Identification

In an age when people frequently communicate with a variety of organizations in their daily lives, the theory of identification offers public relations practitioners a strategy companies and other organizations employ to influence audiences and build relationships with them.

Organizations do this when they demonstrate how they share identities, values, and norms with audiences and publics. As so many organizations try to capture and keep the audience's attention, this strategic process of creating and communicating common ground is crucial. First articulated by scholar Kenneth Burke, identification is a rhetorical concept that has become increasingly important in public relations as more organizations compete to garner the audience support needed for survival. Identifying with an audience consists of persuading them how an organization and an audience member are similar. As Burke described it, “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B” (1969, p. 20). Less overt than some persuasive strategies, without the ability to convince audiences of shared interests, an organization's message is likely to fail. On the other hand, if people believe their views and beliefs overlap with an organization's, it becomes much easier to successfully persuade them, as approving of an organizational message is akin to approving of themselves.

Identification is an ongoing process; indeed, public relations must help organizations to continually show audiences how they are alike and have shared interests. Companies that fail to maintain identification with audiences are in danger of failing. Without the specific connection created by identification, for example, the fur industry in the United States is struggling. It is having difficulty convincing people who value animals for more than their aesthetics that fur clothing is desirable. For some audiences today, then, creating identification on the basis of the values of status and prestige is no longer persuasive. The fur industry faces the danger that “if people find that old identifications are unacceptable, they can be persuaded, and even persuade themselves, to abandon them and adopt new ones” (Heath, 2001, p. 377). Savvy public relations practitioners must therefore monitor changing societal values, trends, and norms.

Understanding societal preferences is necessary, inasmuch as Burke saw identification as “compensatory to division” (1969, p. 22). That is, creating rapport between organizations and audiences necessarily involves showing the audiences how they are like the organization in question but different from other companies also seeking to establish common identity. The messages public relations employs to [Page 404]create identification work to include audience members as part of a certain group, while at the same time they exclude other groups and competing organizational messages. This means, for example, that when The Gap tries to persuade audiences that they share the values of hip style, reasonable price, and comfort, they are excluding audience members who prefer high end, luxury, or more classic clothing. The company would then need to show how it is more similar to potential customers seeking this type of fashion than other casual clothing marketers.

There are a number of ways public relations can attempt to induce identification. In his study of organizational communication, George Cheney (1983) devised three prominent strategies that follow from Burke's (1969) original formulation of the identification theory. These strategies include (a) the common ground technique, (b) identification through antithesis, and (c) the assumed or transcendent we. (Cheney, 1983). Each works to persuade an audience member that they share similar interests. In the common ground technique, an organization would link itself to stakeholders in an overt manner. Audiences are told explicitly that they share organizational values, as in when a company says it has a “commitment to fairness.” Identification through antithesis works by demonstrating and uniting against a common enemy. This strategy functions by an “us versus them” mentality, where organizations point out the differences between themselves and a competitor. Finally, identification can be created through use of the assumed or transcendent we. The use of this pronoun and its derivatives calls audiences to see themselves as part of the organization or institution. When we are called to act as Americans, for example, we unite on the basis of this particular strategy's evocation of our national identity.

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