Handbills, Tissues, and Condoms: A Site of Engagement for the Construction of Identity in Public Discourse
This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in which the text itself implies a reader or receiver. The study argues that in such sites of engagement identities are imputed, claimed, ratified or contested and that the ascription of identity is, therefore, inherent in the activities at the sites of engagement in which this discourse takes place. Thus public discourse is argued to be inherently constitutive of social identity.