The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

JUDY DYER

Identity has been defined in various ways at different times. According to Norton,
identity is:

“How people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is
constructed across time and space and how people understand their possibilities for
the future”

Historically, sociolinguistic research has been primarily concerned not with identity
itself, but with describing and understanding variation in patterns of speech, and what
that variation may mean. Variation in speech can be used to express social meaning
and to ‘signal important information about aspects of speakers’ social identity’

Language can act as a vehicle for conveying important social information about the
speaker, and the process by which certain linguistic features come to be associated
with particular local social characteristics.

The main objective of most sociolinguistic research has been investigating why
individuals speak differently from each other (interspeaker variation), and why an
individual’s own speech may sometimes vary (intraspeaker variation)

THE BIG PICTURE: THREE WAVES OF SOCIAL VARIATION

Three distinct waves provide a useful starting point in an overview of sociolinguistic

views of identity. The first wave, initiated by Labov (1966), employed surveys and
quantitative methods in an attempt to investigate correlations between linguistic
variability and researcher-designated macro social categories, such as social class,
age, ethnicity and sex. Wave two employed more ethnographic methods with
categories suggested by the participants themselves, in an attempt to understand more
locally grounded linguistic variation.

Studies in the first two waves, are concerned with language as situating the individual
in a community or social group, frequently investigating dialect change and variation.
Wave three studies focus on the social meaning of variables, with variation not simply
reflecting but actually constructing social categories and social meaning. Third wave
studies also often focus on variation within one speaker and with the various
constructions of identities within the individual.

INDEXICALITY

The process by which language comes to be associated with specific locally or

contextually significant social characteristics is referred to as the indexicality. It is
crucial to a discussion of language and identity. A whole language or just one linguistic
form can become an index of, or a pointer to, a speaker’s social identity. The
indexicality of language, however, may sometimes work against the speaker, where the
speaker’s dialect is perceived and evaluated negatively by interlocutors.
Where speakers have access to more than one language or dialect, language can also
be used to resist other-imposed identities.

IDENTITY AS A SOCIAL CATEGORY

Labov’s (1966) study and subsequent replications were founded on a correlational

approach to language and identity. Identity was viewed as researcher-designated
broad, fixed social categories such as social class, age, sex and ethnicity. This kind of
research was important because it not only revealed the range of variation in a
community, it also highlighted which types of people used particular variants.

Social psychologists, defining social identity as:

“that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [sic] knowledge of his
membership of a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance
attached to that membership”

Individuals were viewed ‘as occupying particular social identities throughout their lives
by virtue of their position in the social structure, a speaker’s identity viewed through
language was seen as fixed and as a product of certain social factors, they are viewed
as the products of a particular social structure, which they in turn would reproduce
through their language.

IDENTITY AS A CONTACT PHENOMENON

Methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation also reflected the attempt to
understand in more detail how variation may be more locally situated. Ethnographic
methods embedded researchers in their communities so that their analytical principles
and interpretations reflected the perspectives of the speakers of those communities.

Individual speaker variation might also be explained in terms of the speaker’s network
connections. The Milroys’ study also acknowledged contact with others as being highly
important in terms of the influences on a speaker’s linguistic identity. Thus network
theory acknowledged the importance of contact in language variation and was used ‘to
explain individual behaviour of various kinds which cannot be accounted for in terms of
corporate group membership’.

SPEECH ACCOMMODATION THEORY AND ACTS OF IDENTITY

Giles’s (1977) Speech Accommodation Theory. Giles’s SAT was founded on the
idea that speakers could change their speech while in interactions in order to align
themselves or distance themselves from their interlocutors (a speaker is not merely a
passive voice-piece of his or her social position in society, but rather makes sometimes
conscious choices as to how to speak. In this model, speakers are viewed as actively
exploiting linguistic resources available to them in order to project differing identities for
different contexts. Such a choice itself represents an act of identity.

This research emphasizes both the agency of speakers in their ability to manipulate
linguistic resources available to them and the ability to actively project different
identities through language with various interlocutors. Speakers, by actively exploiting
the linguistic resources can create the identity they wish to project in an interaction.
Identity is thus viewed not as a fixed but as a dynamic phenomenon. Sociolinguists
have begun to envision the speaker as more than just a product of his or her social
context, and more an agent with the ability to select linguistic resources available in the
community repertoire. This post-structuralist conception of identity places more
emphasis on the individual and less on the community, and views identity as complex,
contradictory, multifaceted and dynamic across time and place.

IDENTITY AS PRACTICE

The research discussed in this section represents the third wave of sociolinguistic
study of variation, being concerned with how groups of speakers come together and
develop distinct ways of speaking around their joint enterprises.(communities of
practice(Cof P). Speakers were actively exploiting and manipulating a range of variants
in their community repertoire as a resource to mark peer group membership, in effect
as a form of identity practice.

Language is considered to be constitutive of social identity and is not merely a

reflection of one’s general social position in the world. Distinct styles of speech are
sometimes consciously manipulated by individuals to signal group membership.

DIALECT CONTACT CONTEXTS

An approach to studying identity and social variation within a dialect contact context is
described, works use a language ideology framework to inform the analysis and
interpretation of phonological data. The issue in these studies is the use of similar
variants by speakers within a community but with apparently different social meaning.
A justified criticism is that sociolinguists assume a direct correlation between a
linguistic feature and a social characteristic. Silverstein refers to this correlation as first-
order indexicality. Silverstein suggests a model that speakers’ reactions to language,
evident both in language behaviour (hypercorrection, style shifting) and in overt
comment about language and other social phenomena, can also be viewed as
manifestations of ideological stances. These ideological stances can provide a means
of making sense of the indexicality inherent in language, i.e. how language forms index
speakers’ social identities.

Younger speakers are apparently using basilectal or formally stigmatized forms without
being judged as rural speakers. Young people in Corby are able to choose between
features that have been adopted over a wide geographical area, termed levelled or
supra-local features, to index an outward-looking identity, or more local.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

In contrast to the earliest sociolinguistic studies, sociolinguistic research now considers

identity as a primary focus of investigation. In short, there is acknowledgement now
that identity is realized through language in sometimes apparently oppositional ways.
 The Handbook of Sociolinguistics – Coulmas

Language and Identity

The language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of this
language are inseparable: This is surely a piece of knowledge as old as human speech
itself. Language acts are acts of identity. The Greeks identified as non-Greek those
whose speech sounded to them like barbarians and called them barbarians.

Two semantic fields of the verb identify. In the first case, language is taken as an
external behavior allowing the identification of a speaker as a member of some group,
as in the case of non-Greeks identified by Greeks as foreigners by their way of speech.
In the second case, language is taken as the means of identifying oneself and to
belong to a group also identified by its language.

The Dynamics of Identities

At any given time a person's identity is a heterogeneous set made up of all the names
or identities, given to and taken up by her. But in a lifelong process, identity is endlessly
created a new, according to very various social constraints (historical, institutional,
economic, etc.), social interactions, encounters, and wishes that may happen to be
very subjective and unique. We call identification processes those psychological
processes by which identities are established.

Every person exploits different layers of identities, forming more or less intricate and
encased networks, some parts of which are loose and prone to frequent change and
replacement, others being more or less permanent throughout the life span and across
social and cultural space. We are identified, and identify ourselves, within the large
space of the society of our time, within the different groups – institutional, professional,
friends, etc. – we belong to, within the surroundings of our home, our office, our car,
our out-of-door outfits, our in-door outfits, etc.

Language and Identity: Complex Links

The link between language and identity is often so strong that a single feature of
language use suffices to identify someone's membership in a given group. A single
phonemic feature may be sufficient to include or exclude somebody from any social
group. But any other more complex symbolic language item, for example, a given
name, may fulfill the same function.

Language and Identity: Complex Binds

Language features are the link which binds individual and social identities together.
Such features imply the whole range of language use, from phonetic features to lexical
units, syntactic structures, and personal names.

Two main reasons can be used to explain the close link of language and identity. The
first belongs to human psychology: Identification processes range all the way from the
confluent identification of mother and new-born child by feeding at the breast or, more
generally, nursing, to mere imitation of another, and to identification proper where
someone adopts, consciously or unconsciously, a feature or a set of features of
another's behavior. Language use offers the largest range of features and the most
easily adoptable ones for identification.

The complexity of such behavior is best illustrated by the attempt to please someone
by adopting, through identification, behavioral features of another person who one
knows is appreciated by that person. The second reason for the close identification of
language and identity lies in their linkage by constitution and by law.

Imposing on a language the dimensions of an institution, of legitimacy linked to power

over a territory and over other institutions, especially law, has several consequences.
The name of the language, corresponding to some kind of standardized form achieves
some degree of autonomy in people's thinking.

The name of a language serves as the basis of identification by means of a shared

element. In such cases, identification with a partner is mediated, first of all, by the
common label and, secondarily, but not necessarily, by direct behavioral identification
with other participants in the same community, social group, faith, belief, ideology, etc.
Other behavioral features may support the identification, for instance, dress, a flag (or
any other symbol), shared by people one has never met before and will never meet
afterwards.

Boundaries, but with Gaps Boundaries

Languages and the identities they carry with them generally imply a boundary marking
function: The same identity prevails where and as long as the same language is
spoken. Modern nation-states, which today occupy almost all the world's territory,
intervene in the idealized union of language and identity.

They have many means of forcing a language upon their citizens, be it by the
constitutional definition of a national, official, or state language, or by one of many other
ways like control over the language(s) allowed for school education, for law and justice,
etc. French is not only the name of a territory, of the people who live there, of the
language that is supposed to be spoken by them, it is also by constitution the language
of the citizen of the State of France, the formation of states rests on discourse justified
by mother-tongue ideology, and calls on the territorial identity of a population at the
same time that these states, in setting their frontiers, ignored the language people use
and their identity. As a result, frontiers between states do not usually coincide with
dialectal areas and thus most European states, if not all of them, include territories
where languages other than the official ones are in use.

Multilingual situations illustrate the two aspects of identification by language. A bilingual

speaker may be identified by linguistic features deriving from language contact. In
certain situations, this gives rise to feelings of inferiority, discrimination, or exclusion
from the dominant group, or conversely, feelings of familiarity, recognition, complicity
among those who share the language and/or the contact situation.

Group Affiliation as a Matter of Relative Choice

Boundary functions of language imply the possibility for individuals to be both in their
own group and out of the others’ groups. As well as language, groups themselves, via
their leaders, their members, a common faith and holy oral or written bodies, their
press and other media, may reify and totemize their existence with a name identical to
that of what they consider to be their proper language. Membership in a group must
satisfy some kind of need in its members, but groups are nothing without their
members and it must be stressed that group leaders usually have an advantage in
fostering and sustaining the group. One of the easiest means for this is to include the
group's name and its attribute in discourse, to stress group affiliation by differentiating
from others who don't possess the same advantages, who are easily recognized, by
language use.

Groups, whether formal or informal, are aware of and cannot ignore the boundary-
marking function of language, if only by the name of the group. Names function in a
double capacity of naming an organization and some kind of affiliation. Group affiliation
is hardly something anyone can dispense with groups; some are imposed upon one,
e.g., by social categorization; someone may choose whether or not to join.

Later on many want to join other groups by accommodating to their behavior, or by

adopting what is perceived as their characteristic features, among which language
behavior is often, although not always, the most overt. However, it is not necessarily
the most important feature; virtually any product of the imagination can be employed for
purposes of identification.

Theories about the Linguistic Aspects of Identity

To deal with language and identity, we must rely only on language itself. There are
hence two possible avenues of approach: technical terms, as in linguistics, and
metaphorical terms and in everyday language. Technical terms need to be defined and
strictly contextualized; metaphors appeal to imagination, which is not only a great asset
in identification processes but also in scientific research.

Giles's accommodation theory “those individuals who perceive themselves to belong to

the same ethnic category” People are motivated to adjust their speech style, or
accommodate, as means of expressing values, attitudes and intentions towards others,
is a mechanism by which social approval or disapproval is communicated. According to
this theory, the more chances of acquiring a quasi-native competence in the language
of a group rise for an individual member of the other ethnic group when:

(a) his identification with his proper group is weak or the language of this group is not of
central value to him;

(b) he is not inclined to believe that the intergroup relationship can develop in his
group's favor;

(c) he perceives his own group as having a weak ethno linguistic vitality;

(d) his perception of his own group is vague;

(e) he identifies with his community less in ethnic terms than in terms of membership in
other groups, such as a profession.
Giles introduces an additional concept into accommodation theory, the concept of
complementarity. Convergence and divergence may simultaneously operate on
different linguistic dimensions.

Speech acts are seen as acts of projection: “The speaker is projecting his inner
universe, implicitly with the invitation to others to share it, at least insofar as they
recognise his language as an accurate symbolisation of the world, and to share his
attitudes towards it”

One can only behave according to the behavioral patterns of groups one finds it
desirable to identify with to the extent that:

(a) one can identify the groups;

(b) one has both adequate access to the groups and ability to analyze their behavioral
patterns;
(c) the motivation for joining the group is sufficiently powerful, and is either reinforced
or lessened by feedback from the group;
(d) we have the ability to modify our behavior.

We often adopt features of the manners and ways of behavior of others without being
aware of, or having any explicit knowledge about, the process by which this happens.
Yet such identifications make sense at some level of consciousness, and would still
make sense were they to correspond to unconscious representations. Making sense
means to depend on words. Two ways of how language creates people's identities. On
one hand, the language someone speaks functions as a behavioral attribute by any of
its elements; on the other hand, language supplies the terms by which identities are
expressed.

We have to explain why people want to be identifiable by their language and ways of
speech, identification as a process on which rests the operation of bringing together
identities as social constructs and identities as subjective constructs.

Sociolinguistics and language teaching Mckay & Hornberger

Language and Identity

In order to understand the relationship between language and identity, it is important to

understand the poststructuralist theory of language, which is defined as discourse.

Poststructuralist theories of language achieved much prominence in the late 20th

century, and are associated, amongst others, with the work of Bakhtin (1981, 1984),
Bourdieu (1977, 1991), Hall (1997) and Weedon. These theories build on structuralist
theories of language, associated predominantly with the work of Ferdinand de
Saussure (1966). For structuralists, the linguistic system guarantees the meaning of
signs (the word and its meaning) and each linguistic community has its own set of
signifying practices that give value to the signs in a language.

One of the criticisms poststructuralists have levelled at this conception of language is

that structuralism cannot account for struggles over the social meanings that can be
attributed to signs in a given language. The signs /feminist/, /research/,/sociolinguistics/
for example can have different meanings for different people within the same linguistic
community.

While structuralists conceive of signs as having idealized meanings, and linguistic

communities as being relatively homogeneous and consensual, poststructuralists take
the position that the signifying practices of a society are sites of struggle, and that
linguistic communities are heterogeneous. Thus language is not conceived of as a
neutral medium of communication, but is understood with reference to its social
meaning. It is this conception of language that poststructuralists define as ‘discourse’.

If we take the position that linguistic communities are not homogeneous and
consensual, but often heterogeneous and conflicted, we need to understand how
power is implicated in relationships between individuals, communities and nations. This
is directly relevant to our understanding of the relationship between language and
identity. As Bourdieu notes, the value ascribed to speech cannot be understood apart
from the person who speaks, and the person who speaks cannot be understood apart
from larger networks of social relationships. Every time we speak, we are negotiating
and renegotiating our sense of self in relation to the larger social world, and
reorganizing that relationship across time and space. Our gender, race, class, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, among other characteristics, are all implicated in this negotiation of
identity.

The use of the term ‘subject’ is compelling because it serves as a constant reminder
that a person’s identity must always be understood in relational terms: one is either
subject of a set of relationships (i.e. in a position of power) or subject to a set of
relationships (i.e. in a position of reduced power). Three defining characteristics of
subjectivity are of particular interest to language educators: the multiple, non-unitary
nature of the subject; subjectivity as a site of struggle; and subjectivity as changing
over time.

It is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across a
range of sites at different points in time, and it is through language that a person gains
access to – or is denied access to – powerful social networks that give learners the
opportunity to speak.

Many language educators are interested in the extent to which relations of power within
classrooms and communities promote or constrain the conditions under which learners
speak, read or write. We take the position that when learners speak or remain silent;
when they write, read or resist, we need to understand the extent to which the learner
is valued in a particular classroom, institution or community. At the same time,
however, we seek to understand the diverse ways in which learners may challenge
both subtle and overt forms of discrimination, and what implications this has for the
teaching of language. Language is thus theorized not only as a linguistic system, but as
a social practice in which experiences are organized and identities negotiated.

Common Research Methods and Challenges

Research on the relationship between language and identity tends to be qualitative

rather than quantitative. There are a number of common assumptions that many
researchers of language and identity bring to our qualitative research projects. First,
much identity research rejects the view that any research can claim to be objective,
researchers have to understand our own experience and knowledge as well as those of
the participants in our studies. All research studies are understood to be ‘situated’.
Second, identity researchers aim to investigate the complex relationship between
social structure on the one hand, and human agency on the other. Third, identity
researchers seek to better understand how power operates within society, constraining
or enabling human action. Foucault notes for example that power is often invisible in
that it frequently naturalizes events and practices in ways that come to be seen as
‘normal’ to members of a community.

Key Research Findings and Future Directions

Key research findings on language and identity with reference to five areas of research.
The five areas address research on identity and investment, identity and imagined
communities, identity categories and educational change, identity and literacy, and
identity and resistance.

Identity and investment

My research found that high levels of motivation did not necessarily translate into good
language learning, and that unequal relations of power between language learners and
target language speakers was a common theme in the data. For this reason, I
developed the construct of ‘investment’ to complement constructs of motivation in the
field of SLA. The construct of investment, inspired by the work of Bourdieu (1977,
1991), signals the socially and historically constructed relationship of learners to the
target language and their often ambivalent desire to learn and practice it. If learners
‘invest’ in the target language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire
a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value
of their cultural capital.

Thus while motivation can be seen as a primarily psychological construct investment

must be seen within a sociological framework, and seeks to make a meaningful
connection between a learner’s desire and commitment to learn a language, and their
changing identity. Instead of asking for example ‘To what extent is the learner
motivated to learn the target language?’ the researcher asks, ‘What is the learner’s
investment in the target language practices of this classroom or community?’ A learner
may be a highly motivated language learner, but may nevertheless have little
investment in the language practices of a given classroom or community, which may
for example be racist, sexist, elitist or homophobic.

Thus despite being highly motivated, a learner could be excluded from the language
practices of a classroom, and in time positioned as a ‘poor’ or unmotivated language
learner. The English language learners in the class were afraid of being criticized or
laughed at because of their limited command of English. This silence, however, was
perceived by the native English speakers as representing ‘a lack of initiative, agency,
or desire to improve one’s English or to offer interesting material for the sake of the
class’.

They were not ‘invested’ in the language practices of their classroom, where there were
unequal relations of power between the English language learners and native
speakers. Their investments were co-constructed in their interactions with their native
speaker peers, and their identities a site of struggle. Even if a language program is
well-run, a learner’s investment in the target language must be consistent with the
goals of the program if language learning is to meet expectations.

Identity and imagined communities

An extension of interest in identity and investment concerns the imagined communities

that language learners aspire to join when they learn a new language. In many second
language classrooms, all of the members of the classroom community, apart from the
teacher, are newcomers to the language practices of that community. The question that
arises then is what community practices do these learners seek to learn? What,
indeed, constitutes ‘the community’ for them? In many language classrooms, the
community may be, to some extent, a reconstruction of past communities and
historically constituted relationships, but also a community of the imagination – a
desired community. An imagined community assumes an imagined identity.
Documenting the imagined communities of neighbourhoods can provide much
information on the children’s understanding of their community, an important
consideration for language educators.

Identity categories and educational change

There is a growing body of research that seeks to investigate the ways in which
particular relations of race, gender, class and sexual orientation may impact the
language learning process.

In a similar spirit, King (2008), Moffatt and Norton (2008) and Nelson (2009) explore
the extent to which sexual orientation might be an important identity category in the
language classroom. Of central interest is the way in which a teacher can create a
supportive environment for learners who might be gay, lesbian or transgendered.
Nelson contrasts a pedagogy of inquiry, which asks how linguistic and cultural
practices naturalize certain sexual identities, most notably heterosexuality, with a
pedagogy of inclusion which aims to introduce images as well as experiences of gays
and lesbians into curriculum materials.

Identity and literacy

Researchers of language and identity have become interested not only in the
conditions under which language learners speak, but in the extent to which identities
and investments structure their engagement with texts, whether these be written, oral
or multimodal. There is growing recognition that when a learner engages in textual
practices, both the comprehension and construction of the text is mediated by the
learner’s investment in the activity and the learner’s identity.

Identity and resistance

The relationship between language, identity and resistance has become a compelling
and fruitful area of research in language education. How language learners can
maintain membership of their vernacular communities and cultures while still learning a
second language or dialect. Language learners are sometimes ambivalent about the
learning of a second language or dialect, and that they may resort to clandestine
literacy practices to create ‘pedagogical safe houses’ in the language classroom. The
clandestine literacy activities of the students are seen to be forms of resistance to
unfavourable identities imposed on the learners. These safe houses serve as sites of
identity construction.

The third example of identity and resistance, is while the school-sanctioned ESL
student was expected to bring required materials to class, read assigned fiction, do
bookwork, meet assigned dates, follow instructions and work for the full class session,
resistant ESL students engaged in a wide variety of oppositional activities, including
leaving materials ‘at home’, talking with friends and playing cards.

The first observation is that the ESL teachers began to change their practices in
response to the resistance of their students, necessitating a shift in teacher identity; the
second is that the students’ actions paradoxically turned the ESL program into
precisely what the students disliked most.

Future directions

One area that is receiving increasing attention is that of the language teacher and the
language teacher educator. A great deal of language teaching does not take place in
well-funded institutes of education, but in community programs, places of worship and
immigrant centres, where funds are limited and time at a premium. Of central interest in
his narrative is a consideration of the way in which teacher educators can intervene in
the process of practicum observation to bring about educational and social change.

A second area that has much potential for future research on language and identity
concerns growing interest in globalization and language learning.

Morgan and Ramanathan (2005) argue persuasively that the field of language
education needs to consider ways in which English language teaching can be
decolonized, proposing that there is a need to decentre the authority that Western
interests have in the language teaching industry and to give due recognition to local
vernacular modes of learning and teaching.

Language, Identity and Classroom Pedagogies

Theories of language and identity for classroom teaching. There is often a disjuncture
between the pedagogy as it is conceptualized by the teacher and the practices adopted
in the classroom. Despite the best intentions, classroom practices can recreate
subordinate student identities, thereby limiting students’ access not only to language
learning opportunities, but to other more powerful identities.

Teachers’ language practices can reinforce existing inequities among diverse learners
of English. Students who received English medium instruction through high school
were better prepared to succeed in English-medium colleges than those schooled in
the vernacular. The English curriculum for the students educated in the English
medium tended to focus on the creative analysis of English literature, while the English
curriculum for the vernacular students, made extensive use of grammar and
translation. What Ramanathan’s research suggests is that pedagogical language
practices that are ritualized and allow for little meaning-making on the part of students
may limit the learner’s language learning progress and access to more powerful
identities.

Responding to diversity in the language classroom requires an imaginative assessment

of what is possible as well as a critical assessment of what is desirable.

If we agree that diverse identity positions offer learners a range of positions from which
to speak, listen, read or write, the challenge for language educators is to explore which
identity positions offer the greatest opportunity for social engagement and interaction.
Conversely, if there are identity positions that silence students, then teachers need to
investigate and address marginalizing classroom practices.

In Mexico, illustrate the ways in which the non-native English teachers in their study
sought to appropriate and ‘perform’ English without sacrificing local identities. Defining
their research site as a ‘contact zone’, they describe the way the student teachers
confronted the demands of English through various forms of language play in both
English and Spanish, making the case that the student teacher groups were safe
havens in which participants could play with both languages. Such performances
allowed them to explore various identity positions.

We argue that multimodal pedagogies offer teachers innovative ways of validating

students’ literacies, experiences and cultures, and are highly effective in supporting
English language learning in the classroom. The teachers conceive of language not
only as a linguistic system, but as a social practice in which experiences are organized
and identities negotiated. In every region of the world, innovative language teachers
are seeking to provide learners with diverse opportunities to take ownership over
meaning-making, and to re-imagine an expanded range of identities for the future