Kamila Ciepiela Knihy

This book features critical and interpretive, linguistic perspective on foreign language teaching and learning in the 21st century Poland. By juxtaposing two conceptions of identity: essentialist and poststructuralist, the author attempts to present the problem of an EFL teacher identity construction and performance. Language is key to the study, both as a methodology for making more evident how identity operates through discourses and also as the object being studied. The author brings together these two dimensions of language with attention to both the specifics of participants' words and to the wider frames of discourse. The two conceptions of identity are discussed on the basis of the research conducted in one community of practice, i.e. Polish teachers of English. The results of the study lead to the conclusion that an EFL teacher identity should be recognized as an individual self-concept that is (re)fashioned every time individuals engage in interactions with varied milieus.

The book brings to the fore the issue of collective identity and analyzes it from the linguistic perspective. Addressing the problem, the authors demonstrate ways in which the language we use in everyday life enables us to construct and perform in a flexible and context-bound manner the sense of our belonging in a community. They offer some rich data and present strong arguments in favor of qualitative methodologies for research in the field. Drawing on numerous interactional settings, and amongst different communities, the contributors shed new light on how our language practices and non-verbal behaviors mold our collective identities.

The central focus of the book is the identification of the ways people engage in communicative encounters to (re)constitute personal and social identities. Its aim is to identify some principal themes that have emerged from the ample research on identity in a variety of contexts. A common thread of the articles is the role of language in the construction and performance of identities. It embraces an exploration of the sociocultural environments in which human communication takes place, the interplay between these environments, and the construction and display of identities through our communicative performances. Research located in a range of literary, sociological, psychological and linguistic perspectives is used to illustrate the potential of communication in establishing a sense of identity.

«This collection of articles is a sociolinguistic response to the recent explosion of scholarly interest in issues of identity. Identity is central to all human beings as we are all concerned with how to conceive of ourselves, present ourselves and comprehend our relationships with others. The book tackles the problem of how personal identity is made visible and intelligible to others through language, and how this may be constrained. Part One, Emblematic identities, focuses on the construction of self-definitions based on various forms of group identities, including national and ethnic ones. Part Two, Multicultural Identities, looks at negotiation of identities in multicultural contexts involving relations of power, drawing on examples from Europe and the Americas. Finally, Part Three, Emergent Identities, collects empirical studies based on a close reading of texts in which identities are being articulated and negotiated.» (Hanna Pułaczewska, University of Regensburg)