Language and Identities

By Dominic Watt

Book Overview

Language and Identities offers a broad survey of our current state of knowledge on the connections between variability in language use and the construction, negotiation, maintenance and performance of identities at different levels - individual, group, regional and national. It brings together over 20 specially commissioned chapters, written by distinguished international scholars, on a range of topics around the language/identity nexus. The collection deals sequentially with identities at various levels, both social and personal. Using detailed, empirical evidence, the chapters illustrate how the multi-layered, dynamic nature of identities is realised through linguistic behaviour. Several chapters in the volume focus on contexts in which we might expect to observe a foregrounding of factors involved in the definition and delimitation of self and other: for example, cases in which identities may be disputed, changing, blurred, peripheral, or imposed. Such a focus on complex contexts allows clearer insight into the identity-making and -marking functions of language. The collection approaches these topics from a range of perspectives, with contributions from sociolinguists, sociophoneticians, linguistic anthropologists, clinical linguists and forensic linguists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0748635777
• ISBN13: 9780748635771
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher