Fighters, girls and other identities examines an urban taekwondo club and the linguistic interaction between club members, some of whom are considered marginalized in greater Danish society. Using a sports club to study contemporary sociocultural and sociolinguistic processes, Madsen explores the contribution of linguistics to social interaction during, and outside of, instructional periods. The club members' shared histories of interactions and experiences are examined through the lens of dynamic identities and changing social categorizations. Club membership encourages ‘a community based on shared values and interests across ethnic, social, and political borders’ (p. 8) rather than just shared interests.
The book expands our knowledge of identity categorization by studying, from an interactional sociolinguistic perspective, conversations that reproduce social differentiation. Madsen examined the conduct of young club members as it relates to, reproduces, reinterprets, or resists established concepts about cultural diversity and youth in today's Danish society.
Chapter 1 sets the tone and discusses cultural diversity, language, field methods, and identity in interactions. Chapter 2 views the current state of sports clubs in Denmark, assumptions about sports and integration, the taekwondo club as a community of practice, and social positioning. Chapter 3 examines the interactions between girls and boys and includes play and teasing in interactions, social relationships, peer monitoring, and gender roles. Chapter 4 contains an overview of youth, language, and ethnic categorization via the sociolinguistics of Copenhagen, situated functions and youth style in urban environments, and other aspects of ethnicity. Chapter 5 looks at orientation in an out-of-school setting with respect to coolness and opposition, achievements as symbolic capital, and micro-integration and enregisterment. Chapter 6 illustrates perspectives between fighters, girls, and other identities, community sports and integration, and ethnic categorization and social inequality.
Madsen's stated goal for the book is to add to the discussion of youth, cultural diversity, and the relationship between language and social identities. She uses connections between language use and social categorization in the societal positioning of minority youth to show that organized leisure activities contribute significantly to societal integration of immigrant children. Ethnicity and culture are globally ambiguous without considering the internal struggles of a group's identity and belonging.
Fighters, girls and other identities examines the relevance of her research to sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, additional language skill acquisition, bilingualism, the sociology of sports, and sociolinguistic processes in out-of-school learning and leisure time. Madsen focused her research on sixteen children and teenagers before and after training sessions of recoded group conversations, group interviews, and individual interviews. The interviews reveal situational, relational, and sociocultural contexts that arise from simultaneous perspectives that inform and influence each other. Madsen uses the concept of identity to see how children and teenagers negotiate their place in the social order.
