19

The Self
Chris McVittie and Andy McKinlay

Introduction
e idea of self in many ways appears both central to our lives and speci c
to each of us in identifying us as a unique person. It is therefore unsurpris-
ing that the self has for long provided a topic of study for philosophers and
other scholars. In Western thought, interest in the self can be traced back to
the writings of Plato (ca. 428–348 BCE), subsequently taken up in the work
of Aristotle (ca. 384–322 BCE), in discussions of what might comprise the
essential core of a human being. Evidence, however, suggests that in Eastern
writings enquiry into the self goes back even further to the Upanishads, texts
dating from the sixth century BCE that contain the earliest central concepts
of Hinduism and some other Eastern religions. Believed to contain revealed
truths about the nature of ultimate reality, the Upanishads provide discussion
of the self as part of that reality of the nature and organisation of life. More
recently, the topic of the self provided a major focus for the philosophers of
the Enlightenment: Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and Kant all

C. McVittie ( )
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
A. McKinlay
e University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

© e Author(s) 2017 389

B. Gough (ed.), e Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51018-1_19
390 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

wrote on and discussed the self as part of their philosophical enquiries. e

study of the self, then, has a long history.
Mainstream psychological interest in the self stems in particular from the
writings of William James in his classic text e Principles of Psychology (James,
1890). James provided what became a highly in uential and enduring con-
ceptualisation of the self as comprising two separate but necessarily related
aspects. One aspect, termed the I, was for James the person as the centre of
introspection and re ection on experience, the person who made sense of
past, present, and future encounters with the world in a form that rendered
these encounters coherent and thereby allowed for continuity of being. James’
second aspect, termed the me, comprised the self as known through his/her
interactions with others. e me was thus a social self, or more accurately for
James, a collection of social selves that were based in and known through the
person as a social being. In James’ words, ‘a man [sic] has as many social selves
as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their
mind’ (Vol.1, p. 294). e I and the me thus re ected two di erent elements
of self that together comprised the person as an essential being, distinct from
others, and capable of introspecting and re ecting on participation in the
social world.
James’ conceptualisation in various respects takes up and re ects what we
might consider to be a fairly common sense view of the self as an essential and
distinct person, as we each seek to work out who we are and to make sense of
our interactions with others. Yet, however persuasive and apparently obvious
this view might be, this understanding of the self has proved problematic for
social psychology as it seeks to study how people do in everyday life make
sense of who they are in relation to others and negotiate the meanings of their
experiences in a social world. As we shall see in this chapter, to understand
usefully how the self is re ected in and bound up with social actions, we need
a very di erent approach than that found in the writings of James, no mat-
ter how obvious his descriptions of self might otherwise appear. It is for such
reasons that we need to use critical approaches if we are to understand what
the self does mean in each of our lives.

The Self and Mainstream Social Psychology

Following James’ (1890) writings, other writers, most notably Cooley (1902)
and Mead (1934), took up the question of how an individual develops a social
self by making sense of his/her interactions with others. It was not however
until some decades later that the self fully emerged as a topic in social psychol-
 19 The Self 391

ogy. Writing in the mid-1950s, Gordon Allport observed that over the two
preceding decades, there had been a noticeable uptake of interest in the self as
re ected in a considerable volume of writing on the topic. Markedly, however,
little if any of this work aimed to develop understanding of the self as self.
Instead newly introduced constructs such as self-image, self-actualisation, self-
a rmation, and so on had been proposed, taken up in subsequent theories
and in turn led to the emergence of further constructs. What this work had
in common was that the constructs ostensibly related to the self in o ering a
description of some related element, such as self-esteem, or related process,
such as self-actualisation. Seldom if ever, however, did writers make explicit
the proposed relationship between what was being denoted and a broader
idea of self. Rather the idea of self was left largely implicit and superseded by
a range of ‘hyphenated elaborations’ (Allport, 1995, p. 37), many of which
potentially bore little relation to the self at all.

A Proliferation of Self-Related Constructs

Looking back, it is clear that these developments marked the beginning of

a line of work that continues to this day. Regardless of Allport’s (1955) con-
cerns, the production of self-related constructs continued apace over the years
to come. us, if we now pick up any major text on social psychology, we will
nd included within it a diverse range of constructs that explicitly claim some
relation to the self. For example, one leading current text (a typical example)
includes index entries for in excess of 40 self-related terms ranging from ‘self-
actualized personalities’ to ‘self-worth’ (Myers, Abell, & Sani, 2014). And, at
the same time, we nd indexed instances too numerous to count of apparent
manifestations of the self in individual and social actions. All of these e orts
point to social psychology’s continuing interest in the self, albeit one that is
focused on speci c constructs and not the self as a whole.
What remains clear, however, is that little has changed since Allport’s
(1955) concerns about the production of self-related constructs. Apart from a
common reliance on the term ‘self ’, there is often little discernible similarity
among many of the constructs on o er. From a review of uses of self-related
constructs across the behavioural and social sciences, Leary and Tangney
(2003) identi ed at least ve di erent common uses of the term ‘self’ that
had little or no overlap between them. e result of the emergence and use of
a proliferation of constructs that claim to describe di erent parts or orienta-
tions of the self has been a lack of any consensus as to how the self might use-
fully be understood or indeed what all of these self-related constructs involve:
392 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

‘not only have we lacked a single, universally accepted de nition of “self ”,

but also many de nitions clearly refer to distinctly di erent phenomena, and
some uses of the term are di cult to grasp no matter what de nition one
applies’ (Leary & Tangney, 2003, p. 6). us, the term self, instead of denot-
ing a speci c topic of study, has been used in a multiplicity of ways that serve
di erent purposes, with the production of an ever-increasing range of self-
related constructs leading not to any more useful understanding of the self
but to research into the self becoming ‘a conceptual morass’ (2003, pp. 7–8).

The Self as Social Categoriser

In contrast to the work considered above, a second approach to study of the

self has proceeded from a more de ned theoretical position. And, in doing so,
it has in many ways adopted James’ (1890) distinction between the person
as the centre of experience and re ection and the person as known through
social interaction with others. Here the most in uential approach here has
been that of Social Identity eory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986) as
subsequently taken up in self-categorisation theory (SCT; Onorato & Turner,
2004; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). For SIT, the pri-
mary focus lies on how people are identi ed socially in terms of the social
identities that they adopt at various times. ese identities encompass readily
recognisable features of a social landscape, for example, memberships of social
groups de ned by gender, age, nationality, or other characteristics. By taking
up membership of speci c groups through the psychological processes of (1)
social categorisation, (2) social identi cation, and (3) social comparison, indi-
viduals acquire social identities that locate them within a recognisable social
world. In this way, the focus lies more on what people have in common with
others than on what might make them distinctive.
Although SIT seeks to examine social identity rather than self, and com-
monality through group memberships rather than distinctiveness, self none-
theless is important here for two reasons. First, SIT argues that the processes
that lead to adoption of social identities are primarily motivated by an indi-
vidual’s need to maximise self-esteem: taking up social identities that allow
for favourable comparisons of that group with others will enhance self-esteem
and thus people will seek advantageous comparisons and identities whenever
they are available. Second, the role for self incorporated into SIT is developed
further in SCT which aims to specify how and when individuals will identify
themselves in terms of social identities instead of personal identities or selves.
According to SCT, the shift away from personal identity or self occurs when
 19 The Self 393

people have accessible to them a relevant social identity and this identity is
made salient by the context in which the person is at a given time. In these
instances, it is argued, people come to see themselves more as exemplar mem-
bers of a social group than as unique individuals and this process of deper-
sonalisation leads them to identify as group members instead of as individual
selves.
SIT and SCT have been highly in uential in generating social psychologi-
cal research into the processes by which people take up and switch social iden-
tities at di erent times and the consequences for intra-group and inter-group
relations. Given the emphasis on the processes that lead to social identity and
the consequences of adopting social identities, it is perhaps unsurprising that
in this approach, the self plays a less prominent role in social life. Instead
of being a major topic of interest, the self comes in e ect to be viewed as a
default position that is taken up when no social identities are immediately
salient for the individual. At the same time, the self is also little more than an
indistinguishable information processor that is scanning the social horizon
for perceptual clues before applying the most salient self-categorisation. Little
room is left for a self as a unique social being who interacts with others.

Dualist and Essentialist Theories of the Self

e two approaches discussed above provide di erent accounts of the self. On

the rst view the self is a combination of (some) self-related dispositions and
potential actions, whereas on the second view the self is a whole but one that
plays a minor role when compared with social groups and social identities.
Notwithstanding the di erences between those approaches, these and other
mainstream social psychological approaches to the self share two central ele-
ments. First there is the dualist quality of the explanations provided. In main-
stream approaches, individuals and society fall to be treated as separate and
distinguishable entities. Certainly, each impinges on the other; the individual
has to derive beliefs about others or perceive the available social categories
in order to arrive at a point of identifying where he/she stands in relation to
social life. But in each case, social phenomena are regarded as separable from
the individual as self. Second, the accounts provided are essentialist in treating
the psychological processes and properties involved as essential features of the
individual. Views that others might have of the self are treated as individu-
ally located beliefs or as the outcomes of cognitive processes. And, for SCT/
SIT social categories that allow for identi cation and comparison are situated
in a recognisable social landscape. In these ways, whether comprising sets of
394 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

beliefs or perceptual and cognitive processes, self becomes an essential prop-

erty of the individual.
In these respects, much of social psychology’s focus on the self over the
course of the twentieth century follows James’ (1890) early writings. e self
continues to be viewed as comprising two elements, individual and social,
and the emphasis lies on the individual as the site of encounters with the
social world. ese two core assumptions, introduced by James and taken
up widely since then, mark the point of departure for critical approaches to
understanding the self. For critical theorists, the dualist and essentialist ele-
ments of mainstream theorising are neither sustainable nor borne out by care-
ful examination of how people act in social life: what we need is an entirely
di erent approach to the study of self.

Critical Approaches to the Self

From a critical perspective, the focus of social psychological work lies not
in the study of individuals and society as separate entities each with its own
properties but instead on how people live their lives in a social world (Gergen,
2009; Sampson, 1993). e aim is to understand people in social life instead
of attempting to separate and then somehow recombine the two. At the same
time, the topics of interest to social psychology are viewed not as properties
either of individuals or of society but instead as products that emerge when
people live and act socially. In adopting this perspective, the emphasis is on
social interaction, in particular how people use language to negotiate and con-
struct the meanings of everyday life as they engage as social beings. Discursive
research has demonstrated how the central concerns of social psychology such
as attitudes, cognitions, group relations, and so on can be usefully under-
stood as issues that individuals work out in social interaction instead of being
properties of either individuals or a pre-existing social world (McKinlay &
McVittie, 2008). In this respect, the self is no di erent to other social psy-
chological interests: selves can be understood as outcomes that people accom-
plish in talk as they interact with each other. Taking discourse as the site
of investigation, discursive researchers have however pursued rather di erent
approaches to examining how the self is constructed in language. A review
of all such approaches is beyond the scope of the present chapter. Here we
con ne ourselves to outlining two main approaches that discursive researchers
have adopted in relation to the self: macro approaches and micro approaches.
Macro approaches are primarily concerned with the study of how broader
patterns of social structures and practices shape and are enacted in the interac-
 19 The Self 395

tions that people have with each other. us, for example, critical discourse
analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Meyer, 2001; van Dijk, 2001; Wodak, 2001)
examines how people’s talk instantiates forms of social or political inequality.
A main part of this work seeks to examine how dominant ideologies are pro-
duced and reproduced in language, and is designed to expose the inequalities
that are sustained through social practices in order to e ect change. In this
way, critical discourse analysis is usually bound up with aims of emancipation.
Other macro approaches draw on the perspective of post-structuralism, par-
ticularly the work of Michel Foucault (1980, 2002) as taken up in Foucauldian
discourse analysis (Parker, 1992, 2014). In such cases, the emphasis is less on
how language reproduces social inequalities and more on how it re ects the
social and ideological practices of particular historical periods. According to
this argument, the discourses circulating within any speci c period of time
make available certain forms of being or subject positions that individuals
take up and occupy. Certainly these subject positions are open to individual
resistance: the more dominant and entrenched the discourse, however, the
more di cult it becomes for individuals to challenge what are recognised as
readily available forms of selves. Discourses thus re ect power and ideology at
a broader level, but provide ways of understanding the world that appear to
make everyday sense and with which individuals can identify. On this view,
the self or more accurately selves can be understood as outcomes of prevailing
discourses and patterns of social relations.
Micro approaches are less concerned with the study of how language (re)
produces ideology and inequality than with examining how people them-
selves use language to accomplish particular outcomes. ese approaches have
their roots in the traditions of ethnomethodology (Gar nkel, 1967; Heritage,
1984) and conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992; Sacks, Scheglo , & Je erson,
1974) and include subsequent forms such as discursive psychology (Edwards
& Potter, 2005; Potter, 2003). Ethnomethodology is the study of how people
make sense of their everyday lives through processes of practical reasoning.
Conversation analysis focuses on the study of how speakers organise their
turns in everyday talk, how they use particular lexical items and forms, and
how these are demonstrably and sequentially relevant for the ensuing interac-
tion. Discursive psychological is concerned with how individuals construct
and negotiate psychological concepts in everyday interaction. Taking these
interests together, micro forms of analysis examine how individuals in talk-
in-interaction deploy and work up discursive versions of people, events, and
social phenomena. At the same time, micro approaches emphasise the action
orientation of discourse: discourse does not (merely) re ect what might be
considered to be occurring elsewhere but instead is an active medium that
396 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

people use to do things. From this perspective, discourse is never neutral; it is

always being used to achieve certain outcomes, such as justifying one’s actions,
accounting for events, complaining, blaming or criticising others, and so on.
e application of micro approaches is of particular relevance here in that
they build, at least to some extent, upon previous work that speci cally consid-
ered the idea of self. Shortly after the time that Allport (1955) was expressing
his concerns, there came the publication of Erving Go man’s (1959) classic
text e Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in which Go man proposed a
view of self that was radically di erent to the one then gaining prominence
in mainstream social psychology. For Go man, self was not a property of the
individual but rather something that the individual performed in interaction
with others. According to his argument, people in interactions seek to present
themselves in ways that will guide the impressions that others form of them.
At the same time, those with whom an individual is interacting attempt to
gain information about and form an impression of the individual. All perfor-
mances of the self therefore carry risks: any individual might not bring o a
performance successfully or a performance might be taken up in a way that
was not anticipated. Regardless, self is the outcome of the performance in
accomplishing who others take the self to be.
What has been especially attractive to researchers who use micro approaches
is Go man’s emphasis on social interaction and on the outcomes that ow
from it. What this means is that instead of attempting to theorise what hap-
pens inside people’s heads and thereafter attempting to reconnect it with the
social world, we can instead examine social life as it unfolds and see how peo-
ple make sense of it. In this, work that built upon the importance of studying
social interaction and its e ects has been especially in uential. Taking self
to be a product of social interaction instead of a precursor for social action,
attention focuses on how individuals understand their own and others’ per-
formances, how these are achieved in everyday talk and the functions that
selves ful l in local contexts of production.

Constructing the Self
To examine what critical approaches can contribute to understanding the self,
we turn to consider some examples of how people do construct and utilise
selves in everyday talk. In these examples, we see speakers construct versions
of self intrinsic to them, versions that draw also upon perceptions of them
held by other people, and an instance of divergence between the two. We start
by considering instances in which the speakers are presenting versions of the
self based on inner dispositions and re ections.
 19 The Self 397

Constructing an Inner Self

e extract below comes from a study conducted with older (aged 50

years+) non-employed people who were signing on at jobcentres as looking
for employment (McVittie, McKinlay, & Widdicombe, 2008). e study
aimed to examine possible age discrimination against jobseekers and how
jobseekers constructed their identities in that context. is extract begins
with a question to one interviewee, FV, about the possible consequences of
age for gaining employment.

1 INT Have you found age to be a factor in looking for employment?

2 FV I think it really depends what uh what kind of brain you’ve got (.)
(Int: mm
3 hm) ere are two kin- kinds of brains, there there are the (.) eh work is
4 separated from life (.) and you’ve already found out life is separated from
5 work and there’s the attitude that the damn thing is the bit that you ll in
6 from being born to die (.) E::h personally I can split the two, (.) I know
7 what I like I know what I don’t like, if I nd I don’t like something in work
8 (.) I create a situation where I’m out of it (.) If I nd there’s something I
9 like in work I create a situation where I’m even further into it1
(McVittie et al., 2008, p. 252)

Here, the question put to FV introduces the possibility that perceptions

of age might be operating against his e orts to nd employment. As seen,
though, FV does not take up the question in this way. Instead of referring to
age, or to his e orts to nd employment, FV develops a description of two
kinds of people based upon di erent ‘kinds of brains’. He also sets out the
relevance of each kind of brain for its orientation to work, either by split-
ting work and life or by working ‘from being born to die’. is description
thereby depicts two di erent kinds of self: rooted in biology and associated
inner disposition to work. Having constructed these possibilities, FV con-
tinues by claiming that he has the kind of brain that ‘can split the two’. is
claim is then linked to his re exive actions towards work, in seeking to be
‘out of it’ or ‘further into it’ depending on whether or not there is ‘some-
thing I like’.
In these terms, FV’s descriptions construct for him a self that is rooted
within his brain and in an accompanying disposition towards work. is self
however is not the end of the matter. To see what action this self is performing,

1
For details of the transcription notation used in extracts in this chapter, see Chapter 15 p. 397.
398 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

we need to examine his description in this speci c context. And here, for FV,
what it achieves is to account for his current status as being non-employed.
Whereas the question put to him invited a response involving age as a work-
related factor, FV responds by producing an account for being out of work on
the basis of his inner self.
In the extract below, we see self being deployed to similar e ect. is extract
comes from an analysis of interviews conducted on evangelical television pro-
grammes (Xanthopoulou, 2010). A main focus for these interviews was that
of ‘defectiveness’, with interviewees being invited to discuss personal short-
comings or failings in not living up to the standards required by allegiance to a
higher entity (God). One interviewee, Jessie, describes how she ceased singing
in the church choir to form a band and pursue a musical career. Elsewhere the
ability to write and perform songs, and choice of career based on this ability,
might be evaluated positively. In this instance, however, that is less likely to be
the case: withdrawal from the church choir to pursue individual desires and
nancial reward might be criticised for being just the sort of failing that the
programme is discussing. Here we see how Jessie describes her actions:

Jessie: >I had wr↑itten< (.) a whole album worth of

so:ngs (0.4) e:rm (.) ↑non Christian songs but just
kinda like out of my own experience and they were
just s↑itting in (0.2) in a- (.) a b:oo:k (0.4)
a:nd ↑God really said to me J↑essie? you’ve been
that wicked lazy ((pointing with hands)) servant
(0.3) who: is just playing it safe ↓a:nd I’m: I’m
not having it (.) ↑so I guess right then I had a
dec↑ision (0.3) whether (0.2) to: (0.2) ↑stay
c↑omfortable and keep singing in the church (0.2)
and you know doing the ou and a:r (.) o:r (0.2)
↑push myself forward (.) as a singer song wri:teri
(adapted from Xanthopoulou, 2010, p. 686)

Above we see Jessie describing actions that she took previously in writing
songs and more recently in deciding to leave the church choir and ‘get a band
together and start rec[o:rding]’. is action might well be criticisable in any
case but is rendered more so by her description of the songs as ‘non Christian’
which sharpens the contrast between previous church-related activities and
subsequent non-church-based career choices. What we also see in this extract,
however, is how Jessie accounts for her actions. To do so, she constructs her for-
mer self in highly negative terms, describing herself as a ‘wicked lazy … servant’
who was ‘just playing it safe’. e attribution of negative qualities makes this
 19 The Self 399

previous self highly criticisable. Moreover, the e ect of this construction is

emphasised through Jessie’s attribution of criticism to God as the source.
e e ect of this construction of previous self is that Jessie’s current self
becomes laudable in that she has attended to what was previously criticisable.
It is this contrast and the resulting current self that works to justify her actions
in leaving the church to pursue a musical career.
In these examples, we see how speakers construct versions of self based
upon references to inner dispositions, qualities, and re ection. FV’s and
Jessie’s selves are, at the same time, intrinsically bound up with social actions,
in seeking or not seeking employment and in making music, respectively.
ese selves, therefore, are not mere descriptions of what is going on inter-
nally for FV and Jessie but rather are discursive constructions that are used to
accomplish speci c outcomes, here accounting for and justifying to others the
actions of the individual in each case.

Constructing a Self as Known

Constructing an inner self, then, allows a speaker to describe his/her inner

world or experiences in accounting for one’s actions. One di culty for speakers,
though, is that claims based on an inner self invoke knowledge that is available
only to the speaker. Any such claims therefore run the risk of being challenged
by those to whom the self is being told, on the grounds that whatever is being
described is motivated by the interests of the speaker in portraying themselves
in a certain light: speakers can be heard as having a ‘stake’ in how they describe
themselves (Edwards & Potter, 1992, 1993). For example, Jessie’s description of
her actions as resulting from God’s criticism of her previous self might be chal-
lenged on the grounds that she has a stake in describing herself in that way: in
the oft-quoted phrase, ‘she would say that, wouldn’t she’. One way that speakers
seek to attend to the possibility of challenge is by constructing versions of self
that describe not just internal states but also elements that are known to others.
Below, we see an example of how a speaker constructs a self that is osten-
sibly known by others. is extract comes from a study of the narratives of
myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) su erers (Horton-Salway, 2001). ME is a
condition without an established aetiology, and su erers’ claims to be expe-
riencing symptoms are often treated sceptically, especially by medical practi-
tioners. Here we see part of a narrative from Angela, who identi es as an ME
su erer:

189. I think my mother was around at one of these times when that was
190. mentioned too (.) my mother said ‘I know my daughter’(.) I can always
400 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

191. remember my mother saying that (.) ‘I know my daughter’(.) because I

192. was always so active heh heh hyperactive in some respects
193. actually (.) because my Mum used to say to me ‘for goodness sake
194. Angela sit down’ (.) this was before I went down with ME (.) I never
195. wanted to sit down (.) I wanted to be on the go all the while (.) I was
196. happy that way (.) but er (.) things change (.) you’re forced to sit
197. down =1
(Horton-Salway, 2001, pp. 253–254)

Angela, at lines 194 to 197, describes her desires to be active rather than
being ‘forced to sit down’. is description constructs for Angela a self that
cannot function in the ways that she would wish to due to the symptoms that
she experiences. It is however a version of self that is common in accounts
from individuals claiming to su er from ME and one that is open to chal-
lenge by those to whom it is presented. e risk then for Angela is that to rely
on this construction of self alone is to risk non-acceptance and criticism.
Angela’s construction of self though does not rely solely on description of
inner experiences. Instead at lines 189 to 194, we see repeated references to
her mother and to what her mother knows about Angela. e ‘active voicing’
(Woo tt, 1992) of words that Angela attributes to her mother strengthens the
sense that this report is coming from another person who is quali ed to talk
about who Angela is and what she is ‘really’ like. us, we see a self that is pre-
sented as based both on individual experience and on the knowledge of others.
In the next example, we see another instance of how speakers can refer to
the self as known in accounting for their actions. is extract comes from a
study of the drinking habits of undergraduate students in Australia and their
experiences of social pressure to drink while at University (Hepworth et al.,
2016). Here we see Chloe talking about herself as someone who often does
not drink alcohol at parties.

1 Chloe: I know that guys, the guys that I know are really
2 di erent in terms of whether the other people
3 around them are drinking, like if I am at a party
4 and a guy goes; “Oh, aren’t you drinking?” and if
5 I say; “No”, they will be like; “Oh, cool”, and
6 that will be it. But with a girl my girlfriends are
7 all like; “Oh, why aren’t you drinking?” “Oh
8 come on”, you know; “Get into the spirit”, you
9 know, they will have as many lines in the book,
10 whereas guys are more willing to accept OK
11 yeah you have your own reasons not to drink.
(Hepworth et al., 2016)
 19 The Self 401

Above, Chloe describes herself as someone who does not drink for her
‘own reasons’. She does not expand on what these are but the available
inference are that these reasons are part of her inner self. e remainder of
the extract is given over to how this self is presented to others on occasions
when drinking might be expected behaviour and how those whom she is
with respond to her.
Chloe describes in gender-speci c terms two types of response that she
receives to her presentation of self. us, ‘a guy’ will accept her as being ‘cool’,
whereas her ‘girlfriends’ will seek to exert pressure on her by using ‘as many
lines in the book’. Despite di erences in their responses, Chloe presents both
groups as knowing her to be someone who does not drink on these occasions.
Chloe thereby constructs a self that does not conform to what is expected but
risky student behaviour in the form of heavy drinking.
Both Angela and Chloe, then, present selves that are based both in their
internal experience and in how other people know and recognise them in
social situations. In each case, the introduction of how the self is known by
others functions to bolster the speaker’s claim to be a certain type of person
and to behave in particular ways.

Criticising Others

e versions of the self seen so far o er speakers ways of warranting their

claims and accounting for actions that are potentially problematic. ere is
however no reason why descriptions of the self should necessarily relate to
warranting claims of the speaker to be a certain kind of person. As with any
other discourse, discourse of the self is available for use in a wide range of
ways according to what the speaker seeks to accomplish. In the nal exam-
ple, we see the speaker deploy versions of his inner self and self as known
to rather di erent e ect. is extract is taken from a study of residents of
an island (identi ed by the imaginary name Norisle) o the northern coast
of Scotland (McKinlay & McVittie, 2007). Here we see an excerpt from
an interview conducted with two people who had been born and lived on
the UK mainland and had subsequently moved to take up residence on
the island. Ron had lived on the island for 15 years and Jill for 18 months:

1 Ron Amongst my my circle of friends there isn’t actually many local guys
and the
2 ones that are are actually very (.) eh sort of, you know, and there’s
always the
3 racist thing that is is rife here as you said you know, do I consider myself a
402 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

4 Norisle man I mean it doesn’t matter what I consider, everybody else on

5 Norisle would never ever consider me a Norisle man. I mean I=
6 Jill = ey just hear the accent I suppose
7 Ron I came to Norisle originally eh British, I mean I’ve never been English
as far
8 as I’ve been concerned until I came to Norisle and em you know without a
9 doubt I’m English and I’ve been here fteen years1
(McKinlay & McVittie, 2007, p. 183)

Above, Ron refers to two di erent versions of self. One version, at lines
7 to 8, refers to his experience of being British and having ‘never been
English’. e other version, at lines 4 to 5 and at lines 8 to 9, sets out how
other Norisle residents know him, as someone who is not considered ‘a
Norisle man’ and who ‘without a doubt’ is English. ese versions of self
are not just di erent, but clearly inconsistent in portraying Ron in mutually
incompatible ways.
But Ron’s description here is not simply about establishing who he is and
which version of self is to be treated as correct. Rather it is the inconsistency
between these versions of self that provides the main focus. ese construc-
tions are situated within a response to a question as to whether Ron consid-
ered himself to a local resident. And, what Ron formulates here is a complaint
about other Norisle residents. Although it is not pursued, he at line 3 intro-
duces the suggestion of racism on the island (‘the racist thing that is is rife
here’) and this can be heard as an explanation as to why Ron’s version of
himself is not accepted. e constructions of self found here, and the incon-
sistency between them, thus provide the basis for Ron’s criticisms of the local
residents on ground of possible racism.

The Self in Discourse

e examples above show some ways in which speakers construct selves in

the moment-to-moment of discourse. e self can be constructed on the
basis of inner preferences, inner states or experiences, or as some combina-
tion of these and how the self is known and recognised by others. We have
seen also how such selves are found across a range of discursive contexts,
including issues, relating to employment, religion and career, illness, stu-
dent behaviour, and the very question of belonging or not belonging in
relation to others. ese selves are not, however, completed products that
will endure into the next interaction and beyond that. Nor do they pick
out and represent properties that are essential features of the individuals
 19 The Self 403

involved or the social contexts that are described. Rather these selves, as
with any other selves, are constructed to accomplish speci c interactional
business, whether accounting for and justifying actions, criticising those
with whom the speakers interact, or otherwise. Future interactions will call
for and allow the construction of other selves that in turn will be oriented
to the local contexts in which they are produced.
e extent to which the selves that individuals construct in talk re ect
continuing features of the individual is a matter of debate in current social
psychology, with some critical theorists arguing for greater attention to be
paid to how selves are organised over time. For example, it is suggested that
an individual’s constructions of self over multiple situations produce what can
be viewed as a ‘personal history’ of self (Taylor & Littleton, 2012) or alterna-
tively that individuals become psychologically ‘invested’ in speci c forms of
self that recur across social contexts (Hollway & Je erson, 2013). eorists
within micro analytic perspectives, by contrast, remain sceptical that such
approaches have su cient regard for the moment-to-moment construction
of selves in interaction and argue that the primary focus must remain on the
detailed analysis of discourse to understand fully the selves that individuals
negotiate and what they accomplish (Potter, 2012).

Current Trends
One focus of much recent work in critical social psychology has been the
study of how selves are produced across the contexts found in virtual media.
Writing two decades ago, Sherry Turkle (1995) argued that even by then the
interactions made available by new forms of media opened up numerous
opportunities for di erent presentations of the self: ‘the Internet has become
a signi cant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and
reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. In its virtual reality,
we self-fashion and self-create’ (Turkle, 1995, p. 180). Interactions in virtual
contexts do not involve the expectations found in face-to-face interactions
and the claims that people make for themselves are thereby often not open to
the challenges that might result from such constructions of self in everyday
life.
e outcomes of this experimentation with versions of self can be positive
or negative. On the positive side, interactions that do not involve face-to-
face contact allow individuals to conceal or at least not to reveal aspects of
self that might be negatively evaluated. For example, Go man (1963) noted
that, for individuals who risk facing social devaluation, one way of avoiding
404 C. McVittie and A. McKinlay

negative evaluation is by ‘passing’ or concealing from others features of the self

that might indicate stigma. us, for those who face prejudice or discrimina-
tion in face-to-face interactions, the construction of di erent selves in virtual
media can allow them to avoid such risks and to negotiate more favourable
experiences. But on the negative side, virtual media equally a ord to other
possibilities to construct themselves in ways that are not open to challenge as
elsewhere and that are designed to lead to less desirable outcomes. Of course,
many users of virtual media are well aware that these media allow possibili-
ties for producing selves that bear little relationship to other versions of selves
and treat claims accordingly. Experimentation with selves in virtual media,
then, can be relatively easy; having these selves accepted by others is however
another matter.
Opportunities for individuals to construct positive selves are often found in
online communities in which users seek support from and provide support to
others who report having similar experiences. us, for example, those who
claim to su er from ME can construct themselves in ways that are likely to be
met with support from fellow su erers rather than the scepticism they might
face in other contexts (Guise, McVittie, & McKinlay, 2010). And, as seen
elsewhere, the constructions seen in contexts such as these can often involve a
contrast with previous selves in order to bolster the claims being made for cur-
rent selves. Victims of domestic violence can contrast their past experiences of
su ering in abusive relationships with current experiences after leaving these
relationships and thereby present themselves as survivors (Hurley, Sullivan, &
McCarthy, 2007). ere remains the risk, however, that those with whom an
individual is interacting will treat claims to be a particular self as not being
authentic and consequently will not accept these claims. One such exam-
ple is seen in the interactions of users of an internet chat room for ‘suicidal
thoughts’ (Horne & Wiggins, 2009), in which established users of the forum
respond only to postings that indicate the user is genuinely suicidal. Postings
which, by contrast, suggest that an individual is someone who knows about
the problems rather than having experienced them can easily lead to the indi-
vidual’s claims to be suicidal not being accepted and the poster being ignored
by other users.
On the negative side, certain descriptions of self are found in emails that
describe what would appear to be di cult and harrowing circumstances and
which solicit help from the recipient. ese emails are commonly known as
‘419’ emails, ‘419’ being the term for online nancial fraud in terms of the
penal code of Nigeria where many of these emails originate. Recipients who
do accept the claims on o er and respond to them are likely to nd themselves
victims of nancial fraud with no hope of recompense. Routinely though we
 19 The Self 405

do treat these constructions of selves, whether struggling widows, nancial

intermediaries, or others, as inauthentic and do not accept or respond to them
(Blommaert, 2005; Chiluwa, 2009). Perhaps more worryingly, virtual media
also provide opportunities for individuals to construct selves that not only
might be damaging to others but also potentially highly damaging to them-
selves. Various health-related forums found in virtual media go beyond pro-
viding users with support to actually encouraging behaviours that can be very
detrimental to health and well-being. One such instance is that of ‘pro-ana’
sites that promote disordered eating behaviours as desirable and as lifestyle
choices instead of health issues. e metaphors found in such contexts can
suggest that users’ constructions are far from harmless experimentation with
di erent ways of being (Bates, 2015). e availability of such websites, along
with the recurring presence of unlikely claims made by others, does however
function to remind us of the many and diverse possibilities for experimen-
tation in the constructions of self that are made available in virtual media.
In such instances, as elsewhere, the selves that people present and create are
accomplishments, designed towards some social outcomes.

Conclusion
As seen in this chapter, critical approaches argue that in order to understand
selves in social life, we have to look at how selves are constructed and negotiated
through discourse in interaction with others. ese approaches to understand-
ing the self stand in contrast to the approach to the self proposed by James
(1890) as taken up and re ected in mainstream social psychology since then.
at view, rooted in dualist and essentialist assumptions, leads to an under-
standing of the self that ultimately is internally inconsistent and/or unsus-
tainable. As we have seen, however, the self is neither an enduring individual
product nor an individual endeavour that is conducted separately from the
society in which we live. Adopting a critical approach allows us to see how peo-
ple construct themselves in everyday life and how the versions of self that they
propose are oriented to accomplishing social outcomes. e selves that people
make, and how they are taken up by others, are ongoing projects, to be devel-
oped, reworked, or otherwise dealt with as we live our lives as social beings.

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