Language and Identities

Carmen Llamas lectures in sociolinguistics at the University of York. She is co-editor (with Dominic Watt) of Language and Identities (2010) and (with Peter Stockwell and Louise Mullany) of The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics (2007). Her research deals primarily with phonological variation and change in the North East and the Scottish-English border region. Dominic Watt lectures in Forensic Speech Science at the University of York, UK

• PART A: IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE; A1. Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological considerations, Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt; A2. Identity, John Joseph; A3. Locating Identity in Language, Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall; A4. Locating Language in Identity, Barbara Johnstone; PART B: INDIVIDUALS; B1. The role of the individual in language variation and change, Jane Stuart-Smith; B2. The identification of the individual through speech, Dominic Watt; B3. The ageing voice: changing identity over time, David Bowie; B4. Foreign Accent Syndrome - between two worlds, at home in neither, Nick Miller; B5. The disguised voice: impersonating accents or speech styles and impersonating individuals, Anders Eriksson; PART C: GROUPS AND COMMUNITIES; C1.The authentic speaker and the speech community, Nik Coupland; C2. Communities of practice and peripherality, Emma Moore; C3. Two languages, two identities? the bilingual community, Norma Mendoza-Denton and Dana Osborne; C4. Regional variation in ethnic varieties, Erik Thomas and Alicia Beckford Wassink; C5. Religion vs. geography: is there a hierarchy? Sue Fox; C6. Gender, sexuality and the 'third sex', Kira Hall, Lal Zimman and Jenny Davis; C7. Crossing into class: Language, ethnicities & class sensibility in England, Ben Rampton; C8. The glass ceiling? a female identity in the workplace, Louise Mullany; PART D: REGIONS AND NATIONS; D1. Convergence and divergence across a national border, Carmen Llamas; D2. Shifting borders and shifting regional identities, Joan Beal; D3. Supra-local regional dialect leveling, David Britain; D4. Migration, national identity and the reallocation of forms, Judy Dyer; D5. An historical national identity? The case of Scots, Robert McColl Millar; D6. Post-colonial identities: an African perspective, Tope Omoniyi.

This book is a tour de force, a rare combination of comprehensive scholarship, insight, fresh thinking and wisdom. The splendid editing has produced assured writing as well as authoritative views and analysis throughout, and this means that however complex the ideas, it is remarkably easy to read. This is, by far, the best book on this topic in the English language. Language and Identities provides a thematic reader and highly suitable source for postgraduate courses, and thus should influence a wide audience of future researchers in language and identity studies.