TOWARDS THE SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY: CONSTRUCTION OF THE PEDAGOGIST IDENTITY IN SELECTED IGBO LITERATURE TEXTS

Abstract

It is an absolute truism that members of a given society often draw their sense of self mostly from the social categories to which they belong. Through a social categorization process, people with shared common features are categorized and labelled as the in-group, while the few that do not conform to the categorization are labelled the out-group. Language is the main code for such categorization and labelling. Over the years, the image of Nigerian pedagogists has been variously constructed in many fields but little attention is paid to how their image is constructed in Igbo literature. This study, therefore, examines how the pedagogists’ identity is constructed by Igbo literary writers in their works. Data were drawn from four texts, randomly selected as samples from the three genres of Igbo literature and subjected to content analysis using the lenses of the social identity theory. Findings show that pedagogists are always portrayed as poor people, occupying the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and as such are not respected. The study recommends an upward review of pedagogists’ welfare in Nigeria to make it more attractive, and by so doing change the general perception of people towards pedagogists.