ABSTRACT

Innovations and Challenges in Identity Research examines established and emergent issues within identity research.

This innovative book adopts a disciplinary transcendent approach, drawing on a range of social science, humanities and human science disciplines on the way to a detailed consideration of:

  • the history of identity as a construct 
  • the components of a poststructuralist/social constructivist approach to identity
  • the prospect of a Marxist political economy approach to identity
  • the interrelationship between structure and agency and a model of structuring spheres
  • an expanded version of positioning theory
  • the digital universe as the future of identity research.

Leading researcher David Block provides a personal take on this key topic of study in applied linguistics and explains why and how discourse analysis is still a useful means through which we can understand identity today. The book is essential reading for students and academics studying and researching within the area of language and identity.

chapter 1|19 pages

Revisiting identity

A short, selective history

chapter 3|21 pages

Towards a Marxist approach to identity

From recognition and redistribution debates to a historical materialist view of being in the world

chapter 5|16 pages

Expanding positioning theory

chapter 7|10 pages

Conclusion