibo Chen [siboc at sfu.ca]
Subject: Discourse and Identity on Facebook

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-2698.html

AUTHOR: Mariza  Georgalou
TITLE: Discourse and Identity on Facebook
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Discourse
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The growing popularity of computer mediated communication (CMC), as shown in
mushrooming digital technologies available for the public, has brought a
unique challenge for researchers: new, emerging online practices are taken for
granted so quickly that when they have been sufficiently incorporated into
teaching and research, a sense of datedness is almost inevitable. As such, the
merit of CMC research often hinges on whether a study can “capture the
moment”, revealing the deeper social-cultural dynamics that will exist beyond
digital infrastructure. In this regard, “Discourse and identity on Facebook”
offers an insightful exploration into online identity construction and
performance. It adds another welcoming volume to the widely-circulated
Bloomsbury Discourse Series. The central focus of the volume is how Facebook,
as a vibrant socio-cultural arena, mediates online identity manifestations.
Based on a detailed longitudinal online ethnography of five Greek Facebook
users, it convincingly demonstrates the diversity and complexity of online
identity formation. 

To begin with, Chapters 1–3 outline the theoretical and methodological
dimensions of the volume. Chapter 1 “Introduction” initiates the discussion
with a techno-autobiography of a typical day of the author, which illustrates
the extent to which digital technologies have been domesticated in daily life.
The chapter then discusses the importance of studying identity on Facebook,
arguing that online identity is essentially realized through textual practices
and that the affordance of self-presentative opportunities offered by Facebook
allow users to consciously play around their identities through the interplay
of language and other semiotic means. In continuing this line of argument,
Chapter 2 “Identity, discourse and Facebook” reviews key theories of identity
and discourse. According to the author, identity theories can be grouped into
either essentialist or constructivist perspectives, depending on whether
identity is regarded as an absolute and invariant aspect of selfhood.
Following the constructivist perspective, the current volume considers
identity as a dynamic, flexible, and contextual attribute that is actively and
constantly produced and reproduced by discourse. As “the representation of
one’s persona in a digital context” (p. 13), online identity presents the
latest dimension of identity formation, as the digital arena’s openness,
social interactivity, and accessibility have been dramatically enhanced by Web
2.0. Chapter 3 moves to the topic of online ethnography and discusses the
method’s key principles. Given its discourse-centered nature, the reported
study combined both screen-based and participant-based dimensions by
juxtaposing textual analysis of Facebook data and direct interactions with the
research participants. The chapter also describes the reported study’s five
Greek participants, whose bibliographic details are provided in preparation
for the detailed, in-depth discourse analyses in upcoming chapters.

Chapters 4–8 examine five topical issues and how they are influenced by
Facebook’s multimodal environment: place, time, profession and education,
stance-taking, and privacy. Chapter 4 “Place and identity on Facebook”
explores a fundamental constituent of our everyday being: the places we are
attached to. As all participants in the current study are frequent travellers
across Europe, their Facebook posts constitute multiple-placed identities, in
which place marking in profile information and posts (often accompanied by
photos) becomes an essential part of the participants’ identity construction
practices. Place marking in these participants’ posts visualized their
footprints, their hobbies, their socio-political opinions, and so on. Places,
as the author argues, are not simply references, they are adopted in the
digital space as a symbolic resource for self-expression online. Chapter 5
“Time, age and identity on Facebook” continues the discussion by focusing on
temporality, another fundamental constituent of everyday being. The central
question explored here is how Facebook users position themselves vis-à-vis
time. The expression of temporality on Facebook is constrained by the
platform’s digital structure in two notable ways: first, Facebook is
present-oriented, encouraging the celebration of the moment; and second,
Facebook interactions are inherently asynchronous, allowing the recording of
life. As such, references to time on Facebook simultaneously serve two
purposes: they usually begin as expressions concerning the cyclical nature of
everyday life or important life moments (e.g. birthday, or upcoming graduation
day), but later they turn into building blocks for an interactive, co-authored
digital memory bank of one’s online self-continuum. As facilitated by the
digital environment, narratives contributing to time and age identities tend
to be interactional and collaborative. Chapter 6 “Professional and educational
identity on Facebook” attends to the ways in which Facebook mediates the
construction and display of educational and professional identities. As many
people use Facebook for both personal and professional purposes, they are
forced to handle different groups of audiences in one single timeline.
Referring to this paradox as context collapse, the chapter demonstrates its
pervasiveness in the participants’ online activities, such as claiming
expertise, self-promotion, complaining about fatigue from work, and so on.
Besides functioning as an interactive digital depository of activities,
Facebook offers a space for the display and confluence of one’s different
educational and professional identities. Chapter 7 considers the issue of
stance-taking, especially how Facebook affords diversified ways for its users
to communicate their feelings, thoughts, opinions, and evaluations, often with
the assistance of multimodal materials. The generic context of Facebook often
makes stance-taking more straightforward among connected users. As the
reported study was conducted during Greece’s financial crisis, the
participants used Facebook as a venue for making expressive statements. The
chapter suggests that these online gestures, despite being small and
fragmented, should not be ignored as they exemplify the digitization of
political actions. Chapter 8 discusses privacy, the opposite side of online
presence. It returns to the topic of context collapse and illustrates the
pressure many Facebook users experience when shielding their personal
information from undesired or unknown audiences. The chapter also explicates a
fundamental contradiction embedded in online identity formation: the process
is built upon publicness and disclosure, yet the ambiguity of Facebook, as it
can be a private, semi-public, or public space, makes self-disclosure a
challenging task.
 
Chapter 9 “Conclusion” summarizes the whole volume by synthesizing the key
insights drawn from previous chapters’ empirical analyses. Overall, the
chapter argues that Facebook brings three major changes to identity discourse.
First, the most common way identity is embedded into texts is through I-marked
utterances. As Facebook is designed for such expressions, it provides an ideal
breeding ground for users to claim a sense of self, express affiliation or
disaffiliation with specific social groups or public opinions, and index
themselves within the sociocultural milieu. Second, one’s online identity also
emerges from his/her interactions with other Facebook users. Through simple
actions such as sharing and liking, users are confirming each other’s
stance-making practices. More complex practices such as online debates also
generate the same effect. Third, multimodal communication becomes a prominent
feature of online identity performance. Although people still rely on words to
express their opinions and feelings, Facebook’s digital environment has
effectively guided users to exploit a variety of semiotic means to articulate
facets of their identities more forcefully and creatively.

EVALUATION

Built upon vivid examples drawn from a detailed online ethnography, “Discourse
and identity on Facebook” provides a comprehensive and in-depth examination of
identity expressions on Facebook. The personal resonance shown in its
ethnographic approach is impressive, and many readers will probably find
themselves doing the same activities in their everyday online presence. The
volume is at its strongest when it discusses the issue of context collapse and
the interactive and collaborative online space created by Facebook. It also
outlines the multifaceted nature of identity construction, and such complexity
is well demonstrated throughout the empirical analyses in Chapters 4–8. At the
end of each chapter, the author has provided related class activities and
useful resources, which would benefit novice discourse analysts. The volume is
without doubt a very valuable reference for researchers who are interested in
examining booming online discourses through qualitative methods. 

My main criticism, though, would be the way in which Chapters 4–8 present
their main arguments. The extensive use of quotes from the research data in
each chapter occasionally interrupts the argumentative flow and some readers
may find the analysis too descriptive. To some extent, such emphasis on
discourse examples obscures the theoretical discussions on Facebook’s
mediation of identity manifestations. In addition, the volume would have
benefited from a deeper inquiry into the economic, political, and
socio-cultural backgrounds of Greece. Readers without sufficient knowledge of
Europe may question some interpretations in Chapters 4–8 since many quotes
analyzed there are context-specific. Although the author intends to appeal to
a wider readership by including related class activities and useful resources
at the end of each chapter, the inherent specificity of the reported study (an
ethnography based on only five Facebook users from Greece) would potentially
dissuade some instructors from using the book as a course reading. 

All that being said, the book remains a valuable reading for anyone interested
in computer mediated communication, and its attention to identity and daily
expressions online would resonate strongly with the readers.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sibo Chen is SSHRC Vanier Doctoral Fellow in the School of Communication,
Simon Fraser University. His major research interests are language and
communication, critical discourse analysis, and genre theories.





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