Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics

Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics is a collection of papers from the BAAL Annual Conference at the University of Bristol 2005. The thirteen papers, by researchers from Britain and across Europe, represent a range of research orientations within Applied Linguistics which connect in different ways with issues in culture and identity. Two plenary addresses from the conference, by Roz Ivanie and Srikant Sarangi, explore the themes of identity and culture in contexts of learning and of work. Papers addressing language planning and policy issues present recent analyses of francophone identity in Canada and Sami identity in Finland. The issues of culture and identity in writing are explored in different papers from the perspective of identity construction in academic writing, discipline cultures in higher education contexts, the consequences of these for interdisciplinary writers, and how writers construct audience identity though the linguistic choices they make. Empirical studies of language learning and teaching are also represented, with papers on Processing Instruction and Intercultural Pragmatics. The themes of identity and culture in these papers connect a range of sub-disciplines within Applied Linguistics, and also connect knowledge building in Applied Linguistics with pervasive themes in research across the social sciences, into the ways people as individuals and in communities understand, shape and represent their experiences of learning and work.