This collection of research articles on language and identity begins with an editors’ introduction that positions the subsequent chapters in the field. The concepts of social constructionism, categorization and membership definitions, anti-essentialist visions of the “self” and indexicality, all themes that recur in the book, are defined and critically discussed in this introduction. The following chapters are based on studies carried out with a variety of methodological approaches, including Conversation Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, narrative analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics, yet they all share an anti-essentialist orientation: the assumption that identities are discursively produced, and an inclusion of both local and global influences on identity construction.
The book is divided into four sections: part I, “Overview: Theory, method and analysis”; part II, “Private and public identity: constructing who we are”; part III, “The gendered self: Becoming and being a man”; and part IV, “The in-between self: negotiating person and place.”
The volume begins and ends with chapters that analyze narratives from Holocaust survivors. Both these chapters, albeit in different ways, address how these narratives do not fit the canonical narrative structure of temporally ordered events with causal sequencing, but incorporate the narrator’s current perspective into their stories. In addition to addressing the topic of narrative structure, these essays address the larger issue of how the speakers make use of both interactional footing and social positioning in their constructions of identity. These themes are continued in the remaining three chapters in part I, and continue to be addressed in the other sections. The concepts of footing, positioning, and voice are salient in this volume, as is the interweaving of participant roles and references with “capital-D Discourses” (i.e., widespread cultural practices and ideologies).
Included in part II are five studies that look at Discourses around food and motherhood, as well as talk in three different types of workplace. In all five of these chapters, competing Discourses emerge. The focus of each analysis is the different linguistic strategies used to construct roles and identities that both address the conversational goals of the speakers and position them with the larger society.
Part III contains three chapters on masculine identities. The first two present analyses of the construction of hegemonic identities by white, heterosexual males in the U.S. and Brazil, respectively. The final chapter of this section addresses how working-class urban African American fathers position themselves in opposition to the dominant Discourse of the street.
The final section addresses the transitional identities of Hispanics in the U.S., Moroccan immigrants in the U.K., and, as indicated above, Holocaust survivors. All these chapters address the use of linguistic resources to negotiate group boundaries and construct identities that are sometimes in contrast to, and sometimes a part of, Discourses about specific social groups.
