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Article published In:
Language and Dialogue
Vol. 4:3 (2014) ► pp.341–356

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The co-construction of identities in dialog

| A*STAR – Institute of High Performance Computing

In this paper, I will present a dialogic view of identity. I argue that identity is not a static description of who or what a person or thing is rather than the outcome of, what I call, a dialog of cultures. In a broad sense, identities are negotiated or, co-constructed, against the background of different perspectives between the dialog partners. From this point of view, identity construction is a joint activity with no one having full control over its outcome. In contrast, identities rather “happen” in dialog. The analysis of selected dialogs from a German talk show will illustrate how the co-construction of different identities works, giving rise to a re-definition of identity in genuinely dialogic terms.

Keywords: identity, co-construction, dialog, action, activity
Published online: 24 November 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.4.3.01fel
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Vasilyeva, Alena L.
2020. Constructing others and dialoguewith them in the course of publiceducational meetings. Language and Dialogue 10:1 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo

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