Volume 5 • Number 3 • September 2001,Introduction

243– 257 243

Introduction
Negotiation of identities in
multilingual contexts
Adrian Blackledge and Aneta Pavlenko
University of Birmingham Temple University

1 Overview
The focus of this special issue is on negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts, and the
papers selected discuss various aspects of negotiation of identities by linguistic minority
speakers. The authors argue that these interactions are always subject to societal power
relations, which include, inter alia, gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Crucial
aspects of the ongoing construction, negotiation and renegotiation of identities in multilingual
settings are beliefs about, and practices of, language use. If the dominant, majority group in a
society, nation, nation-state or community considers that the ideal model of society is
monolingual, monoethnic, monoreligious, and monoideological (Blommaert & Verschueren,
1998), we immediately encounter questions such as “who is in?” and “who is out?” A
dominant ideology of homogeneity in heterogeneous societies raises questions of social
justice, as such an ideology potentially excludes and discriminates against those who are
either unable or unwilling to fit the norm. The study of language ideologies provides a
theoretical framework in which the authors of the papers in this collection explore negotiation
of identities in multilingual settings.
While the use of the notions “ideology,” “identity,” and “negotiation” in interpreting
language behaviors is certainly not new in the field of bilingualism, we see this special issue as
distinct and innovative in four important ways. These four aspects include: (1) the use of a
poststructuralist approach to identity, (2) the use of a common theoretical framework, which
underscores the importance of considering language ideologies and power relations in context,
(3) a clarification of the meaning of “negotiation of identities,” and (4) an emphasis on social
significance and social justice. These four features will be discussed in the present introduction.

1.1
Views of “identity” in different theoretical frameworks
To begin with, we will consider how the relationship between language and identity is viewed
in different paradigms which attempt to account for various language contact phenomena by
invoking bi- and multilinguals’ identities. While the notion of “identity” is by no means new
for the field of bilingualism, its meanings have shifted numerous times over the years with the

Address for correspondence

Adrian Blackledge, University of Birmingham, Westhill Campus, Weoley Park Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6LL, U.K.;
e-mail: <[email protected]>. Aneta Pavlenko, CITE Department, College of Education, Temple University,
Philadelphia, PA 19122, U.S.A.; e-mail: <[email protected]>.
The International Journal of Bilingualism
244 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

changes in theoretical paradigms and deserve additional clarification. One paradigm that pays
attention to the relationship between language and identity is commonly known as variationist
sociolinguistics. Explanation of language variation in this framework is predicated on the
assumption that “for the most part, people sound the way you would expect them to sound
given the facts about their class, sex, age, and region” (Chambers, 1995, pp. 100 –101). Thus
people are taken to express — rather than negotiate — identities. Over the years, several
scholars, including Cameron (1990), Johnstone (1996), Tannen (1993), and Williams (1992),
criticized this and related assumptions for considering identity simply as an explanatory
concept and for seeing linguistic phenomena, including phonology, as fixed, rather than fluid
and skillfully deployed by individual speakers. These scholars pointed out that, first of all,
multiple identities are constructed and negotiated through language and are themselves in
need of explanation, and that, secondly, linguistic forms and strategies have multiple
functions and cannot be directly linked to particular identities outside of interactional
contexts. Finally, several studies, most recently Cutler (1999), Lo (1999), and Rampton
(1995, 1999c), persuasively demonstrated that on many occasions people do not at all sound
the way they are expected to given the basic demographic facts and thus researchers need to
pay more attention to local and constructed— rather than expressed — aspects of identity.
A number of intergroup theories in the sociopsychological paradigm attempted to
theorize identity, negotiation of identity, and language contact outcomes, drawing on Tajfel’s
(1974, 1981) view of social identity as based on group membership (cf. Ting-Toomey, 1999).
In this approach, when individuals view their present social identity as less than satisfactory,
they may attempt— at times successfully, at times not — to change their group membership in
order to view themselves more positively. Negotiation in this perspective is defined as a trans-
actional interaction process, in which individuals attempt to evoke, assert, define, modify,
challenge and/or support their own and others’ desired self-images (Ting-Toomey, 1999,
p. 40). Identity, in turn, is viewed as reflective self-images constructed, experienced, and
communicated by individuals within a culture and within the context of a particular interaction
(Ting-Toomey, 1999, p. 39). Eight identity domains are seen as crucial for everyday interac-
tions, including cultural, ethnic, gender, personal, role, relational, facework, and symbolic
interaction identities. It is posited that individuals experience identity, security and emotional
safety in a culturally familiar environment. In contrast, in a culturally unfamiliar environment,
individuals may experience identity vulnerability or insecurity because of a perceived threat or
fear. Satisfactory identity negotiation outcomes in conversational interaction include the
feelings of being understood, valued, supported, and respected, despite the intercultural
differences that may surface in the process.
Several critics object to intergroup sociopsychological approaches for creating abstract
and rigid categories that do not allow consideration of characteristics in which various groups
— and individuals within these groups — may differ, and for using explanatory constructs
which are themselves in need of explanation (Hamers & Blanc, 2000; Husband & Saifullah-
Khan, 1982; Pavlenko, in press; Syed & Burnett, 1999). To begin with, the monolingual and
monocultural bias underlying sociopsychological approaches leads them to conceptualize the
world as consisting of homogeneous, and, most of the time, monolingual cultures or in- and
out-groups, and of individuals as moving from one group to another. This monolingual bias is
most evident in the unidirectional perspective which posits the necessity to abandon one’s first
language and culture in order to learn the second language and acculturate to the target
The International Journal of Bilingualism
 Introduction 245

language (TL) group, whether this abandonment is termed “acculturation,” “integrative

attitude,” or “convergence.” As such, sociopsychological approaches do not lend themselves
easily to theorizing bi- and multilinguals who may be members of multiple communities. The
second problem is an adoption of a reductionist, static and homogeneous view of culture
which appears “to be referring to two specific, identifiable, perpetual cultures — a native
culture and a host culture” (Syed & Burnett, 1999). Such an approach does not take into
consideration the ongoing cultural change whereby some cultural patterns, such as those
belonging to American popular culture, may be exercising their impact world-wide through
the use of the media and the internet, nor does it consider the bi- or multidirectionality of
change whereby various cultures and subcultures continuously influence each other, with host
societies also transformed by the incoming members. Moreover, the approaches described
above predominantly view language users as members of homogeneous groups, divided by
language, ethnicity, and culture. What they do not take into account is social, cultural, gender-
based, economic, and generational stratification which is an important feature of all societies.
Thus, the sociopsychological theory does not address the reasons why some members of an
ethnolinguistic group may be adhering to their native, in-group language, while others may be
learning an outgroup language in order to escape the situation of social inequality (Gal, 1979;
McDonald, 1994; Nichols, 1983) or the culture that does not “name them” (see Pavlenko’s
paper). Intergroup approaches are equally poor at explaining the creation of new shared codes
or the appropriation of linguistic resources of groups to which the speakers do not straightfor-
wardly belong (Rampton, 1995, 1999a,b,c).
We agree with the earlier critics that sociopsychological approaches do not allow us to
theorize negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts comprehensively because they
neglect “the historical and structural processes … which set the parameters of social
boundaries” (Williams, 1992, p. 218). A strong explanatory theory needs to consider the
issues of power and domination in the relationships between majority and minority groups,
and to find ways of relating the social to the linguistic. As Cameron repeatedly argued, to
assume that people behave in certain ways because they are members of certain groups is a
correlational fallacy, because the purported explanation is in reality nothing but a descriptive
statement:
… the “language reflects society” account implies that social structures somehow exist
before language, which simply “reflects” or “expresses” the more fundamental categories of
the social. Arguably, however we need a far more complex model that treats language as part
of the social, interacting with other modes of behavior and just as important as any of them.
(Cameron, 1990, pp.81– 82)
Gumperz’s (1982) collection on language and social identity and Le Page and Tabouret-
Keller’s (1985) investigation of “acts of identity” in multilingual contexts signified the
transition from purely sociopsychological approaches— which originally inspired Le Page —
to more ethnographically-oriented sociolinguistic approaches which view identities as fluid
and constructed in linguistic interaction. For the purpose of this discussion, we will adopt a
poststructuralist theoretical framework, predicated on Bourdieu’s (1991) view of language as
a form of symbolic capital and Weedon’s (1987) view of language as a site of identity
construction. This framework, which emphasizes that at all times identities are embedded
within larger ideological structures and discursive practices (Gal, 1989; Heller, 1995a;
Woolard, 1985, 1998), will allow us to focus on the role of macro-social factors in shaping
The International Journal of Bilingualism
246 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

identity options and to examine ways in which language practices are bound up in relations of
authority and power and larger socioeconomic and sociopolitical processes.

1.2
Language ideologies and identities
The study of language ideologies developed in paradigms of linguistic anthropology, language
shift, language planning, and ethnography of speaking, as a means of interpreting cultural
conceptions of language, and of analyzing collective linguistic behavior. Early research in
these paradigms tended to equate a language with a people, essentializing links between
national or regional groups and linguistic practices. Recent studies, however, have taken a
more nuanced approach, recognizing the social positioning, partiality, contestability,
instability, and mutability of the ways in which language uses and beliefs are linked to
relations of power and political arrangements in societies (Blommaert, 1999; Blommaert &
Verschueren, 1998; Gal, 1998; Gal & Woolard, 1995; Kroskrity, 1998; Woolard, 1998). Gal
and Woolard (1995) make the point that ideologies that appear to be about language are often
about political systems, while ideologies that seem to be about political theory are often
implicitly about linguistic practices and beliefs. Ideologies of language are therefore not about
language alone (Woolard, 1998), but are always socially situated and tied to questions of
identity and power in societies. Related to the essential equation of one language with one
“people” is an insistence on the significance of the “mother tongue” as the only authentic
language of a speaker, as if only the language learned at the mother’s knee could convey the
true self of the speaker. The essentialized links between language ideology and speakers’
identities are plain here: if you are a speaker of language X, you must be an X sort of person.
These links become clearer yet when we examine the moral values attributed to language
varieties and their speakers.
While modern linguists may regard all languages and language varieties as equal in
value, political and popular discourse often comes to regard official languages and standard
varieties as essentially superior to unofficial languages and nonstandard varieties (Collins,
1999). This culture of standardization (Silverstein, 1996) comes into being through an
ideology which implies that clarity, logic and unity depend on the adoption of a monoglot
standard variety in public discourse. Lippi-Green (1994) notes that standard language
ideology extends as far as discrimination against those whose accent differs from the norm,
particularly those accents associated with racial, ethnic, or cultural minorities. She suggests
that the ultimate goal of such ideologies is the suppression of language variation of all kinds,
and the promotion of an abstracted, homogeneous, spoken language which is modeled on a
standard written language. Speakers of the British prestige speech form known as Received
Pronunciation may be regarded not only as members of a socially privileged sector of society,
but also as persons of greater intellectual and personal worth (Woolard, 1998). Woolard
further makes the point that when a linguistic form such as Received Pronunciation is ideolog-
ically linked to a group or type of people, it is often misrecognized (Bourdieu, 1977, 1991) as
being symbolically linked to speakers’ social, political, intellectual, or moral character.
Bourdieu’s analysis makes it clear that the power of speakers of standard French was misrec-
ognized and perceived as being rooted in (rather than simply indexed by) their use of the
standard variety (Gal & Woolard, 1995). Bourdieu’s model of the symbolic value of one
language or language variety above others rests on his notion that a symbolically dominated
The International Journal of Bilingualism
 Introduction 247

group is complicit in the misrecognition (meconnaisance), or valorization, of that language or

variety. The official language or standard variety becomes the language of hegemonic institu-
tions because the dominant and the subordinated group misrecognize it as a superior language.
For Bourdieu, this misrecognition of the legitimacy of the dominant language (and culture)
“contributes towards reproducing existing power relations” (1977, p. 30). In the papers
collected here, Bangladeshi women in Birmingham, U.K. are denied access to symbolic
resources because English is the only language of currency in the school setting (Blackledge),
and the development of language testing for citizenship status in Germany explicitly positions
German as the language of greatest symbolic value (Piller). Woolard points out that the
attribution of social, moral and political meanings to specific language varieties affects
patterns of language acquisition, style-switching and shift. Moreover,

in liberal democratic societies, the misrecognition, or revalorization of the indexical

character of language may make discrimination on linguistic grounds publicly acceptable
where the corresponding ethnic or racial discrimination is not.
(Woolard, 1998, p. 19)

Thus, although penalizing a student for being African American may be illegal,
penalizing a student for speaking African American Vernacular English is not. Where discrim-
ination against Asian Americans in job promotion is illegal, passing over or dismissing an
Asian American because of an “accent” that others claim is difficult to understand is not.
However, Woolard argues that simply stating that language ideologies are really about racism
and other forms of discrimination is not an adequate analysis.
The process of misrecognition often contributes to the indexical linking of a language
with character types and cultural traits. Gal and Irvine (1995) note that ideologies often
identify linguistic varieties with “typical” persons and activities and account for the differen-
tiation among them. In these processes the linguistic behaviors of others are simplified and are
seen as deriving from speakers’ character or moral virtue, rather than from historical accident.
Gal and Irvine offer the example of nineteenth-century Macedonia, which was unusually
multilingual, with language use not falling within expected ethnic boundaries. Outsiders thus
positioned Macedonians as untrustworthy, as apparently shifting linguistic allegiances were
construed as shifting political allegiances and unreliable moral commitments. A number of
studies have demonstrated that the official language, or standard variety, often comes to be
misrecognized as having greater moral, aesthetic and/or intellectual worth than contesting
languages or varieties (Bokhorst-Heng, 1999; Heller, 1999; Jaffe, 1999; Schieffelin &
Doucet, 1998; Spitulnik, 1998; Watts, 1999). A corollary of such language ideologies is that
speakers of official languages or standard varieties may be regarded as having greater moral
and intellectual worth than speakers of unofficial languages or nonstandard varieties. In
Bourdieu’s terms, those who are not speakers of the official language or standard variety are
subject to symbolic domination, as they believe in the legitimacy of that language or variety,
and “Symbolic power is misrecognized as (and therefore transformed into) legitimate power”
(1991, p. 170). Bourdieu suggests that we have to be able to discover power in places where it
is least visible, because symbolic power “is that invisible power which can be exercised only
with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that
they themselves exercise it” (1991, p. 163). The papers presented here are located in more-or-
less liberal, democratic, multilingual societies (Germany, Britain, Canada, and the United
The International Journal of Bilingualism
248 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

States) which apparently tolerate or promote linguistic heterogeneity. What unites the studies
is that they make visible the hidden symbolic power which underpins an ideological drive
towards homogeneity, a drive which potentially marginalizes or excludes those who either
refuse, or are unwilling, to conform. In Britain Bangladeshi women are required to either
learn English or accept that they will not gain access to information about their children’s
schooling (Blackledge); in Germany citizenship applicants must attain a required level of
proficiency to succeed (Piller); in Canada Italian-heritage young people linguistically perform
their range of “hyphenated” identities differently in different peer-group settings (Giampapa);
and in the U.S. bilingual writers who strive to explore their own linguistic struggles, multi-
lingualism, and multiculturalism, are nevertheless writing their autobiographical narratives in
standard English (Pavlenko).
Bourdieu’s notion of misrecognition and symbolic domination is consistent with the
Gramscian notion of hegemony (Gal, 1998), which emphasizes that dominant ideas are partic-
ularly powerful because they are the assumed, implicit aspects of a more explicit ideology.
Gramsci proposed that state control could not be sustained over time without the consent of the
polity through ideological persuasion; that is, through hegemony (Philips, 1998). Although
Gramsci did not insist that such persuasion was necessarily implicit more than explicit, in
post-Gramscian writings the term hegemony has come to mean the taken-for-granted, almost
invisible discourse practices of symbolic domination. However, while hegemony is a recog-
nizable process, it is neither stable nor monolithic. Rather, it is constantly shifting, being
made and remade, characterized by contradiction and ambiguity, productive of opposing
consciousnesses and identities in subordinate populations, and always exposed to the
possibility of alternative counterhegemonies (Blommaert, 1999; Gal, 1998; Williams, 1977).
Furthermore, it is not always the State that is the main actor, nor are hegemonic discourses
always aimed at exerting control over the populace. In an increasingly globalized
environment, where the power of multinational corporations is consistently increasing, the old
politics of State and polity are called into question (Heller, 1999). The achievement of
domination through hegemony is always complex and problematic, usually only partially
achieved, and often fragile. While Gramsci’s notion of hegemony has much in common with
Bourdieu’s model of symbolic domination, it is in the idea of “counterhegemony” or
resistance that the possibility of alternatives to the dominant ideology may come into being.
That is, subordinated groups may not always accept the symbolic power of the dominant
group, but may symbolically resist that power by adopting linguistic practices which are
counter to those of the dominant group. In the papers collected here groups and individuals in
multilingual settings (re)negotiate their identities in response to hegemonic language
ideologies which demand homogeneity. The different ways in which they do so exemplify the
complexity involved in attempts to “negotiate” identities in multilingual states which are
underpinned by implicit monolingual ideologies.

1.3
Negotiation of identities
What does “negotiation” involve in the perspective assumed here? What linguistic
phenomena are implicated in the negotiation process and what is the range of identities that
may be negotiable? As argued above, poststructuralist inquiry reinterprets the notion of
identity (which will be used in the present collection as synonymous with subject position).
The International Journal of Bilingualism
 Introduction 249

While sociopsychological approaches view identities as stable and unchangeable, poststruc-

turalist scholarship theorizes identities as multiple, dynamic, and subject to change, and the
relationship between language and identity as mutually constitutive: On the one hand,
languages supply the terms and other linguistic means by which identities are expressed, and,
on the other, the linguistic resources individuals use serve to index their identities (Tabouret-
Keller, 1997).
In analyzing how identities are shaped, produced, and negotiated, we adopt the analytical
concept of “positioning” proposed by Davies and Harré (1990). “Positioning,” for Davies and
Harré (1990, p. 48), is the process by which selves are located in conversation as observably
and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. Interactive positioning
assumes one individual positioning the other, while reflective positioning is the process of
positioning oneself. While Davies and Harré (1990) see positioning as largely a conversa-
tional phenomenon, in the present collection we expand the meaning of positioning to all
discursive practices which may position individuals in particular ways (e.g., language testing
practices in Piller’s paper) or allow individuals to position themselves (e.g., written autobi-
ographies in Pavlenko’s paper). Davies and Harré (1990) point out that once an individual has
taken up particular subject positions as one’s own, he or she inevitably sees the world from the
vantage point of these positions— which include but are not limited to race, ethnicity, gender,
generation, sexual orientation, geopolitical locale or institutional affiliation— in terms of the
particular images, metaphors, story lines, and concepts. Subject positions are not stable
entities either, and people are continuously involved in the processes of producing and
positioning selves and others, and in creation of new subject positions. Thus, Pavlenko
discusses how at the end of the twentieth century immigrants in the U.S. embrace hybrid ethnic
identities of Chinese-Americans or Chicanos, unavailable to previous generations.
While agency and choice are critical in positioning, it is important to underscore that
often instances of reflective positioning are contested by others and many individuals find
themselves in a perpetual tension between self-chosen identities and others’ attempts to
position them differently. Thus, in the present collection negotiation of identities will be
understood as the interplay between reflective positioning, that is, self-representation, and
interactive positioning, whereby others attempt to reposition particular individuals or groups.
To date, the best illustration of this understanding of negotiation has been provided in the
papers in the special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, edited by Rampton (1999a). This
collection expands Rampton’s (1995) notion of “crossing” as the use of apparently outgroup
linguistic styles and portrays a range of ways in which people use languages and dialects to
appropriate, explore, reproduce or challenge influential images and stereotypes of groups to
which they do not themselves (straightforwardly) belong (Rampton, 1999b, p. 421). In their
focus on ways in which people signal problematic affiliations, the legitimacy of which can be
easily questioned, the cases examined in Rampton’s (1999a) collection challenge variationist
and sociopsychological approaches which view language use as intrinsically linked to group
membership and thus portray “negotiation of identities” par excellence.
A different approach to negotiation of identities is taken by Wodak and associates who
examine discursive construction of national identities in the Austrian public (media, posters,
political speeches etc.) and quasi-private (group discussions and interviews) discourses (de
Cillia, Reisigl, & Wodak, 1999; Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, & Liebhart, 1999). The re-
searchers argue that national identities are not simply discursive constructs, made up of
The International Journal of Bilingualism
250 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

national identity narratives, but rather representations produced and reproduced in institu-
tional contexts which result in a particular “habitus,” internalized through “national”
socialization. They also emphasize that within the same nation state different political and
ideological orientations provide different identity options: while off icial discourses
emphasize state-based nationalism, semiofficial and quasi-private discourses allow for
cultural/linguistic nationalism. Potential conflict between the two positions makes it rather
difficult for some of the study participants, such as, for instance, a German-speaking
Carinthian Slovene woman, to represent themselves in unproblematic and homogeneous
ways. Both aspects of this recent work are taken up in the present collection: while Piller’s
paper, for instance, depicts construction of national identities through naturalization laws and
language testing practices, Giampapa illuminates how participants draw on different aspects
of their ethnic identities in different contexts.
The view of negotiation as the interplay between two types of positioning also allows us
to pinpoint limitations of the notion of “negotiation of identities.” First of all, in many
contexts, certain identities may not be negotiable because people may be positioned in
powerful ways which they are unable to resist. For instance, in Nazi Germany, individuals may
have disagreed with being identified as Jews because of a maternal grandmother, but their
opinions did not matter much in the process of extermination. Similarly, in Stalinist Russia
particular individuals who were identified as “enemies of the people” based on their parents’
social and class origins, may have disagreed with such positioning but were unable to resist
this identification and the resulting repercussions. It appears that how much room for
resistance to particular positioning individuals have depends on each particular situation and
the balance of power relations between the groups or individuals in question. As will be
demonstrated in Blackledge’s paper, certain identities may be non-negotiable not only under
totalitarian regimes, but also in everyday, familiar contexts. Secondly, in full agreement with
Hill’s (1999) call for attention to the historical perspective, we also view “negotiation of
identities” as a sociohistoric phenomenon. This view could also potentially limit its scope, as
it is quite possible that in certain historic periods or in certain contexts negotiation was not
conceivable and identities were not subject to contestation or change. Third, it is possible that
the notion of “identity,” predicated on the individualistic view of the self, may not even be a
relevant concept for analysis of interaction in multilingual contexts in societies where selves
are viewed as relational constructs. In short, we argue that for future scholarship it is important
to recognize the limitations of the notion of “negotiation of identities” and to distinguish
between instances of positioning where the power differential is such that resistance is
impossible, instances of positioning which evoke resistance, and instances of negotiation
where the interlocutors or the negotiating parties may enjoy a relatively equal power balance.
If any kind of negotiation takes place, what are the means through which identities can
be negotiated? As studies in cultural psychology, anthropology, and sociology demonstrate,
these means embrace verbal and nonverbal behaviors and may include a wide range of objects,
clothing, or spatial arrangements (cf. Cerulo, 1997). What is of interest to the field of bilin-
gualism, however, is an array of linguistic means which can be implicated in such negotiation.
Traditionally, the key linguistic means of negotiation of identities discussed in the bilin-
gualism literature were codeswitching, or code-alternation, codemixing and language choice
(Auer, 1998; Bailey, 2000; Heller, 1988; Milroy & Muysken, 1995; Myers-Scotton, 1983).
We believe that Auer’s (1998) collection does justice to this research and thus deliberately
The International Journal of Bilingualism
 Introduction 251

chose not to include any studies that dealt with code-alternation per se. Instead we opted to
expand the term “negotiation” and to demonstrate other ways in which individuals may be
positioned, and position and reposition themselves. Thus, Piller and Blackledge illuminate
discursive practices through which ideologies of language and nationhood may position
immigrant and minority language users. In contrast, Giampapa’s and Pavlenko’s papers focus
on reflective positioning aspects of negotiation. Giampapa’s paper illustrates ways in which
ethnic identities may be negotiated and renegotiated in conversation, with and without the use
of codeswitching. Pavlenko’s paper examines ways in which adult second language users
reposition themselves with regard to their new communities of practice in writing, creating
effective counterdiscourses to the ideology of monolingual native-speakerness.
The present collection also presents a wide range of identities implicated in negotiation,
following Le Page and Tabouret-Keller(1985) who pioneered the deconstruction of equations
such as race = culture = language or ethnicity = language. Poststructuralist scholars flag
multiple discontinuities and hybridities at the interstices of linguistic and cultural contact,
pointing out that linguistic groups are not necessarily isomorphous with culturally- or
socially-conceived ethnic groups. In this view, ethnic identities, previously viewed as stable
ascriptive categories, determining behavior of ethnic group members, may be up for grabs.
Recent anthropological inquiry reinforces the notion that all identities may be negotiable in
certain contexts. For instance, Hensel’s (1996) ethnographic study demonstrates that in
Bethel, Alaska, ethnicity is not judged on the basis of genetic heritage but on the basis of
practice. His analysis of strategic talk about hunting, fishing, and processing suggests that the
informants in the study are significantly less concerned with the maintenance of “Yup’ik
Eskimo” and “non-native” identities, and much more with how native or non-native one is
within the context of a given activity. In contexts where many individuals are no longer
monocultural monolinguals, but belong to a number of different, often newly created, groups,
this flexible view allows us to investigate various identities as linked to particular contexts and
practices, rather than to predetermined overarching categories.
This approach is in agreement with Bourdieu’s (1977) view of “habitus” as ways of
being, or dispositions, learned interactively through participation in practices most typical for
members of a particular group or class. Accordingly, the papers in the present collection argue
that all identity options— including ethnic identities— may be available for renegotiation in
multilingual contexts. Giampapa’s study, for instance, demonstrates that ethnic identity is not
perceived as a homogenous and stable category by Italian Canadians, but rather as a flexible
construct, whereby self-ascription shifts from context to context. Piller’s study focuses on
national identities, analyzing ideologies of language and nationhood which inform natural-
ization language testing. Blackledge shifts the focus to social and gender identities and
examines how discourses of literacy, race and class conspire to construe immigrant mothers as
illiterate and incompetent parents. Pavlenko’s examination of written autobiographies of
bilingual writers suggests that memoirs represent a fertile space where individuals may use
their linguistic resources to reposition themselves, reimagining and refashioning their social,
ethnic, and gender identities.

The International Journal of Bilingualism

252 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

1.4
Multilingualism, identity, and social justice in liberal democratic states
The notion of “imagination” plays an important role in the present collection. In his
influential volume, Anderson (1983) suggests that nations are imagined political
communities, imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. They are imagined because
most of their members will never meet each other, “yet in the minds of each lives the image of
their communion” (p. 6). Anderson notes that the rise of print-languages at the same time as
the development of capitalism in Europe (between 1820 and 1920) demanded new literacies.
The ruling elites of Europe were required to decide which of the existing vernacular languages
would replace Latin and Greek as the languages of literacy (and therefore of education,
business, commerce, and state): “Thus English elbowed Gaelic out of Ireland, French pushed
aside Breton, and Castilian marginalized Catalan” (p. 78). Those who already spoke the
languages selected for national literacy were suddenly at an enormous advantage when
compared to those who spoke other vernaculars, and this hegemonic process allowed the
privileged, literate languages to become national languages. Now speakers of the huge variety
of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who previously found it difficult to understand each
other, could communicate through print. Thus the map of modern Europe is based on the
“imagined communities” which have developed from the adoption of state languages
following the interaction between the emergence of capitalism and print, and what Anderson
calls the essential “fatality of human linguistic diversity” (1983, p. 43). While this analysis is
helpful in identifying the ways in which administrative vernaculars came to be dominant
languages in the development of European nation-states, Anderson’s model does not
necessarily assume that communities, or nations, will be linguistically homogeneous, and
easily linked to named languages. In fact many European nation-states which are legally
and/or ideologically “monolingual” are linguistically heterogeneous. If Anderson’s analysis
seems to assume that languages are fixed and stable entities (Gal & Irvine, 1995), which
therefore come to represent more-or-less fixed and stable communities or nations, it is in their
written representation that they do so. Languages are not self-evident, natural facts (Gal,
1998), and contestation occurs around definitions of languages as much as around
communities. Languages are not permanent; instead, the concept of a permanent language
may be invented, developed through the imagining of the nation-state. If this is the case, then
language does not create nationalism, so much as nationalism creates language; or rather,
nationalist ideology creates a view that there are distinct languages (Billig, 1995). In fact
nations and nation-states are constantly developing, shifting, and changing, and are constantly
imagined and reimagined in diverse and complex ways by dominant and subordinate groups
and individuals whose identities are in a constant process of renegotiation. Grillo (1998)
points out that while modern nation-states were conceived as ideally homogeneous, seeking
from their citizens uniformity and loyalty, this ideology was constantly confronted with the
reality of social, cultural, and linguistic heterogeneity. This tension between a dominant
ideology of national homogeneity and actual heterogeneity has important implications for
multilingual identities and social justice in liberal democratic states. In Giampapa’s paper,
young Italian-heritage Canadians demonstrate that they negotiate identities which are more-
or-less Italian, more-or-less Canadian, in different social contexts. However, assumed notions
of “Canadian” or “Italian” are not necessarily the young people’s most salient dimensions of
belonging. And in Pavlenko’s paper, bilingual U.S. writers use the written medium not only to
The International Journal of Bilingualism
 Introduction 253

imagine themselves and, accordingly, position themselves, as legitimate members of the

American society, but also to appropriate the meaning of “language ownership” and to
provide new images, metaphors, and identities for public imagination. In other words, while
questions of national belonging continue to influence the negotiation of identities in multi-
lingual communities, linguistic minority speakers in each of the studies collected here are also
subject to other, often multiple, loyalties.
When a language is symbolically linked to national identity, the bureaucratic nation-
state faced with a multilingual population may exhibit “monolingualizing tendencies”
(Heller,1995b, p. 374). Heller’s (1995b; 1999) study of a Francophone school in Ontario
observed tensions between the monolingual ideology of the school, and the language use and
ideologies of at least some of its students, and found that some of the students found ways of
resisting the linguistic ideology of the school. In a school which was concerned with using
French to resist the domination of English, students set up their resistance to the school
through the very language which was oppressing them. Thus the symbolic status of a language
can create identity and discontinuity, and can both unite and divide, as it can become a battle-
ground, an object of oppression and a means of discrimination (Blommaert & Verschueren,
1998). In the papers here, the symbolic status of German in applications for German
citizenship (as demonstrated in Piller’s paper), and the symbolic status of English in
Birmingham (Blackledge’s paper), become battlegrounds for symbolic as well as material
resources.
In sum, we view the study of linguistic ideology as a bridge between linguistic and social
theory, linking considerations of language use, attitudes and beliefs with considerations of
power and social inequality (Mertz, 1998). Schieffelin and Doucet(1998) note that language
ideologies are often the location of images of “self/other” or “us/them.” For instance,
immigrants to America have always been expected to replace whatever traits make them
different with characteristics which make them appear more “American” (Dicker, 1996). One
of these characteristics is spoken and written English. In fact the dominant ideology of the
United States is one of monolingualism: “It is not ‘normal’ to speak a language other than
English, nor is it ‘normal’ that, if you do, you would want to continue to speak it after having
learned English” (Shannon, 1999, p. 183). Grillo (1998) recalls that after mass immigration to
the United States in the early twentieth century the “Americanization” movement insisted that
all immigrants must achieve proficiency in English if they were to be American citizens. To be
a “good American” required proficiency in English, and language and literacy tests for
immigrants were introduced. The theme of “being a good American” is developed in
Pavlenko’s paper, while the ideology of language proficiency equating to good citizenship is
examined in Piller’s paper, which identifies the exclusionary nature of current language
testing practices in Germany.
The ideological assertion that one language equals one culture or one nation ignores the
complexity of multilingual societies. In her discussion of language use in the German-
Hungarian town of Transdanubia, Gal (1993) points out that the symbolic association between
a language and a social group is by no means either natural or necessary, as her respondents
exhibited considerable heterogeneity, even in the discourse of single individuals on different
occasions. This point is further exemplified in Bokhorst-Heng’s (1999) study of the role of
language in the imagining of the nation in the development of Singapore; in Spitulnik’s (1998)
study of languages used on Radio Zambia; and in Stroud’s (1999) research on the changing
The International Journal of Bilingualism
254 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

symbolic value of Portuguese in the establishment of the nation-state in postindependence

Mozambique. There is a key methodological point here: a simple equation of “one language
equals one (cultural, ethnic, national, class, generational, gendered or other) identity” is
clearly an oversimplification. Giampapa’s paper makes a related point, demonstrating that
multiple identities are negotiated by Italian-Canadian young people through their subtly
differing language attitudes and behaviors across and within a number of discourse sites. This
paper makes it clear that in a world of global communication and migration the simple formula
of “language equals identity” is no longer adequate for analysis.
Hegemonic ideologies create the conditions for symbolic domination in a range of insti-
tutional and everyday practices, including, for example, education (Blackledge, 2000, and
this volume; Heller, 1995b, 1999), the workplace (Goldstein, 1996; Norton, 2000), the mass
media (Di Giacomo, 1999; Spitulnik, 1998), the law (Lippi-Green, 1994; Mertz, 1998) and
politics (Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, and Liebhart, 1999). In the face of a hegemonic ideology
of homogenization which is reproduced in these several contexts, it is not surprising that those
who are subject to the “symbolic violence” of monoglot standardization appear to comply
with their symbolic domination. A process of normalization occurs, in which it comes to
appear natural that one language, or one variety, dominates others, is more legitimate, and
provides greater access to symbolic resources. What Bourdieu calls “the institutionalized
circle of misrecognition” (1991, p. 153) develops from this ideology of implicit homoge-
nization. In multilingual, liberal democratic states this process creates the conditions for
social injustice, as those who either refuse, or are unable to conform to the dominant ideology
are marginalized, denied access to symbolic resources and, often, excluded: “Those who find
themselves marginalized are left to try to find a way in, to resist, or to bail out altogether”
(Heller, 1999, p. 14).
Social injustice through symbolic domination occurs in hyper-modern, neo-liberal
democratic states and their institutions, which respond variously to their increasingly diverse
populations. In Britain an explicit policy of involving all parents in their children’s education
results in the marginalization and eventual exclusion of a linguistic minority group
(Blackledge); in Germany an explicitly “liberal” reform of naturalization legislation results in
undemocratic, exclusionary language testing practices (Piller); in Canada, Italian-Canadian
youth negotiate identities by “playing the linguistic game” in different market-places
(Giampapa); and in the United States, bilingual writers are attempting to subvert the meanings
of “American” and “legitimate English speaker” to reimagine Americans as bi- and multi-
lingual (Pavlenko). In each case language ideologies impact upon individuals and groups in
different ways. In asking questions about social justice, about who has access to symbolic and
material resources, about “who is in” and “who is out,” we need to take account not only of
localized linguistic behaviors, attitudes and beliefs; we must also locate them in wider social
contexts which include class, race, ethnicity, generation, gender, and sexuality. The papers
collected here make a significant contribution to the development of theory in understanding
identity negotiation and social justice in multilingual contexts.

The International Journal of Bilingualism

 Introduction 255

References
ANDERSON, B. (1983). Imagined communities. London: Verso.
AUER, P. (1998). Codeswitching in conversation: Language, interaction, and identity. London:
Routledge.
BAILEY, B. (2000). Social/interactional functions of codeswitching among Dominican Americans.
Pragmatics, 10, 165– 193.
BILLIG, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
BLACKLEDGE, A. (2000). Literacy, power and social justice. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
BLOMMAERT, J. (1999). The debate is open. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates
(pp.1– 38). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
BLOMMAERT, J., & VERSCHUEREN, J. (1998). The role of language in European nationalist
ideologies. In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and
theory (pp.189– 210). New York: Oxford University Press.
BOKHORST-HENG, W. (1999). Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign: Language ideological debates
in the imagining of the nation. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates(pp.235– 266).
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
BOURDIEU, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
BOURDIEU, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
CAMERON, D. (1990). Demythologizing sociolinguistics:Why language does not reflect society. In J.
Joseph & T. Taylor (Eds.), Ideologies of language (pp.79 – 93). London: Routledge.
CERULO, K. (1997). Identity construction: New issues, new directions. Annual Review of Sociology,
23, 385– 409.
CHAMBERS, J. (1995). Sociolinguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
CILLIA, R. de, REISIGL, M., & WODAK, R. (1999). The discursive construction of national identities.
Discourse and Society, 10, 149– 173.
COLLINS, J. (1999). The Ebonics controversy in context: Literacies, subjectivities and language
ideologies in the United States. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates (pp.210–
234). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
CUTLER, C. (1999). Yorkville Crossing: White teens, hip hop, and African American English. Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 3, 428– 442.
DAVIES, B., & HARRÉ, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the
Theory of Social Behavior, 20, 43– 63.
Di GIACOMO, S. (1999). Language ideological debates in an Olympic city: Barcelona, 1992– 1996. In J.
Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates (pp.105– 142) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DICKER, S. (1996). Languages in America. A pluralist view. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
GAL, S. (1979). Peasant men can’t get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community.
Language in Society, 7, 1– 17.
GAL, S. (1989). Language and political economy. Annual Review of Anthropology, 18, 345– 367.
GAL, S. (1993). Diversity and contestation in linguistic ideologies: German speakers in Hungary.
Language in Society, 22, 337– 359.
GAL, S. (1998). Multiplicity and contention among language ideologies: A commentary. In B.
Schieffelin, K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp.3–
47). New York: Oxford University Press.
GAL, S., & IRVINE, J. (1995). The boundaries of language and disciplines: How ideologies construct
difference. Social Research, 62, 967– 1001.
GAL, S., & WOOLARD, K. (1995). Constructing languages and publics: Authority and representation.
Pragmatics, 5, 129– 138.
GOLDSTEIN, T. (1996). Two languages at work: Bilingual life on the production floor. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.

The International Journal of Bilingualism

256 A. Blackledge and A. Pavlenko

GRILLO, R. (1998). Pluralism and the politics of difference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
GUMPERZ, J. (Ed.) (1982). Language and social identity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
HAMERS, J., & BLANC, M. (2000). Bilinguality and bilingualism. Second ed. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
HELLER, M. (Ed.). (1988). Codeswitching: Anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
HELLER, M. (1995a). Codeswitching and the politics of language. In L. Milroy & P. Muysken (Eds.), One
speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on codeswitching (pp. 158– 174).
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
HELLER, M. (1995b). Language choice, social institutions and symbolic domination. Language in
Society, 24, 373– 405.
HELLER, M. (1999). Linguistic minorities and modernity. A sociolinguistic ethnography. London/
New York: Longman.
HENSEL, C. (1996). Telling our selves: Ethnicity and discourse in Southwestern Alaska. New York:
Oxford University Press.
HILL, J. (1999). Styling locally, styling globally: What does it mean? Journal of Sociolinguistics,3, 542–
556.
HUSBAND, C., & SAIFULLAH-KHAN, V. (1982). The viability of ethnolinguistic vitality: Some
creative doubts. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 3, 195– 205.
JAFFE, A. (1999). Locating power: Corsican translators and their critics. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language
ideological debates (pp.39– 66). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
JOHNSTONE, B. (1996). The linguistic individual: Self-expression in language and linguistics. New
York: Oxford University Press.
KROSKRITY, P. (1998). Arizona Tewa Kiva speech as a manifestation of a dominant language ideology.
In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory
(pp.103– 122). New York: Oxford University Press.
Le PAGE, R., & TABOURET-KELLER, A. (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language
and ethnicity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
LIPPI-GREEN, R. (1994). Accent, standard language ideology, and discriminatory pretext in the courts.
Language in society, 23, 163– 198.
LO, A. (1999). Codeswitching, speech community membership, and the construction of ethnic identity.
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3, 461– 479.
McDONALD, M. (1994). Women and linguistic innovation in Brittany. In P. Burton, K. Dyson & S.
Ardener (Eds.), Bilingual women. Anthropological approaches to second-language use (pp.85–
110). Oxford/Providence: Berg.
MERTZ, E. (1998). Linguistic ideology and praxis in U. S. law school classrooms. In B. Schieffelin, K.
Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp. 149– 162). New
York: Oxford University Press.
MILROY, L., & MUYSKEN, P. (Eds.). (1995). One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspec-
tives on codeswitching. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
MYERS-SCOTTON, C. (1983). The negotiation of identities in conversation: A. theory of markedness
and code choice. Journal of the Sociology of Language, 44, 115– 136.
NICHOLS, P. (1983). Linguistic options and choices for Black women in the rural South. In B. Thorne, C.
Kramarae & N. Henley (Eds.), Language, gender, and society (pp.54– 68). Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
NORTON, B. (2000). Identity and language learning. Gender, ethnicity and educational change. London:
Longman.
PAVLENKO, A. (in press). Poststructuralist approaches to the study of social factors in second language
learning and use. In V. Cook (Ed.), Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.

The International Journal of Bilingualism

 Introduction 257

PHILIPS, S. (1998). Language ideologies in institutions of power: A commentary. In B. Schieffelin, K.

Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp. 211– 222). New
York: Oxford University Press.
RAMPTON, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.
RAMPTON, B. (1999a). Styling the other: Thematic issue. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3, 4.
RAMPTON, B. (1999b). Styling the other: Introduction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3, 421– 427.
RAMPTON, B. (1999c). Deutsch in Inner London and the animation of an instructed foreign language.
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3, 480– 504.
SCHIEFFELIN, B., & DOUCET, R. C. (1998). The “real” Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalinguistics and
orthographic choice. In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies:
Practice and theory (pp.285– 316). New York: Oxford University Press.
SHANNON, S. (1999). The debate on bilingual education in the U.S.: Language ideology as reflected in
the practice of bilingual teachers. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates (pp.171–
200). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
SILVERSTEIN, M. (1996). Monoglot “standard” in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic
hegemony. In D. Brenneis & R. Macauley (Eds.), The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic
anthropology(pp.284– 306). Boulder, CO: Westview.
SPITULNIK, D. (1998). Mediating unity and diversity: The production of language ideologies in
Zambian broadcasting.In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies:
Practice and theory (pp.163– 188). New York: Oxford University Press.
STROUD, C. (1999). Portuguese as ideology and politics in Mozambique: Semiotic (re) constructions of
a postcolony. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates (pp.343– 380). Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
SYED, Z., & BURNETT, A. (1999). Acculturation, identity, and language: Implications for language
minority education. In K. Davis (Ed.), Foreign language teaching and language minority education
(Technical report N 19) (pp.41 – 63). Honolulu: University of Hawaii, Second Language Teaching
and Curriculum Center.
TABOURET-KELLER, A. (1997). Language and identity. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), The handbook of
Sociolinguistics(pp.315– 326). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
TAJFEL, H. (1974). Social identity and intergoup behavior. Social Science Information, 13, 65– 93.
TAJFEL, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
TANNEN, D. (1993). The relativity of linguistic strategies: Rethinking power and solidarity in gender and
dominance. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Gender and conversational interaction (pp.165– 188). New York:
Oxford University Press.
TING-TOOMEY, S. (1999). Communicating across cultures. New York: Guilford Press.
WATTS, R. (1999). The ideology of dialect in Switzerland. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological
debates (pp.67 – 104). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
WEEDON, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. London: Blackwell.
WILLIAMS, G. (1992). Sociolinguistics:A sociological critique. London: Routledge.
WILLIAMS, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WODAK, R., CILLIA, R. de, REISIGL, M., & LIEBHART, K. (1999). The discursive construction of
national identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
WOOLARD, K. (1985). Language variation and cultural hegemony: Toward an integration of socio-
linguistic and social theory. American Ethnologist, 12, 738– 748.
WOOLARD, K. (1998). Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In B. Schieffelin, K.
Woolard & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp.3 – 47). New York:
Oxford University Press.

The International Journal of Bilingualism