Language and identity : national, ethnic, religious

✍ Scribed by John Joseph

• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 281
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book attempts to put forward a coherent view of identity as a linguistic phenomenon in a way that will speak to people across a wide
range of interests. That is, inevitably, an undertaking fraught with
opportunities for failure. I am a linguist by training and profession – a
broad-minded linguist, I think – but inevitably more attuned to the
interests that arise from my field than to neighbouring ones, despite my
best efforts. The final chapter will consider what exactly these intellectual boundaries themselves mean in terms of identity.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
The identity of identity
What language has to do with it
Fundamental types of identity
Construction and multiplicity
Other terms used in current research
Identity as a linguistic phenomenon
2 Linguistic Identity and the Functions and Evolution of Language
Identity and the traditional functions of language
Identity and the phatic and performative functions
Does identity constitute a distinctive function of language?
'Over-reading': identity and the evolution of language
Conclusion
3 Approaching Identity in Traditional Linguistic Analysis
Introduction
Classical and Romantic views of language, nation, culture and the individual
The nineteenth century and the beginnings of institutional linguistics
The social in language: Voloshinov vs Saussure
Jespersen and Sapir
Firth, Halliday and their legacy
Later structuralist moves toward linguistic identity: Brown & Gilman, Labov and others
From 'women's language' to gender identity
From Network Theory to communities of practice and language ideologies
4 Integrating Perspectives from Adjacent Disciplines
Input from 1950s sociology: Goffman
Bernstein
Attitudes and accommodation
Foucault and Bourdieu on symbolic power
Social Identity Theory and 'self-categorisation'
Early attempts to integrate 'social identity' into sociolinguistics
Communication Theory of Identity
Essentialism and constructionism
5 Language in National Identities
The nature of national identities
When did nationalism begin?
Constructing national identity and language: Dante's De vulgari eloquentia
Taming and centring the language: Nebrija and Valdés
Language imagined as a republic: Du Bellay
Fichte on language and nation
Renan and the Kedourie–Gellner debate
Anderson's 'imagined communities' and Billig's 'banal nationalism'
De-essentialising the role of language: Hobsbawm and Silverstein
Studies of the construction of particular national-linguistic identities
Europe
Asia
Africa
Americas
Australasia and Oceania
6 Case Study 1: The New Quasi-Nation of Hong Kong
Historical background
The 'myth' of declining English
Samples of Hong Kong English
The formal distinctiveness of Hong Kong English
The status of Hong Kong English
The functions of Hong Kong English
Chinese identities
Constructing colonial identity
The present and future roles of English
7 Language in Ethnic/Racial and Religious/Sectarian Identities
Ethnic, racial and national identities
From communities of practice to shared habitus
The particular power of ethnic/racial identity claims
Religious/sectarian identities
Personal names as texts of ethnic and religious identity
Language spread and identity-levelling
8 Case Study 2: Christian and Muslim Identities in Lebanon
Introduction
'What language is spoken in Lebanon?'
Historical background
Distribution of languages by religion
The co-construction of religious and ethnic identity: Maronites and Phoenicians
Constructing Islamic Arabic uniqueness
Recent shifts in Lebanese language/identity patterns
Still more recent developments
Renan and the 'heritage of memories'
Linking marginal ethnic identities: Celts and Phoenicians
Language, abstraction and the identity of Renan
Maalouf's utopian anti-identity
Afterword: Identity and the Study of Language
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

✦ Subjects

Sociolingüística; Sociolinguistics; Análisis del discurso; Discourse Analysis; Análise do discurso; Cambio social; Mundança social; Social Change; 1. Language and languages. 2. Identity (Psychology) 3. Sociolinguistics. 4. Nationalism. I. Title.