Caltrop Matrix of Identity
Many of the intercultural communication studies on identity and identification touch
upon the multifaceted nature and dynamic complexity of identity. Collier illustrates the
complexity of identity by three dimensions: scope, salience, and intensity (2005). Hecht’s
Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) places identity over four layers of personal,
enacted, relational, and communal as the multiple loci in social interaction (2005). Imahori
and Cupach treat identity as a complex construct and notice the overlapping aspects of
identity (2005). Ting-Toomey looks at the multifaceted nature of identity through structural
and historical constraints and is driven to explore the contextual assumptions regarding the
complexity of identity (2005). Hecht and Jung have expanded their theoretical construction of
CTI into investigating the gaps among the four different frames of identity (Jung & Hecht,
2004). Therefore, complexity might be the true nature of identity. Actually, complexity could
be the nature of any social behavior and cultural concept. The perspective of complexity
really depends on the researcher’s ambition and capability to include the different layers and
various aspects of the objects or subjects at the changing levels of abstraction.
The structural multi-levels and performing complexity of identity are morphologically
similar to the psychological term of gestalt, which means “a physical, biological,
psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its
properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.” Although Gestalt
psychology has already become obsolete in the discipline of psychology, the structural and
holistic nature might still have heuristic implication only if we could put it on a sophisticate
model over the dynamic substrates and rotate the whole structure perhaps under a conceptual
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Convention