1st Edition

The Discourse of Culture and Identity in National and Transnational Contexts

Edited By Christopher Jenks, Jackie Lou, Aditi Bhatia Copyright 2015
    138 Pages
    by Routledge

    128 Pages
    by Routledge

    This collection examines and uses discourse to promote a better understanding of culture and identity, with the primary goal of advancing an understanding of how discourse can be used to examine social and linguistic issues. Many of the contributions explore how the formation of culture and identity is shaped by national and transnational issues, such as migration, immigration, technology, and language policy.

    The collection contributes to a better understanding of the process of intercultural communication research, as each author takes a different theoretical or methodological approach to examining discourse. Although different aspects of discourse are analyzed in this collection, each contribution examines issues and concepts that are central to understanding and carrying out intercultural communication research (e.g., structure and agency, static and dynamic cultural constructs, sociolinguistic scales, power and discourse, othering and alienness, native and non-native). This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.

    1. The discourse of culture and identity in national and transnational contexts Christopher Jenks, Aditi Bhatia and Jackie Lou

    2. The structure and agency dilemma in identity and intercultural communication research David Block

    3. Dehistoricized cultural identity and cultural othering Qu Weiguo

    4. ‘Your pronunciation and your accent is very excellent’: orientations of identity during compliment sequences in English as a lingua franca encounters Christopher Jenks

    5. Alien species: the discursive othering of grey squirrels, Glasgow Gaelic, Shetland Scots and the gay guys in the shag pad John E. Joseph

    6. Agency and power in intercultural communication: negotiating English in translocal spaces Suresh Canagarajah

    7. The discourse of language testing as a tool for shaping national, global, and transnational identities Elana Shohamy

    8. The paradox of culture in a globalized world Rodney H. Jones

    Biography

    Christopher Jenks is Assistant Professor of English and ESL/TESOL Coordinator at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA. He is the author and co-editor of several books, including an edited collection on second language learning that was runner-up for the 2011 British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Book Award.

    Jackie Lou is Assistant Professor of English at the City University of Hong Kong. She is the author of the upcoming book Representing Chinatown: Language and Globalisation in an Urban Neighborhood. She has published journal articles, book chapters, and presented at conferences in the fields of sociolinguistics, visual anthropology, and urban studies.

    Aditi Bhatia is Assistant Professor of English at the City University of Hong Kong. She has published in a number of international journals, including the Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Language and Politics, World Englishes, and Discourse & Society. Her main interest is in the area of discourse analysis, with particular reference to the study of political discourses.