Lecture, three hours. Study of relationships among communication, culture, and identity, and examination of ways in which texts (broadly construed) constitute experience, difference, and subjectivity. Focus on function of language, representation and meaning in construction of self, social collectives, and world views. Consideration of how communication is performative endeavor for humans seeking to construct identity. Students are prepared to describe and explain theories that detail performance as communicative form, analyze ways language and discourse function as texts that work to produce significant personal and social identities, and describe specific principles, motivations, and theoretical categories within interdisciplinary study of culture that produce identity. Letter grading.