Macro social categories poorly capture the identity relations that matter locally

Evidence

The second principle challenges another widely circulating view of identity, that it is simply a collection of broad social categories. This perspective is found most often in the quantitative social sciences, which correlate social behavior with macro identity categories such as age, gender, and social class. Within sociocultural linguistics, the concern with identities as broader social structures is particularly characteristic of early variationist sociolinguistics (e.g. Labov, 1966) and the sociology of language (see Fishman, 1971, among others). The traditional forms of these approaches have been valuable for documenting largescale sociolinguistic trends; they are often less effective in capturing the more nuanced and flexible kinds of identity relations that arise in local contexts (but see, e.g. Labov, 1963). This analytic gap points to the importance of ethnography. Linguistic ethnographers have repeatedly demonstrated that language users often orient to local identity categories rather than to the analyst’s sociological categories and that the former frequently provide a better empirical account of linguistic practice. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 35

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Language-identity links are ideological, not natural — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 50; Ethnopolitically segregated neighborhoods predict lower identity complexity; Logical categories mirror social hierarchy and division of labor, not solidarity — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 43 (+3 more)

Related

• Local identity categories often explain linguistic practice better than analysts’ broad sociological categories. (similarity 0.86)
• Cultures differ in whether identity derives from relationships rather than from category membership (similarity 0.81)
• No single method can capture all of identity’s complexity (similarity 0.81)
• Language-identity links are ideological, not natural (similarity 0.80)
• Identity analyses should combine multiple dimensions rather than foreground one (similarity 0.79)
• Social categories vary in how much they overlap with each other (similarity 0.79)
• Living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods raises cognitive identity complexity (similarity 0.78)
• Identity ranges across macro demographic categories, local cultural positions, and fleeting interactional stances. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Ethnopolitically segregated neighborhoods predict lower identity complexity #corroborates (0.78)
• Social identity complexity governs who counts as an in-group member #complicates (0.75)
• Logical categories mirror social hierarchy and division of labor, not solidarity #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 43
• Social identity derives its value from comparisons against out-groups #corroborates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2718