It looks like Adam over at Emergent Chaos has been reading sociology (ethnomethodology is a sociological approach to language use) and finding out about linguistic anthropology. Although it is nice to see these ideas spreading from anthropology to sociology and into information security, I hope some also will dig into it enough to find and cite originals or at least get back to where ideas are originating.

In “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” the idea is that we create personas to control relationships. From lawyers to doctors to waitstaff or auto mechanics, people present a view into their identity that makes sense. I would question if I want to give business to an auto mechanic who was reading the Harvard Law Review when I came in, or a lawyer who was reading a Chilton’s repair manual. People present themselves in certain ways to control the perception of ‘who they are,’ and so a professional relationship develops in the right way.

Goffman’s foundational “presentation” book is widely cited but the more contemporary approach to language and identity is still in linguistic anthropology , where the role of language in identity-making has been a major focus at least since Dell Hymes developed the “ethnography of communication” along with concepts such as “linguistic community” and “community of practice.” Jane Hill’s recent work on Mock Spanish and on racism and identity in language is especially worth mention for this subject. Adam concludes:

So next time someone talks about identity or identity management, ask yourself, what are the assumptions about the relationship? And when you hear someone talking about ‘customer relationship management,’ as yourself what identity they seem to want to manage.

We have found important applications of these concepts in our study of identity-making in African (419) scam letters, where language is deliberately constructed in such a way as to authenticate false identities and to scam unwitting victims.