Identity and dialect performance affords an original vantage point from which the nuanced intersectionality and dynamism inherent in research on dialectology and sociolinguistics can be championed. The result is a compendium of studies on how dialect performance and linguistic choices are linked to identity construction through metalinguistic discourse in a comprehensive range of communities. This collection also celebrates methodological eclecticism through a wedding of qualitative and quantitative methods to yield maximum insights into manifestations of dialect performance and the process of identity construction.
Structurally, this book contains nineteen chapters of how the central motif of dialect performance plays out in various geopolitical contexts and how identity manifests itself during such processes. A helpful introduction by Reem Bassiouney prefaces these chapters, which serves as an overarching weaver to pinpoint the shared similarities of the dialectal analyses that follow, introduces seminal readings relevant to certain chapters, and usefully classifies them into four parts. Part 1 (chs. 1–3) evolves chiefly around dialect boundaries and lays the theoretical groundwork for coming chapters. In particular, ch. 1 by John Edwards is foundational reading for those new to research on identity and dialect. Part 2 (chs. 4–7) is a foray into the political arena of how various nation-building projects in South Sudan (Stefano Manfredi, ch. 4), Italy (Mauro Tosco, ch. 5), Morocco (Dominique Caubet, ch. 6), and in Britain (Carmen Ebner, ch. 7) cross paths with dialect use, and how dialect performance can be empirically problematized as a form of resistance. Part 3 (chs. 8–13) is a methodological treasure trove in which the prominent use of metalinguistic discourse is particularized in the studies of indexicality, stance-taking, crossing, and passing as a means of examining the intersection between language ideologies and identity construction. Multi-site analyses from ch. 8 by Isabelle Léglise & Santiago Sánchez Moreano, ch. 11 by Ángeles Vicente & Amina Naciri-Azzouz, and ch. 12 by Patrick Heinrich succeed in illustrating how identity performance is contextually bounded. Part 4 (chs. 14–19) has a focus on how media, including both mass media and social media, has a prominent role to play in circulating and calcifying ideologies about language. Given that media studies have been traditionally under-featured in sociolinguistic analyses, this section has made a timely contribution and offered original insights by factoring media into the dynamism in research on identity and language. One notable example, among others, is Anne Storch's article (ch.17), in which the ‘messy space’ carved out by Nigerian Pidgin English as a youth language is cogently argued and exemplified as a far-reaching consequence of colonialism.
Collectively, this book is thematically structured in such a systematic way that the case is convincingly presented for how dialectal variation and style, which index social and cultural meanings and indicate ideological and habitual tendencies, can be an intentional performance of identity. Together, these nineteen chapters weave an accessible and insightful understanding of the link between dialect and identity. This book is unreservedly recommended to any readers and researchers interested in sociolinguistics, the indexicality of language, identity construction, and dialectal performance.
