Relationships between Voice, Silence and Identity Formation in Organizations

Abstract

Language and voice are very important in the formation of identity, but if that very language/ voice is absent because of censorship, silencing or lack of voice, limited discursive or symbolic resources, how are individuals going to construct their identity? On the one hand, the challenge of identity is to incorporate multiple and diverse elements in order to build a sense of self-continuity and coherence. On the other hand, multiple and diverse moments and contexts offer people the possibility to tell many different identity stories which can be contradictory, changing, disparate, and fundamentally unstable. This latter view leads to a more postmodern definition of identity that will be analyzed here in relation to voice and silence.