Language and Identities - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

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

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This volume 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. Bringing together the expertise of distinguished international scholars in specially commissioned chapters, the book provides a thematic reader and essential resource for advanced students and researchers in language and identity studies.

Leading scholars consider:

• Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of language and identity
• Individual identities
• Group and community identities
• National and supra-local regional identities

Dealing sequentially with both social and personal identities at various levels, the chapters use detailed empirical evidence to illustrate how the multi-layered, dynamic nature of identities is realised through linguistic behaviour. Several chapters in the collection focus on contexts in which a heightened sense of identity might be expected: 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.