Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Arabic Language and National Identity , Edited by Yasir Suleiman

2007; Wiley; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00312_5.x

1467-9841

Lauren Wagner,

Linguistic Variation and Morphology

Discourse and Identity is a monograph aimed at scholars and students interested in identity and its relationship to language.An introduction to theories and approaches, this book offers a guide to the field via existing data and analyses and is designed to be a valuable resource and reference for scholars in this area.The book aims to introduce the study of identity as constructed in discourse across a variety of disciplines (including linguistics, psychology and cultural studies) and the authors offer case studies to support their overview of work in each area.Focusing primarily on methodology, the first half of the book considers interactional and ideological approaches to identity through the analysis of discourse extracts.Though confusing at times due to the huge variety of approaches covered, the authors impressively link together the array of interdisciplinary methods in order to set the foundation for the remainder of the book.The second half considers some literal and ideological contexts in which identity is constructed through discourse, at which point the foundation laid out by the opening chapters on methodology becomes clearer.In this sense, the second half of the book contextually applies the theory and method detailed in the first.To introduce the book, the authors use an illustrative stretch of discourse from British fashion show What Not to Wear (BBC Television), where the 'style gurus' from the programme explain how they can find their participant's 'true identity' by setting her up in the 'right' clothes.The brief analysis offered raises the issue of identity as stylistic practice (since it is apparent that the way in which we adorn ourselves is seen as an expression of our identity) yet it also demonstrates the assumptions of essentialism that underlie much of the work into identity to date.The concept of identity as constructed through style is a contemporary one, with scholars such as Irvine ( 2001) arguing that the meaning behind style is ideologically mediated and thus contextually specific.This approach demonstrates how style is used to construct fluid identities rather than it being a reflection of a 'true' or 'natural' self.This is in contrast to early variationist work in sociolinguistics which took the vernacular, or 'unconscious' speech as reflective of a fixed social identity.Approaches which consider discourse as the means by which identity is constituted rather than the place in which it is reflected have since come to fruition (cf.Eckert and Rickford 2001), and it is this constructionist stance which is articulated in the book's introduction.