01st Nov2012

Discourses, analysis, and identity

by felixburgos

1. Discourses: One of the things that I got from the readings this week is the way in which, through discourses, we refer to the phenomenon of connection and disconnection in the digital age. Being “tethered”, being “connected and disconnected”, living in a “network”, constructing “workspace encampments”, “creating a cocoon”, among others, are just some ways that have been used to explain the influence of the digital age in our daily lives. I am really fascinated by the way in which academia, the mass media, and people in general use the language to talk about technology and interpersonal relations. However, I think that such discursive strategies are not unified. Perhaps walking towards a dead end, but I wonder how linguistics and some of its working paradigms (pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis) is able to analyze something like this:

“Share. Interact. Experience Smarter. The Galaxi S III is so advanced but so intuitive, it’s simple. With technology that makes it easier than ever to share your world -with your devices, with your friends or groups of people” [Online Advertisement of the Galaxi S III].

My background as a “linguist” makes me think that these discursive items are not only related to marketing strategies, but also appeal to the “new” experiences of human activity. It’s true, this is not related to space, but to the way we talk about technologies, but isn’t language a way to describe how we model and experience the world?… Does this make any sense?

2. Research on mobile activity and (inter)personal relations: I find the study carried out by Ito, Okabe & Anderson as a very important advance in the research of mobile devices, space, and temporality. Although, I don’t want to create a debate here about differences of social class or socio-cultural capital, I wonder what could we think of those people whose access to mobile media (or even movement in urban spaces) is limited. Let’s see…: Cocoons “involve a complex set of negotiations that take into account the presence of others in the vicinity, while also working to shut them out” (Ito et al., p. 74). So, there is an analysis of “what” users of devices do when creating their “own” space. But what about those that surround them and who lack of those means to change the sense of space? What type of analysis would we do here?

3. Multiplicity and identities: It seems that the way in which we interact with certain technologies does not only expand, constrain or multiply space, but also the identity(ies) of individuals. What are the implications of these “varieties” of identities in cultural studies? What does it mean to be part of a specific society where some cultural values are assumed to be shared, when these cultural values could be challenged when our identity changes in a virtual environment?

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