Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts

The volume highlights the role of language ideologies in the process of negotiation of identities and shows that in different historical and social contexts different identities may be negotiable or non-negotiable. The chapters address various ways in which individuals may be positioned or position themselves in a variety of contexts. In asking questions about social justice, about who has access to symbolic and material resources, about who is ‘in' and who is ‘out', the authors take account not only of localised linguistic behaviours, attitudes and beliefs; they also locate them in wider social contexts which include class, race, ethnicity, generation, gender and sexuality.  The volume makes a significant contribution to the development of theory in understanding identity negotiation and social justice in multilingual contexts.

Aneta Pavlenko is Research Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Oslo. Her research examines the relationship between multilingualism, cognition, and emotions. She has testified in court as an expert in forensic linguistics, lectured widely in North America, Europe and Asia, and authored more than a hundred articles and ten books, the most recent of which is The bilingual mind and what it tells us about language and thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014). She is former President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and winner of the 2006 BAAL Book of the Year award and the 2009 TESOL Award for Distinguished Research.