Research project Doing Military Service: A Study of Conscripts’ Interactional Identity Construction
How do conscripted young adults manage their entry into the Swedish Armed Forces, and how does language become a key to understanding this new reality? This project follows conscripts during their basic training with the aim of exploring the interactional work through which roles and identities are understood and negotiated in new contexts.
Photo: Helena Textorius.
This project investigates how conscripted young adults develop an understanding of their identity within the Swedish Armed Forces through interaction. In the participants’ interactions outside of formal military tasks, their own understanding of their function in the military context becomes visible. In this process of identity work, they draw on a variety of communicative resources—such as spoken language, gaze and gestures. Within this social interaction, the conscripts can reconstruct and negotiate the institutional role of the conscript.
The study is longitudinal, and the material has been ethnographically collected throughout a conscript group’s basic training. Examining identity construction through interaction in a conscript group can provide insights into how language is used to understand new contexts, and by foregrounding the conscripts’ perspectives, the study gives voice to young adults required to complete military service, which can be valuable at a societal level.
Photo: Helena Textorius.