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The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline: Personal - group - collective
Edited by Birte Bös, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin and Nuria Hernández
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 78] 2018
► pp. 133–152

Identity and metapragmatic acts in a student forum discussion thread

| University of Helsinki, Finland

Starting with the idea that identity is dynamic, interactive and contextualised, the present study offers a close reading of a discussion thread from an online student discussion forum. During the discussion, the interactants both construct identity with language and use identity in order to frame and evaluate their own and others’ contributions. The discussion turns into a metapragmatic debate in which the interactants move away from the topic of the discussion to talk about who is allowed to say what on the topic. The analysis shows how a participant whose identity is flexible is challenged by the other participants, for whom her identity is defined from the beginning, as she self-positions as an outsider. Her contributions are evaluated against this positioning, and for the others her identity resists change.

Keywords: identity construction, metapragmatic acts, positioning, self-positioning, negotiation, evaluation, online interaction, discussion forum
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Constructing identity
    • 2.1Identity and interaction
    • 2.2Identity and metapragmatics
  • 3. Material: The Student Room
  • 4.Identity and metapragmatic acts in the Freshers Week discussion
    • 4.1Laurelei’s self-positioning as continental
    • 4.2Laurelei’s self-positioning as British
    • 4.3Laurelei’s self-positioning as someone with a dual nationality
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.78.06tan
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