Languages are inseparable from their contexts of use. They are not only congruent with, but also involved in the configuration of the worldviews and value systems manifested in cultures and embodied in texts. The spread of English worldwide foregrounds the issue of textual dynamics in intercultural settings. The production/reception of texts in English facilitates international contacts and exchanges, yet it also triggers hegemonic practices. The volume aims to investigate the representations and negotiations of sociocognitive identities in intercultural settings relevant for 'good practice'. Contributions explore 'languaging' strategies (verbal, visual, multimodal; English monolingual, bilingual, multilingual) through a range of methodological perspectives wherein the respect for sociocultural differences is a constitutive value.

The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable relationships between linguistic and social variables - have been challenged by pioneering new approaches to the topic. This volume brings together a team of leading experts to explore discourse in a range of social contexts. By applying a variety of analytical tools and concepts, the contributors show how we build images of ourselves through language, how society moulds us into different categories, and how we negotiate our membership of those categories. Drawing on numerous interactional settings (the workplace; medical interviews; education), in a variety of genres (narrative; conversation; interviews), and amongst different communities (immigrants; patients; adolescents; teachers), this revealing volume sheds light on how our social practices can help to shape our identities.

Ken Hyland draws on a number of sources to explore how authors convey aspects of their identities within the constraints placed upon them by their disciplines' rhetorical conventions. He promotes corpus methods as important tools in identity research.

This volume sets out to foreground the issues of youth identity in the context of current sociolinguistic and discourse research on identity construction. Based on detailed empirical analyses, the twelve chapters offer examinations of how youth identities from late childhood up to early twenties are locally constructed in text and talk. The settings and types of social organization investigated range from private letters to graffiti, from peer group talk to video clips, from schoolyard to prison. Comparably, a wide range of languages is brought into focus, including Danish, German, Greek, Japanese, and Turkish. Drawing on various discourse analytic paradigms (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis), the contributions examine and question notions with currency in the field, such as young people's linguistic creativity and resistance to mainstream norms. At the same time, they demonstrate the embeddedness of constructions of youth identities in local activities and communities of practice where they interact with other social identities and factors, in particular gender and ethnicity.

A look at the various cognitive, social, and linguistic aspects of how social identities are constructed, forgrounded and redefined in interaction. Concepts and methodologies are taken from studies in language variation and change, multilingualism, conversation analysis, genre analysis, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, as well as translation studies and applied linguistics.

The different traditions that have inspired the contributors to this volume can be divided along three different orientations, one that is rooted predominantly in sociolinguistics, a second that is ethnomethodologically informed, and a third that came in the wake of narrative interview research. All three share a commitment to view self and identity not as essential properties of the person but as constituted in discursive practices and particularly in narrative. Moreover, since self and identity are held to be phenomena that are contextually and continually generated, they are defined and viewed in the plural, as selves and identities. In the attempt of moving closer toward a process-oriented approach to the formation of selves and identities, this volume sets the stage for future discussions of the role of narrative and discourse in this generation process and for how a close analysis of these processes can advance an understanding of the world around us and within this world, of identities and selves.

Gender and discourse interface in many more epistemological sites than can be represented in one collection. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis therefore focuses on a principled diversity of key sites within four broad areas: the media, sexuality, education and parenthood. The different chapters together illustrate how taking a discourse perspective facilitates understanding of the complex and subtle ways in which gender is represented, constructed and contested through language. The book engages critically with long-running and on-going debates, but also reflects and develops current understandings of gender, identity and discourse, particularly the shift from 'gender differences' to the discoursal shaping of gender. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis thus offers not only insights and methodologies of new empirical studies but also careful theorisations, in particular of discourse, text, identity and gender. The collection is a valuable resource for researchers, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates working in the area of gender and discourse.

Exploring food-related interactions in various digital and cultural contexts, this book demonstrates how food as a discursive resource can be mobilized to accomplish actions of social, cultural, and political consequence. The chapters reveal how social media users employ language, images, and videos to construct identities and ideologies that both encompass and transcend food. Drawing on various discourse analytic frameworks to digital communication, contributors examine interactions across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. From the multimodal discourse of a Korean livestreaming online eating show, to food activism in an English blogging community and discussions of a food-related controversy on Omani Twitter, this book shows how language and multimodal resources serve not only to communicate about food, but also as a means of accomplishing key aspects of everyday social life.

This volume explores linguistic identity construction across online and offline contexts. The contributors focus on ‘clusivity’ as an overarching aspect and offer a multifaceted operationalisation of the linguistic processes of identity construction. The studies address three major strands of human identity, each of which can be thought of as an aggregative abstraction with its own complexities: personal identity, group identity and collective identity. The contributions pay special attention to the interplay between the public and private dimensions of the interactions and audiences, as well as the potential impact of social and technical affordances of different communicative settings and online and offline modes of identity construction. The volume is aimed at all researchers concerned with the complex notion of identity, both in linguistics and in neighbouring disciplines.

Based on empirical research, this book closely analyses how European identities are discursively produced. It focuses on discourse from members of a civic association active in promoting democracy and attempting participation in the transnational public sphere. Unlike previous books that have addressed the question of European identity from top-down stances or through methodological nationalism, this book engages with the multifaceted concept of transnationalism as a key to the negotiation of 'glocal' identities. Applying a discourse historical approach (DHA) through a transnational reading, it shows how grassroots actors/speakers construct their different cultural and political affiliations as both world and European citizens. They negotiate institutional identities and historical discourses of nationhood through new forms of mobility, cultural diversity and the imagination of Europe as a proxy for a cosmopolitan civil society. These discourses are ever more important in a fractured and polarised Europe falling prey to contrary discourses of nationhood and ethnic solidarity. Highlighting how transnational narratives of solidarity and the de-territorialisation of civic participation can impact on the (re)imagination of the European community beyond tropes like 'Fortress Europe' or intragovernmental politics, this important book shows how identification processes must be read through historical and global as well as localised contexts.