So, I claim identity to be central to my research. But what, really, is identity? What’s the difference between identity and personality, for example? Or between identity and experience? Identity and attribute? Property? Capacity? I’m struggling a bit here…
But, what I do know is that identity is created in relation to others, and that language is the tool we use in this construction. This means losing your language (partially or entirely) must affect your identity. Or, as Monica Blom Johansson puts it in her dissertation from 2012: ”if identity is a product of relationships, it follows that it may be harmed by having aphasia”.
Btw, Monica’s dissertation is available in full-text here!
