This book brings together a collection of 12 articles addressing current theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues in sociolinguistic research on identity. As described in the Introduction, the contributions to the book cast a critical eye on various poststructural tenets about the relationship between language and identity. Part I discusses existing and/or novel theoretical perspectives on the construction of identity through language. The rest of the book presents empirical cases that show how various sociolinguistic approaches may illuminate the study of identity in different settings. Each case examines how the deployment of either linguistic features (Part II) or different languages and language varieties (Part III) contributes sociolinguistic resources for identity work.
Chap. 1 proposes an innovative analytical framework, “hierarchy of identities.” Centered on the notion of “moments,” this framework enables one to analyze how several identities can be hierarchically co-produced during interaction. Chap. 2 provides a review and critique of current constructionist theories of identity. This chapter underscores the value of social constructionism while questioning the constructionist neglect of constraints and continuity in identity construction. Chap. 3 critiques the poststructural lack of attention to the psychological dimension of identity. The chapter assesses how psychoanalysis could be used to investigate “the psychological self” in applied linguistics.
Chap. 4 discusses and exemplifies how languages may be discursively constructed and deployed as emblems of national identity. This article primarily deals with how struggles over language issues as well as naming practices can shed light on the role of language in the construction of nationhood. Chap. 5 explores the role of identity in learning and teaching EFL pronunciation through interviews that elicit EFL teachers' perceptions of (non-)native English accents.
Chaps. 6 and 7 adopt a language ideological framework to investigate how sociolinguistic variation may index different orientations to place in two different towns in northern England. Chap. 8 links identity with language revitalization efforts in a case study of the “ethnolinguistic vitality” of the French vernacular on the island of Guernsey, off the coast of France. Chaps. 9 and 10 use discourse analysis in order to delve into gender identities in two institutional settings in the UK. Chap. 9 deals with how women articulate professional and feminine identities in narrative. Chap. 10 looks at the emergence of masculine identities in a college-level classroom.
Chaps. 11 and 12 return to the issue of ethnolinguistic identities by situating the production of these identities in multilingual primary and secondary classrooms in the Netherlands and in the United States, respectively. Finally, chap. 13 analyzes attitudes toward the use of Irish English in Ireland in order to shed light on the relationship between a standard variety and national identity.
This edited volume offers an array of state-of-the-art sociolinguistic research that will be of great interest to graduate students, researchers, and language practitioners trying to understand identity through the study of language.
