(De)Coupled Identities: Some Theoretical Reflections and a Few Empirical Observations on Exclusion and Inclusion Discourses

Upholding (or opposing) power relationships implied by event models used in a discourse and accepting (or rejecting) social categorizations employed in referential expressions therein are two potentially linked language games. Validating (or overcoming) the communicative roles presupposed by the discourse is a third one.

   Although, in each game, player and move definitions can be set in the game’s own terms, and thus form an autonomous system, they can also be construed as mappings of the other games’ players and moves, and they are often so conceived. That is the art of the games, to redraw their own domains and to project their own range of action. For such reasons, coupled player dichotomies often function as subjection or exclusion mechanisms, and decoupling them can contribute to equalize conditions.

   Analyses of moves that have coupled or decoupled gender or ethnic identity dichotomies with other categorizations in Mexico’s recent history support the view outlined above, which draws upon findings from various fields, mainly cultural sociology and discourse science. The main corpus consists of public interventions by and about actors of cases that have made the country face contradictions between different laws, between law and tradition or between law and aspiration (such as the revoked and the effective elections of Eufrosina Cruz).

   The moves include subsuming one of the coupled dichotomies (as a whole) under a new superordinate or subdividing one of its poles into new hyponyms, which make the dichotomy less relevant. They also comprise ironically denouncing the consequences of the opposition or simply deconstructing it by introducing co-hyponyms or clines.

   Comments on the argumentative and rhetorical resources used to effect the moves lead to identification of key problems in current conceptions of discourse and context interaction.