Requerimientos de los servicios según su naturaleza

The study of identity has been central in the social and human sciences and its theorizing involves insights from many different disciplines (psychology, sociology, anthropology, gender theory). Identity has also been critical for sociolinguistics and discourse studies, which have focused particularly on the relationship between discourse and identity, aiming to explain and demonstrate the ways through which identity becomes constructed and reproduced through discourse (Bamberg, 2006; Bamberg et al., 2011; Schiffrin, 1996).

Early sociolinguistic studies on identity theorized identity as a well-established entity of the individual, and as a fixed and permanent attribute of the speakers that could be observed by the researcher (Schiffrin, 1996). Researchers of that early period ascribed the linguistic behavior of socially defined groups to particular cultural and biological characteristics. This position was based on the twofold assumption that ‘groups can be clearly delimited and that group members look alike’ (Bucholtz, 2003:400). For example, some of the classic work on identity in the early days (see

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Labov’s work, 1966, 1972b), especially variational sociolinguistics, linked identity with language by showing the ways social categories, such as gender, age, and social class, could explain the way in which people pronounced certain sounds (Bamberg et al., 2011; LePage and Tabouret Keller, 1985). Much of the work that followed Labov’s influential study, focused on linguistic variation across particular populations, advancing in that way the knowledge of researchers on language variation in society (De Fina, 2011). Identity and language in this type of work were related in the following way: language reflected an inner quality of the speaker, which was representative of his/her identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; De Fina, 2011). This view suggests that language and identity are two well separated notions that are related in a one-to-one type of relationship.

During the last two decades though, the above volume of work and its assumptions have been forcefully criticized within the field of sociolinguistics for raising theoretical, methodological and political issues (Bucholtz, 2003; De Fina, 2011; Bucholtz, 1999). First of all, as Coupland (2008) has argued, despite the fact that variational sociolinguistic work has advanced the knowledge of the scientific community on language variation, studies within that tradition seem to have treated the relationship between language and identity in rather simplistic terms. Indeed, more recent work (see De Fina, 2011) has shown that the relationship between language and identity is far more complex than a one-to-one type relationship between linguistic practices and distinct social groups. For example, speakers can adopt different linguistic styles that index membership to particular groups (i.e. by adopting accents or using dialects), for a number of different reasons, such as rejecting or accepting identities projected to them (De Fina, 2011). The main assumption behind this type of work is that speakers have choices for presenting information, and the actual decisions they make about which devices (lexical, syntactic, prosodic, phonetic) to use in their talk reveal their alignment to certain social categories and the consequent emergence of respective social identities (Bamberg et al., 2011). Other critiques to this early work are based on insights from the field of social theory and challenge the way early identity theorists viewed society and social phenomena. These critiques are mainly constructed around the argument

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that assumptions of homogeneity and stability seem to be completely out of date in post-modern societies that are characterized by continuous flows and mixing of people, and disunity (Bauman, 2005; Blommaert and Rampton, 2011; Giddens, 1991; Laclau, 1990). According to social theorists, late modern societies, characterized by fracture and continuous physical and social displacement, provide appropriate conditions for the emergence of various new local and group-specific identities for individuals (Bauman, 2005; Hall, 1996; Laclau, 1990). Members of modern states can simultaneously employ many different and sometimes conflicting regional, supraregional, sexual, linguistic, religious, political and other types of collective identities (Wodak et al., 1999). This is critical in the context of the present project. As will be shown in the following chapters, participants in the study employ collective regional identities that cut across national categorizations and play a significant role in the development of trust in the given context.

Over the last 25 years or so identity scholars have come to redefine the field, and the ways they understood and approached identity in their research. More recent work reflects a tendency to view identity not as a property of the individual which resides in his/her mind, but as a construct which is constituted in social action, and especially through language (Bamberg et al., 2011; Benwell and Stokoe, 2006; Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Harré, 1991; Kerby, 1991; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Taylor, 1991). This assumption has led to different ways of researching identity as well. Instead of focusing on isolated linguistic choices of people and attempting to grasp through those the ‘real’ identity of the speakers, more contemporary sociolinguistic research has been more concerned with how identity is used in talk (Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; De Fina, 2011). More specifically, recent work examines how individuals engage in identity work in interaction, by which means/through which discursive practices they enact, accept or reject different facets of identity in their social interactions in a process of creating and negotiating social meaning (Bamberg et al., 2011). Contemporary thinking in the field suggests that identity is produced and negotiated in professional, as well as in mundane, everyday interactions because when people talk they perform specific acts and express specific stances towards the way the world works (Ochs, 1992). This proposition leads to the study of identity

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through the analysis of spoken interaction, mainly by means of discourse analysis. Identities in contemporary work are also studied in a particular here and now (Angouri, 2016; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998). The role of context is given particular attention and identity is studied in relation to particular sociocultural contexts (i.e. identity in the workplace context).

Identity in my study is approached as a discursive construct that emerges through social interaction and is always open to negotiation between participants. I espouse the social constructionist idea that there is no such thing as an objective reality, hence, there is no such thing as an objective identity either. Thus, I am not starting my research by aiming to reveal any ‘real’ identity of my participants. Instead, I will pay attention to the ways my participants interact, how they make relevant particular types of identities in their interactions with their business partners, and what sorts of actions these identities seem to perform/to what ends they are put in the specific interactional contexts. My analysis does not aim to lead to generalizable findings with regard to my participants’ identities; rather, my analysis is going to focus on specific interactions and shed light on the situated character of identity work in which the participants are involved (situated in the wider social context and local interactional context).