Identity Community Discourse

Languages are inseparable from their contexts of use. They are not only congruent with, but also involved in the configuration of the worldviews and value systems manifested in cultures and embodied in texts. The spread of English worldwide foregrounds the issue of textual dynamics in intercultural settings. The production/reception of texts in English facilitates international contacts and exchanges, yet it also triggers hegemonic practices. The volume aims to investigate the representations and negotiations of sociocognitive identities in intercultural settings relevant for 'good practice'. Contributions explore 'languaging' strategies (verbal, visual, multimodal; English monolingual, bilingual, multilingual) through a range of methodological perspectives wherein the respect for sociocultural differences is a constitutive value.

The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable relationships between linguistic and social variables - have been challenged by pioneering new approaches to the topic. This volume brings together a team of leading experts to explore discourse in a range of social contexts. By applying a variety of analytical tools and concepts, the contributors show how we build images of ourselves through language, how society moulds us into different categories, and how we negotiate our membership of those categories. Drawing on numerous interactional settings (the workplace; medical interviews; education), in a variety of genres (narrative; conversation; interviews), and amongst different communities (immigrants; patients; adolescents; teachers), this revealing volume sheds light on how our social practices can help to shape our identities.

Ken Hyland draws on a number of sources to explore how authors convey aspects of their identities within the constraints placed upon them by their disciplines' rhetorical conventions. He promotes corpus methods as important tools in identity research.

This book explores the development of the first cohort of students to complete a new Bachelor of Education in English language teaching in the United Arab Emirates, theorizing the students' learning to teach in terms of the discursive construction of a teaching identity within an evolving community of practice.

The studies presented in this volume focus on two distinct but related areas of specialized communication professional and academic settings, resting on an anti-essentialist notion of identity as a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society. The authors start from a detailed analysis of discourse practices as evidenced in texts, their production and the professional performance patterns which underlie such practices, and explore the way the actors, roles and identities are constructed in language and discourse. In particular, by highlighting discursive attitudes and aptitudes, they underscore the need to understand discourse in light of norms of professional responsibility, showing that not only do professionals and academics use discourse to create self-identity, but they also use identity constructed through discourse to influence society.

This volume sets out to foreground the issues of youth identity in the context of current sociolinguistic and discourse research on identity construction. Based on detailed empirical analyses, the twelve chapters offer examinations of how youth identities from late childhood up to early twenties are locally constructed in text and talk. The settings and types of social organization investigated range from private letters to graffiti, from peer group talk to video clips, from schoolyard to prison. Comparably, a wide range of languages is brought into focus, including Danish, German, Greek, Japanese, and Turkish. Drawing on various discourse analytic paradigms (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis), the contributions examine and question notions with currency in the field, such as young people's linguistic creativity and resistance to mainstream norms. At the same time, they demonstrate the embeddedness of constructions of youth identities in local activities and communities of practice where they interact with other social identities and factors, in particular gender and ethnicity.

The book problematizes the concept of identity itself and the relationship between people's sense of belonging in a community, the discourse practices that define that sense of membership, and its expression and manifestation in verbal and non-verbal behavior.

A look at the various cognitive, social, and linguistic aspects of how social identities are constructed, forgrounded and redefined in interaction. Concepts and methodologies are taken from studies in language variation and change, multilingualism, conversation analysis, genre analysis, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, as well as translation studies and applied linguistics.