Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T23:04:26.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Labeling: “What Are You, Anyway?”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2020

Sally McConnell-Ginet
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

Labels – names – are at the heart of social identities. Identity categories like race, ethnicity, nationality, and even gender do not have sharp boundaries given by biology or history or cultural affiliations. Social identity groups are less like biological species than like sports teams or their fans, largely created and sustained by labeling and other linguistic and social processes. They are not unreal, but they are always changing. Identities can be created by labeling from above that obliterates the identity distinctions drawn by those labeled (e.g., Indians in the Americas) and helps disempower them. Identities can be created by strategic labeling to create alliances to help improve the positions of those so labeled (.e.g., Asian Americans). Labeling with a noun (e.g., a vegan or vegans) suggests that those labeled are a kind, sharing not just the properties that prompted attaching a label but a cluster of other relatively stable properties as well. In contrast, describing by using some kind of verb phrase (eats only plant-based food) carries fewer suggestions about persistence of that property or about other properties that those to whom the description applies might have.

Type
Chapter
Information
Words Matter
Meaning and Power
, pp. 8 - 49
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×