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.
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.
