Language and Identities

by Carmen Llamas (Editor), Dominic Watt (Editor)

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748635771
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/18/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carmen Llamas lectures in sociolinguistics at the University of York. She is co-editor (with Dominic Watt) of Language and Identities (2010) and (with Peter Stockwell and Louise Mullany) of The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics (2007). Her research deals primarily with phonological variation and change in the North East and the Scottish-English border region.

Dominic Watt lectures in Forensic Speech Science at the University of York, UK

Table of Contents

PART A: IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE; A1. Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological considerations, Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt; A2. Identity, John Joseph; A3. Locating Identity in Language, Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall; A4. Locating Language in Identity, Barbara Johnstone; PART B: INDIVIDUALS; B1. The role of the individual in language variation and change, Jane Stuart-Smith; B2. The identification of the individual through speech, Dominic Watt; B3. The ageing voice: changing identity over time, David Bowie; B4. Foreign Accent Syndrome - between two worlds, at home in neither, Nick Miller; B5. The disguised voice: impersonating accents or speech styles and impersonating individuals, Anders Eriksson; PART C: GROUPS AND COMMUNITIES; C1.The authentic speaker and the speech community, Nik Coupland; C2. Communities of practice and peripherality, Emma Moore; C3. Two languages, two identities? the bilingual community, Norma Mendoza-Denton and Dana Osborne; C4. Regional variation in ethnic varieties, Erik Thomas and Alicia Beckford Wassink; C5. Religion vs. geography: is there a hierarchy? Sue Fox; C6. Gender, sexuality and the 'third sex', Kira Hall, Lal Zimman and Jenny Davis; C7. Crossing into class: Language, ethnicities & class sensibility in England, Ben Rampton; C8. The glass ceiling? a female identity in the workplace, Louise Mullany; PART D: REGIONS AND NATIONS; D1. Convergence and divergence across a national border, Carmen Llamas; D2. Shifting borders and shifting regional identities, Joan Beal; D3. Supra-local regional dialect leveling, David Britain; D4. Migration, national identity and the reallocation of forms, Judy Dyer; D5. An historical national identity? The case of Scots, Robert McColl Millar; D6. Post-colonial identities: an African perspective, Tope Omoniyi.

Editorial Reviews

The book is a valuable contribution to the slowly growing body of works on the identity-marking dimension of language. By providing readers with a strong theoretical grounding on the subject, a wide range of methodological approaches to consider, and a broad range of empirical studies by respected specialists from various fields, this book about language and identity will surely find its way in many libraries, course outlets, reference lists, and citations for years to come.

English World-Wide - Isabel Pefianco Martin

This book is a tour de force, a rare combination of comprehensive scholarship, insight, fresh thinking and wisdom. The splendid editing has produced assured writing as well as authoritative views and analysis throughout, and this means that however complex the ideas, it is remarkably easy to read. This is, by far, the best book on this topic in the English language. Language and Identities provides a thematic reader and highly suitable source for postgraduate courses, and thus should influence a wide audience of future researchers in language and identity studies.

Discourse & Society - Robert Bevan

[This volume] has a much wider scope, since it addresses all aspects of identity, not just national identity. While the latter type is touched upon in several chapters, others deal with gender identity, social class, ethnicity, age, forensic linguistics, or language disabilities, such as Foreign Accent Syndrome. In this respect, this collection is unique, for it enables any student of linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics or linguistic anthropology to come to grips with a large collection of short and accessible articles written by leading academics in their fields. The volume succeeds in not being simply a collection of case studies, in that each chapter is an open gate to a wider field of study and research. The first section on ''Theoretical Issues'' is also a particularly welcome addition to this volume, with some excellent articles by leading scholars in contemporary sociolinguistics. This section fully succeeds in providing the reader with an adequate toolkit for the analysis of identity through and association with language. Finally, this volume is also unique in its bringing together studies on variationist and interactionist sociolinguistics in almost equal numbers, thus helping to demonstrate that both angles are not as far apart as can sometimes be heard… An extremely useful resource to students and confirmed academics alike.

LINGUIST list - James Costa

The book is a valuable contribution to the slowly growing body of works on the identity-marking dimension of language. By providing readers with a strong theoretical grounding on the subject, a wide range of methodological approaches to consider, and a broad range of empirical studies by respected specialists from various fields, this book about language and identity will surely find its way in many libraries, course outlets, reference lists, and citations for years to come.

English World-Wide - Isabel Penfiaco Martin

The book is a valuable contribution to the slowly growing body of works on the identity-marking dimension of language. By providing readers with a strong theoretical grounding on the subject, a wide range of methodological approaches to consider, and a broad range of empirical studies by respected specialists from various fields, this book about language and identity will surely find its way in many libraries, course outlets, reference lists, and citations for years to come.

— Isabel Penfiaco Martin

English World-Wide