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Identity styling through code-mixing in journalistic discourse 179
achieve particular effects or to suggest particular interpretations” (Selting 1999:
1). What is more, a “style is not an invariable way of using language, it is rather
a mixture of different ways of using language, a distinctive repertoire” (Fairclough
2000: 96). Yet, those “mixtures” of linguistic devices are not at all combined
out of random and incidental elements, since many stylistic features (e.g.,
registers, semantic macrostructures, syntactic patterns, lexical choices) are to
some extent constrained by institutional contexts and prescribed by the texts’
generic requirements. It is assumed here that languages’ resources may be mustered
to perform, or to style, an identity. The analysis of journalistic discourse
undertaken here concerns the linguistic styling of personal and professional
identities through written political commentary. Out of a range of resources for
styling, one – code-mixing – is examined, in order to see how it constructs specific
discourse identities.
3. Determinants of identity styling
It needs to be stressed that a way of speaking or a style of writing is not
a simple index of one’s identity: various identities may be more or less consciously
performed through stylization (Butler 1990; Cameron & Kulick 2003;
Block 2007). The performance of identity in journalistic discourse is subject to
constraints of public display as well as to social and cultural conventions of
reception. Most stylisticians are against reductionist approaches to styling identity:
“Language users both draw on and create conventionalized associations
between linguistic form and social meaning to construct their own and others’
identity” (Bucholtz & Hall 2004: 478). This also means that one can express
oneself “like an expert”, “like a celebrity”, or “like a leader” without being one.
An act of identity styling through language is projective and its social contextualization
is highly contingent. To grasp this complexity, Coupland (2007:
111–115) proposes recognizing the following processes involved in styling:
targeting, framing, voicing, keying and loading. Targeting is connected with the
construction of a persona of a chosen discourse participant, mostly the author or
the recipient, sometimes the third party. Targeted identities may be personal or
professional (“this is how a ‘real’ reporter speaks”), individual or collective
(“this is the way we, the Polish, are”). In this study, code-mixing will be demonstrated
to work towards the author’s self-styling as an “expert” in order to
increase the authoritativeness of his claims. By implication, in written discourse,
self-styling by the author as a “teacher” determines the status of the
target readers as “learners”.
The second process, framing, is a key determinant of identity styling. It is
connected with how the speaker has made a specific identity aspect salient
through the choice of linguistic devices. Discursive frames have both an iden-