First-Person Singular and Plural

Strategies for Managing Ego- And Sociocentrism in Four Basketball Teams

Bibliographic Data

ID2366470
AuthorsGerald Pillsbury (corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume26
Issue4
Pages450-478
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary Ethnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0891-2416 • E-ISSN: 1552-5414
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/089124198026004003
OpenAlexW2060638931
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited23

John Hewitt has argued that because American culture sees individualism and collectivism as two valued but opposed alternatives, it encourages Americans to construct their identities pragmatically. This study examines the specific forms that pragmatic strategy takes in a collectivist context: membership on a basketball team. Using a semiotic conception of self, the author analyzes team members' use of personal pronouns. Taking "I" to indicate an independent, autonomous self and "we" to indicate an interdependent, contextually defined self, these basketball players' discourse reveals four patterns of managing the two selves: (1) one pronoun replaces the other, (2) "we" transforms "I" into a generic individual, (3) both selves coexist, and (4) one self speaks through the other. The author concludes that the concept of the pragmatic strategy of self-construction is too broad of a label to be useful and argues for far greater attention to more specific patterns of self-construction

Basketball · Collectivism · Construct (python library · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Individualism · Interdependence · Linguistics · Personal pronoun · Plural · Political science · Self · Semiotics · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology · Social Psychology

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