Language and Identity

10 Key excerpts on "Language and Identity"

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  Paul at the Crossroads of Cultures

  Theologizing in the Space Between

  • Kathy Ehrensperger(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  Both contribute to an enhanced awareness of differences among language users. It has been assumed that as exemplary users of more than one language bilinguals ‘bring with them intuitive strategies that facilitate healthy negotiations’. 83 The relevance of this insight will be further analysed with regard to the role of Paul and his team in chapter 5. 3.4 Conclusions We have investigated the multiple and complex aspects of the relation between language, culture and identity informed by current sociolinguistic research and aspects of Bourdieu’s approach to the interplay between individuals and society more generally. Although there is an inherent and primary link between language and cultural embeddedness in the ‘habitus’, this link, although durable, is neither static nor immutable. It is a disposition which enables an agent to relate creatively to situations and contexts in appropriate but also innovative ways. As such, identity is always localized temporally, socially and culturally. Against any deterministic notion we found that this allows for the perception of transformation within the parameters of a given context. That the link between culture and language is not deterministic is also evident when the widespread existence of bilingualism and biculturalism is taken into account. What emerged from our survey is that rather than a language per se being the determinative factor in terms of self-perception and identity, it is the cultural patterns combined with the sense of belonging that, in multilingual contexts, are the decisive identity-shaping factors. Languages are important in that they are adjusted to the communicative and more significantly to the representative or symbolic needs of the community of belonging. The ability to relate to, and communicate in, more than one cultural and linguistic context enhances the awareness of diversity, not just of peoples but also of 83 Canagarajah 2006: 7. Linguistic and Cultural Diversity and Identity Formation 61

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  Discovering Sociolinguistics

  From Theory to Practice

  • Dick Smakman(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  So, in addition to influencing language use, speaker characteristics such as age, social position, and gender are themselves identity markers (and so people have an ‘age identity’, a ‘social identity’, and, for instance, a ‘gender identity’). According to Block and Corona (2016), the current consensus on identity is that it is ‘multilayered and complex’ (509–510), which means that its different dimensions cannot be treated in isolation. These identities interrelate in various ways and together form an individual’s overall identity. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985) believed that identity is largely some-thing you do, rather than something that you are born with. Coulmas ( 2013 ) added that individual linguistic identity is partly given and partly adopted. Individuals may choose to show an identity, and they may choose to do this subtly or conspicuously and choose to foreground certain identities at the expense of others. Language identity may be foregrounded or not. Identity on Martha’s Vineyard A good example of research exploring identity is William Labov’s investiga-tion of local speakers on the island of Martha’s Vineyard (an island just off the North East coast of the United States). In this famous investigation (Labov 1963 ), he found that islanders often pronounced certain vowels, namely those in words such as ‘mouth’ and ‘price’, in a way that was typical of the island. Labov assumed that this showed their identification with a Martha’s Vineyard Non-linguistic aspects of identity Language is an important identity marker of groups and individuals but hardly ever acts alone in this sense. It usually marks identity in combination with a myriad of other characteristics, even unexpected ones. In Toksook Bay in Alaska, dance is an important identity marker (John 2015 ). Marriage, mourning, and other ceremonies are important markers of group iden-tity amongst Gurezi immigrants in the Valley of Kashmir in the Western Himalayas (Ahmed 2014 ).

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  Conversations of Intercultural Couples

  • Kellie Goncalves(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Akademie Forschung

    (Publisher)

  In emphasizing that language is indeed a marker of identity, Tabouret-Keller (2004: 315) asserts that “the language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of this language are inseparable: This is surely a piece of knowledge as old as human speech itself. Language acts are acts of identity” (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). Their findings influenced future studies concerned with language use and identity construction, emphasizing identities as both fluid and multiple. In this section, I have presented and discussed various social-science approaches con-cerned with identities and the role of language. Within sociolinguistics, variationist stud-ies attempt to link linguistic features to social categories, and as a result, view identities as pre-discursive and given. In contrast, interactional studies offer a new and compelling way for viewing identities – as produced and constructed in communicative processes and verbal interaction, highlighting the notion of multiplicity. Schiffrin (1996: 199) states that “identity is neither categorical nor fixed: we may act more or less middle-class, more or less female, and so on, depending on what we are doing and with whom”, implying that while language use may in fact be an indicator of identity, there is more to identity construction than just language use. Linguistic anthropology similarly views identities as inherent in actions rather than people (Bucholtz and Hall 2004: 376). In talking about identities, Bucholtz and Hall use verbs and nouns such as act , doing and actions that open up the way to the notions of practice and performance, which are both linguistic and social phenomena. Within their theoretical framework regarding Language and Identity, Bucholtz and Hall (2004) focus on four interrelated and overlapping semiotic processes: practice , indexicality , ideology , and performance .

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  Identity in Communicative Contexts

  • Kamila Ciepiela(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  conveying messages, people accomplish other goals, of which the most prominent one is identity construction and performance� As Stella Ting-Toomey (1999: 26) notes: “individuals acquire their identities via interaction with others” and several per- spectives from the disciplines of psychology, sociology and linguistics have been Kamila Ciepiela 8 influential in exploring the links between social interaction and the construction and performance of identity� Despite the fact that people communicate by employing a variety of semiotic codes (mimicry, kinesics, drawings, colours, etc�), language is understood as the basic means of communication� Linguists, however, highlight the dual function of language in human life� Language is not only the most efficient means of expression but also a tool for meaning representation� The view of language as an ability of the individual, firmly located within the mind and abstracted from experience, and the view of language as a means of in- teraction with others have given rise to a pervasive dualism in which oppositions are set between the individual and the group, and which has permeated not only psychological and cognitive theories of language and the self, but also the interac- tionally oriented ones� From one perspective, identity is seen to be established and maintained either through negotiation within social situations, or through social roles that are in- ternalized by the individuals� These internalizations can take the shape of a proto- typical self in the form of an image, a self-schema or a category� A convenient way of thinking about such categories is in terms of a central exemplar (Rosch 1978) whose meaning as Taylor (1989) argues, can be interpreted as a schematic repre- sentation of the core of the category that is used on different occasions� Perhaps the clearest example of the approaches to identity that parallel the cognitive-psychological theories of language is the Social Categorisation Theory (SCT) (Turner et al� 1987)� It is based on Rosch’s (1978) work on natural catego- ries in which category formation is driven by perceptual processing of real life data� Turner, however, assumes that categories are not only conceptual but also

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  Sociolinguistics and Language Education

  • Prof. Nancy H. Hornberger, Dr. Sandra Lee McKay, Nancy H. Hornberger, Sandra Lee McKay(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Part 5 Language and Identity 349 Chapter 13 Language and Identity BONNY NORTON Overview: Key Terms and Goals For the past 10 years, I have taught a graduate course at the University of British Columbia, called ‘Language, Discourse, and Identity’, which has given me the opportunity to remain connected to the burgeoning litera-ture on Language and Identity in the field of language education. However, given the immense wealth of this literature, which includes an entire jour-nal devoted to the topic (the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education ), this chapter, like my course, is selective in orientation. To achieve some balance between depth and breadth, I include some of the classic literature in the area, while making space for new voices and emerging themes. I begin by defining key terms, and then outline what I see as some of the primary goals of this area of research. As a starting point, and with a view to defining key terms, it is useful to consider why I include the term discourse in the title of my graduate course. In order to understand the relationship between Language and Identity, as discussed in this chapter, it is important to understand the poststructuralist theory of language, which is defined as discourse. Poststructuralist theories of language achieved much prominence in the late 20th century, and are associated, amongst others, with the work of Bakhtin (1981, 1984), Bourdieu (1977, 1991), Hall (1997) and Weedon (1997). These theories build on, but are distinct from, structuralist theories of language, associated predominantly with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1966). For structuralists, the linguistic system guarantees the meaning of signs (the word and its meaning) and each linguistic commu-nity has its own set of signifying practices that give value to the signs in a language.

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  Introducing Multilingualism

  A Social Approach

  • Kristine Horner, Jean Jacques Weber(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 7 Language and identities I n this chapter we move our focus from the more macro level of various countries’ official recognition of themselves as multilingual states (societal multilingualism) to the more micro level of people’s multilingualism (indi- vidual multilingualism). It should be clear that all the languages or varieties that we use have both instrumental and identity functions. However, in any given place and time, some languages will be perceived as being more useful resources than others, with immigrant minority languages often at the bottom of this hierarchy. It always depends on the particular context we are in: a highly valued resource in one society does not necessarily keep this value when we move to another. At the same time, a negatively valued language can have a highly positive identity function associated with it for a particular group of people. In this chapter, we try to understand this iden- tity function of language and how, in multilingual situations, identity may be linked to more than one language. Before we undertake this investiga- tion, we first need to understand how identity works. Let us therefore start by looking at how other people influence our identity through processes of categorization. CATEGORIZATION We constantly categorize other people; we label, reify and objectify them. Labelling is a way of trying to fix somebody’s identity, reducing it to a single core element that sums up her or his identity in our eyes: e.g. somebody becomes a ‘foreigner’ or an ‘immigrant’. In this way, naming, categorizing and labelling are political acts. We need to be aware of this and make a conscious effort to resist and deconstruct stereotypical attribu- tions and categorizations.

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  Language, Identity and Symbolic Culture

  • David Evans(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Identity is, in fact, always unfinished since it is developed in time and of course time is forever unfinished. Even after an individual’s demise their post- humous identity is still subject to time and modification. We will discuss such implications of the changing nature of multiple identities when we focus on language and power later on in the chapter. Clark and Holquist make the important point that in claiming a unitary identity through a correspondence between words and the ‘self ’ in such pronominals as ‘I’, ‘You’, ‘She’, ‘He’, we create ‘fictions of sameness’. Therefore not only is the world always more than the language used to name it but we, as humans, are also always more than the language used to describe us. Heidegger (1993) made his existential claim that ‘[l]anguage is the house of being’ but he also needed to add that it can also be the container of being through unequal power relations. Truly, then, a ‘double-edged sword’ of constructing and constraining. Dialogism, heteroglossia and ideology Bakhtin (1981: 341) states that ‘[t]he ideological becoming of a human being . . . is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others’. Identities then are being constructed and re-constructed within the dialogic interface between the words of self and others. Individuals appropriate words for themselves but these words are already imbued with the meanings of others. Identities therefore are constructed in the intersubjective space between self and other. The notion of ‘heteroglossia’ (Bakhtin 1981; Wertsch 1991) is born from our words carrying the voices of others within the content of what we say. Taking language from the common pool means not only assimilating but perhaps also processing the ideological content of language. Bakhtin (1981: 293) states the following: ‘All words have the “taste” of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age gap, the day and the hour.

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  Language and Subjectivity

  • Tim McNamara(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  5.2 LANGUAGE LEARNING AND DISCOURSES OF NATIONAL IDENTITY One of the salient discourses within which languages and language learning may be located is within discourses of national identity. Why does language learning seem to be such a struggle in the English- speaking world? A functional explanation that does not involve issues of subjectivity would be that as English increasingly becomes the language of international communication, English speakers feel less and less need to learn other languages. There is no doubt that simple economic and political forces shape the options of individuals in relation to language learning, as in so much else. Yet what role do discourses play within this? I will argue that discourses of national identity play a major role in determining attitudes to language learn- ing in the anglophone world, as elsewhere. Within Britain, for example, plurilingualism is not expected of public figures, with the possible exception of Scotland and Wales, particularly the leaders of the nationalist parties in those countries. Even such an ardent Europhile as the prime minister who led Britain into the European Union, Edward Heath, had a ludicrously strong English accent in his occasional speeches in French. Queen Elizabeth’s even more occasional speeches in French are also marked by an assertion of her English identity with the strongly English features in her delivery of French. In my own country, Australia, public figures who are fluently bilingual are considered marvels. The election of Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister in 2007 provoked endless discussion of the wonderful fact that he was able to deliver a speech in Mandarin. Things are somewhat different in the United States, where the ability to address political rallies in Spanish as well as in English is a distinct political advantage for presidential candidates wishing to win the votes of Spanish speakers, the largest linguistic minority in the United States.

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  Contemporary Applied Linguistics Volume 1

  Volume One Language Teaching and Learning

  • Vivian Cook, Li Wei(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 10 Identity in Applied Linguistics: The Need for Conceptual Exploration David Block 10.1 Introduction Over the past 40 years, identity has moved to centre stage in the social sciences in general and applied linguistics in particular as Bonny Norton Peirce’s (1995: 12) call for ‘a comprehensive theory of social identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context’ has been taken up with enthusiasm by a good number of researchers working in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics and second language learning. 1 As a result, there have been a good number of books – both collections and monographs – which have put identity at the centre of discussions about language learning and use in studies focusing on bi- and multi-lingualism in educational contexts (e.g. Creese, 2005; Hadi-Tabussen, 2006; Heller, 1999, 2006; Miller, 2003) and naturalistic contexts (e.g. Block, 2006b; Joseph, 2004; Nic Craith, 2007; Norton, 2000; Pavlenko and Black-ledge, 2004) . In keeping with the overall orientation of this book, my aim in this chapter is not to rehearse exhaustively the findings and arguments of these and other publi-cations, but to identify and discuss what I see as problematic aspects of contempo-rary applied linguistics research in which identity is central and a key construct. In the sections that follow, I present three aspects of identity research in applied lin-guistics which I think are problematic and therefore worthy of further and more in-depth exploration by future researchers. In order, I will deal with the term ‘iden-tity’ itself and how it might be distinguished from ‘subjectivity’; the tension between structure and agency in much identity research and why it is important to address it; and finally, the prospect of a psychologically-inspired approach to identity to complement the already dominant social orientation.

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  Language and Identity

  National, Ethnic, Religious

  • J. Joseph(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Thus we might say that identity is a subcategory of representation – except that it extends beyond the bounds of representation as traditionally conceived, i.e. as the cognitive act of a subjective, agentive mind. We may want to widen the definition of representation, or else keep it in this restricted sense while recognising its limitations. As for identity, we can define it as the category (or set of categories) into which a person (or less often, animal or object or abstrac- tion) is read as belonging, expressible as or (in the case of a proper name) consisting of a noun phrase or adjective phrase. I say ‘is read as belonging’ rather than ‘belongs’ in order to make clear that our experi- ence does not include knowledge of any absolute identity, which can exist only in a Platonic heaven or, what amounts to the same thing, and equally unknowable, the mind of God. Both in recent models and in the wider history, there is a key under- lying paradox: although the goal of the social sciences is to determine what is behind the illusion that individuals act as wilful subjects, there is a strong methodological reluctance to move away from putting the individual as wilful subject at the centre of the social science universe of discourse. This chapter has included an attempt to motivate such a move, by arguing for an approach grounded in reading and interpretation that, among other things, has evolutionary plausibility. Inquiry into Language and Identity poses fundamental challenges to linguistics as traditionally conceived, reaching as far as the definition of language itself and its place within human life and evolution. I have tried to show that an understanding of language without consideration of identity can never hope to be complete, to indicate how such a consid- eration can enrich our understanding of language, and to draw atten- tion to some of the methodological issues that cannot be skirted if it is to do so in any sort of serious way.

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