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Language and identity: past concerns, future directions
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Abstract:
“Identity” as an operating variable and/or explanatory concept continues to pervade sociolinguistic scholarship. This article reflects on and discusses the continuing dominance of post-structural and social constructionist accounts of identity and debates whether recent work has led to an “unrestrained embracing of speaker agency” (Bell 2017: 592) with a comparative neglect of social structure, or whether this work is contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between local meaning-making practices and macro-socio(linguistic) processes, and thereby challenging extant binaries in sociolinguistics, in particular: the treatment of stability versus fluidity, agency versus structure and the traditional dichotomy between micro- and macro-sociolinguistics. Reflecting on historical developments and recent trends, it outlines the significant contribution of theoretical models and empirical studies to sociolinguistics, whilst noting obvious gaps, e.g. insufficient studies of the Global South. It is argued that recent work is contributing to a sociolinguistics which foregrounds and problematises the concept of “context” and the contingency of difference and belonging. The paper also argues that recent identity scholarship opens up opportunities for cross-disciplinary projects, drawing on the combined expertise of sociolinguistics, cognitive sociologists and psycholinguists to explain inter alia such phenomena as fluidity and variation in speaker/community attitudes and practices.
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Keyword:
Cultures & Applied Linguistics (from 2021); Languages
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URL: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/47996/ https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/47996/1/47996.pdf https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/soci/html?lang=en
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Current challenges of language policy and planning for international organisations
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Using corpus linguistics to investigate agency and benign neglect in organisational language policy and planning: the United Nations as a case study
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Mapping the language ideologies of organisational members: a Corpus Linguistic Investigation of the United Nations’ General Debates (1970-2016)
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Constraints of hierarchy on Meso-Actors’ agency: evidence from Vietnam’s Educational Language Policy Reform
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“Leave no one behind”: linguistic and digital barriers to the dissemination and implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
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A network model of language policy and planning: The United Nations as a case study
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How can linguists contribute to the refugee crisis? Issues and Responses
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Language policy and planning in international organisations
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Networked identities: changing representations of Europeanness
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