Language Policy and Identity in Mauritania. El Hacen Moulaye Ahmed
or unity from diversity. In addition, in the APA Dictionary of Psychology, identity was described as “an individual’s sense of self defined by (1) a set of physical and psychological characteristics that is not wholly shared with any other person and (2) a range of social and interpersonal affiliations (e.g., ethnicity) and social roles” (Vandenbos, 2006, p. 312). Unlike the first definition’s incomplete introduction to the idea of sameness as the definition of identity, the last definition gives it more references. The idea of sameness is introduced as external features and internal characteristics that distinguish an individual or group of people from others; thus, the distinctions render a particular uniqueness.
Furthermore, Castells stated: “by identity, as it refers to social actors, I understand the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or related set of cultural attributes, that is/are given priority over other sources of meaning” (2002, p. 6). The definition relates identity to culture and highlights the plurality and hierarchization of identities. Another definition that captures identity through the lenses of a range of sociocultural, religious, and biological dimensions runs in the following lines: “Identity is . . . the way individuals and groups define themselves and are defined by others on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language, and culture” (Deng, 1995, p. 1). Clearly, identity is determined by many factors. As such, there are many identities that an individual or group of people who share one or some of such factors can have.
In this sense, identity is an ongoing process that is limited by neither time nor place, but rather by different traits that distinguish an individual or a group of people from others. “Indeed, identity is objectively defined as location in a certain world and can be subjectively appropriated only along with that world. . . . [A] coherent identity incorporates within itself all the various internalized roles and attitudes” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 132). A similar definition was spelled out in the form of question by Clifford “what if identity is conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject?” (Clifford, 1988, p. 344). Consolidating such views, Hall (1991) reminded both the readers and the writers that “we have now to re-conceptualize identity as a process of identification. . . . It is something that happens over time, that is never absolutely stable, that is subject to the play of history and the play of difference” (p. 15). The definitions present the premise that an individual or group’s identity changes over time as the roles they play are shifted, and/or the individual or group of people with whom the contrast is made changes.
As a concluding definition to such all-pervasive notion, Erikson’s discussion of identity is invoked. He argued that it is impossible to have a single overarching definition to the term. This is because, as he mentioned, “at one time . . . [identity] will appear to refer to a conscious sense of individual identity; at another to an unconscious striving for a continuity of synthesis.” Additionally, it appears “as a criterion for the silent doings of ego synthesis, and finally, as a maintenance of an inner solidarity with a group’s ideals and identity.” In such different reflections of identity, Erikson pointed out that identity connotes both “persistent sameness within oneself” and “a persistent sharing of some kind of essential character with others” (Erikson, 1956, pp. 56–57). Indeed, the trail of arguments about identity which are spelled above leads one to argue that identity is an indefinable concept in terms of fixed positions which are a priori defined and ready to be stepped into. In contrast, “identity” is a slippery term which can be understood only through the dialectical relations between and across self and other based on internal and external determining factors, such as age, gender, race, religion, and so forth. Based on the different determining factors, identity is both what constitutes an individual in relation to himself or herself and what constitutes him or her in relation with other groups. As such, everyone has one and numerous identities based on the traits s/he is put against either by himself/herself or by others.
Theories of Identity
Castells started his book, The Power of Identity, with the statement: “Our world [sic] and our lives, [sic] are being shaped by the conflicting trends of globalization and identity” (2002, p. 1). He thought of identity as a powerful phenomenon, alongside, and aroused by, globalization. Whatever form it takes, and whatever implications it carries, identity has occupied the center-stage, not only in world politics but also in the world of humanities and the social science (Weedon, 2004, p. 1). Indeed, identity has attracted the interest of scholars from a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines. The spectrum includes, inter alia, philosophy (e.g., Flanagan, 1994; Popper & Eccles, 1977; Strawson, 1997), anthropology and cultural studies (e.g., Hall, 1992; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998), political science (e.g., Preston, 1997), sociology (e.g., Stryker & Statham, 1985), and psychology (e.g., Baumeister, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987).
Even though identity has developed as a field of study and has branched out into various disciplines and directions, two important issues about identity remain constant, identity as essence and as difference, identity as individualist and as collectivist, identity as singular and as plural, identity as real and as imaginative, which can be thought of as markers pointing to two different poles of the wider spectrum of these scientific disciplines contributing to the study of identity. That is, the debate over identity hinges on paradoxical combination sameness and difference. In order to lay out some of the different perspectives about the discussion of these paradoxical combinations, one can group the scholars of the different disciplines, who have approached identity, into what one can name the “five modes of thinking on identity,” individualist, essentialist, symbolic interactionist, postmodernist and postpositivism realist. To be scholarly to some extent, it is worth noting, however, that this researcher is aware of the problematic issue of grouping people inside and across these different modes of thinking since every scholar in a way or another viewed identity in a different way. As such, it is clear that presenting a scholar or some scholars’ thought as representative to the whole group is problematic; however, an equidistant position from Feyerabend’s radical relativism—“unless we want to assume that they [theories or assumptions] deal with nothing at all we must admit that they deal with different [conceptual] worlds” (Feyerabend, 1978, p. 70)—leads the investigated effort of grouping and representing some scholars as comforting to the whole group’s views to be laudable since the invited scholars express more or less the same views of the uninvited ones inside each of the different groupings.
To start with, individualists believe, primarily, in what Appiah (2005) called “the autarky of the soul” (p. 70). That is to say individualists lessen the reliance on the other when identifying the self. According to them, “the person, the personality, the inner core of the personality or, literally, the self” is the referent of self-concept or identity. “One could talk of an idyllic, lone being contemplating about oneself in a Wordsworthian world. Such an outlook emanated from personality psychology” [sic] (Mehdi, 2012, p. 32). In Lawler’s words, the uniqueness or sameness “is seen as something which belongs to the person in question and is nothing to do with the social world. The social world might impact upon it and shape it, but (it is generally assumed) it does not make it” (2014, p. 15).
However, the begging question is what is that thing inside us which makes us unique? The answer was offered by Lawler. He argued that in some versions, it might be a unique mixture “of genes; in others, it is a ‘soul’.” Nevertheless, “that posits some notion of some part of a person that is not produced by the social world, what is being posited is an essence. . . . It is often seen as what lies ‘inside’ and is understood as being ‘deeper’ or ‘truer’ than what is ‘outside’” (2014, p. 15, emphasis in original). Lawler seems to hold a view of identity that praises the inner core of the person and thus makes him the determinant marker of an individual or a group of people’s identity. However, the use of the terms “deeper” and “truer” entails that there is another identity which is less deep and true, for, linguistically speaking, the two terms are used in the form of comparative adjectives. In other words, individualists posit that there are two ways through which identity should be looked, identity distanced from society and identity interlocked with it; nonetheless, they choose the former which they regarded as deeper and truer.
Furthermore, the standpoint, which