Identity
Jan Blommaert (2009) explains that in order to explore the concept of identity and its connection with other concepts, two different elements of identity must be recognized based on who confers the identity:
- Achieved/inhabited identity: the identity that people themselves articulate or claim
- Ascribed/attributed identity: the identity given to someone by someone else.
Annotated Bibliography
Blommaert, J. (2009). Language policy and national identity In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy: Theory and method. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Taking the monoglot ideology and its guardian, the state, to task, Blommaert explains that while societies are necessarily diverse in that people demonstrate aspects of identity through the use of different varieties of language, including accents, registers, styles, and genres, an ideology persists that monolingualism is a factual state, rather than an ideological stance in which "standard language" is used by an ethnolinguistically defined homogeneous "people" within a particular geographical region (a language-people-country link). This ideological stance, then, illustrates how state language policies would be built around images of societally desirable forms of language usage and of the “ideal” linguistic landscape of society, which are often derived from larger sociopolitical ideologies in order to impose particular ascriptive ethnolinguistic identities for its citizens.
The crux of Blommaert's argument then is that identity should not be seen as one item, but as a repertoire of different possible identities, each of which has a particular range or scope and function. In that case, then, the problematic term national identity would be very limited in the sense that it illustrates a specific ascriptive label attached to people, which would only occasionally be an achieved adopted identity of people related to interactions between individuals and the state.
Garcia, O. (2012). Ethnic identity and language policy. In B. Spolsky (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 79-99.
While all of the chapters in this book are helpful for anyone wanting to engage with varied aspects of language policy, Chapter 5, "Ethnic Identity and Language Policy" offers a great deal of insight into the complex relationship between ethnic identity and language. Taking a postmodern stance, she argues that instead of being fixed and easily defined concepts, both ethnicity and language are fluid, contextual, and complex. As such, they are continually changed by social, political, and demographic conditions, and uses the terms languaging and ethnifying to illustrate the manipulation of these two concepts by not only states, but also individuals.
Taking the monoglot ideology and its guardian, the state, to task, Blommaert explains that while societies are necessarily diverse in that people demonstrate aspects of identity through the use of different varieties of language, including accents, registers, styles, and genres, an ideology persists that monolingualism is a factual state, rather than an ideological stance in which "standard language" is used by an ethnolinguistically defined homogeneous "people" within a particular geographical region (a language-people-country link). This ideological stance, then, illustrates how state language policies would be built around images of societally desirable forms of language usage and of the “ideal” linguistic landscape of society, which are often derived from larger sociopolitical ideologies in order to impose particular ascriptive ethnolinguistic identities for its citizens.
The crux of Blommaert's argument then is that identity should not be seen as one item, but as a repertoire of different possible identities, each of which has a particular range or scope and function. In that case, then, the problematic term national identity would be very limited in the sense that it illustrates a specific ascriptive label attached to people, which would only occasionally be an achieved adopted identity of people related to interactions between individuals and the state.
Garcia, O. (2012). Ethnic identity and language policy. In B. Spolsky (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 79-99.
While all of the chapters in this book are helpful for anyone wanting to engage with varied aspects of language policy, Chapter 5, "Ethnic Identity and Language Policy" offers a great deal of insight into the complex relationship between ethnic identity and language. Taking a postmodern stance, she argues that instead of being fixed and easily defined concepts, both ethnicity and language are fluid, contextual, and complex. As such, they are continually changed by social, political, and demographic conditions, and uses the terms languaging and ethnifying to illustrate the manipulation of these two concepts by not only states, but also individuals.
Additional Resources to Annotate:
- Pavlenko, A. (Ed.). (2008). Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries. Clevedon, GBR: Channel View Publications.
- Pavlenko, A. (2006). Bilingual minds : Emotional experience, expression, and representation . Clevedon [England] ; Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.
- Mok, D. (2010). The Spatiality and Cost of Language Identity. International Regional Science Review, 33(3), 264.
- Love, N. & Ansaldo, U. (2010). The native speaker and the mother tongue. Language Sciences, 32(6), 589-593.
- Kouhpaeenejad, M. H., & Gholaminejad, R. (2014). Identity and Language Learning from Poststructuralist Perspective. Journal Of Language Teaching & Research, 5(1), 199-204. doi:10.4304/jltr.5.1.199-204.
- Tong, H., & Cheung, L. (2011). Cultural identity and language: A proposed framework for cultural globalisation and glocalisation. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 32(1), 55-69.
- Norton, B. (2016). Identity and Language Learning: Back to the Future. TESOL Quarterly, 50(2), 475-479.