In this chapter, we explore the notion of commodified identity and introduce a series of tools and frameworks by which to analyse its discursive constitution. We pursue four different interpretations of the term ‘commodified identities’:

1. Identities of consumers (accounts for and practices of consumption).

2. The process of identity commodification through acts of consumption (How do commercial discourses such as advertisements ‘speak’ to us and engage us with their message?).

3. Representations of identities in commodified contexts (for example, consumer femininity, commodified ‘laddism’).

4. Self-commodifying discourses (for example, personal advertisements, job applications/CVs/references, commercial telephone sex lines).

In order to address all of these connotations of ‘commodified identity’ we draw on critical discourse analysis and critical discursive psychology. In other words, we analyse the linguistic content of advertising or promotional material, but will, in a detailed case study of men's lifestyle magazines, relate this to in-depth interviews and reader-response exercises conducted with groups of male consumers. This kind of two-way analysis captures meanings at the interface between contexts of production, text and consumption and is allied to a growing tradition of research known as a ‘circuits of culture’ model central to contemporary cultural studies (for example, Du Gay et al. 1997; Johnson 1986). A circuits of culture model acknowledges the importance of a global consideration of all moments in the broader context of commercial culture (that is, production, text, consumption, lived identities of consumers) and the often complex ways in which they may intersect.