Language and identity : national, ethnic, religious /

Joseph (Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland) provides a thoughtful, well-organized, and--despite his reluctance to say so--fairly radical view of the relation between language and identity, which he "reconfigures." Offering "an overview of how national, ethnic, and religious identities are constructed through language and how language is constructed through them," the author moves beyond the still-dominant view of language as an autonomous, formalistic system that enables one to generate representations and self-representations and to communicate. In a wide-ranging discussing that quotes Ferdinand de Saussure and Dante with equal ease, Joseph gives interpretation a central role and explores its foundational coupling with identity. He argues that to separate language as a system from those who speak it purposively is to distance one from whatever truths can be learned about language. He devotes two chapters to a helpful survey of theories from linguistics and other disciplines such as anthropology, looking at how they sought to connect language and identity. Other chapters explore how language is intricately involved in the construction of national and religious identity, with examples drawn from Hong Kong and, with particular efficacy, from Lebanon. Complex, lucid, and accessible, this is an important volume. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. K. Tololyan Wesleyan University