Social Scientific Methodology (I am...)

Though this is surely just Derrida ranting, as I hear from most that he usually does, I find it interesting about what he says regarding the concept of belief and how it's exposed though our language, specifically "I am." In the social sciences, particularly (yes, I'm calling you out Carl Couch) in the New Iowa School (Symbolic Interactionism in Sociological Social Psychology), we attempt to measure identity through this methodology. Essentially, you are handed a questionnaire and asked to respond to twenty blanks that start with "I am." Though you have probably already thought of some critiques that could blunder this method already, let me tell you my favorite. First off, this is a culturally bias scientific methodology. In Spain, for instance, identity is a rarely posited quandary in comparison with the hypertextuality of the internet and/or (generally speaking) the more postmodern U.S world of academics. I only suppose this, because I get very shallow, half-baked responses from just about anyone that hasn't studied philosophy. In fact, it has become a hobby of mine in recent months to raise the question of what exactly it means to be Andaluz, Córdobes, or Spanish. I plan on pursuing this in the future as a research interest depending on whether or not I can find an adequate method to pin down the problem. In any case, if I were to attempt to use this method I would come to the immediate problem of wondering what to translate. If you are not familiar, in Spanish you can express first-person meaning through Ser or Estar, the former being more permanent and the latter more temporal, to put in ratter general and speciously. In English, the meaning is not definite, but supposed in the question posited (at least in this context, which Derrida would also have something to say about). I would assume to translate this to Ser, therefore solidifying that an identity is a more permanent clause, which negates to at least some degree the work of Goffman (our ability to act out our role in relation to the situation) and symbolic interactionism in general.

Obviously, we find the gaping flaw inherent in Sociological identity research. I have always argued its ignorance to temporality and lack of principles inherent in Process Philosophy, which is rather ironic considering Pierce and Dewey's grand influence in both schools of thought. Have we completely ignored the work of Jung, Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Steigler, whose work on individuation, has demonstrated these methodologies fallacious? Are we really trying to capture something that is clearly too dynamic and complex to nail down in a questionnaire like that? Certainly we, as scientists, must come to a more adequate way of dealing with methodology and going beyond language to understand the neural mechanisms that underpin the thoughts and, thus, identities that cause our behavior. Furthermore, we must understand what mechanisms we need to reproduce them via technology, like cyberneticist Norbert Weiner. Sure, easier said than done, but why do we sit around and watch while the "real doctors" do all of the work?