Voices in discourses:: Dialogism, critical discourse analysis and ethnic identity

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature. We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to illustrate our individual-cum-social viewpoint by discussing how identity is represented through a variety of voices and a variety of discourses. We discuss ethnic identity as related both to social level discourses that our subject drew on - such as the discourses of the journalistic profession or ethnicity and to 'voices' that bear witness to his experiences as an individual and his individual life course.