Language Migration And Identity

While much scholarship has been devoted to the interplay between language, identity and social relationships, we know less about how this plays out interactionally in diverse transient settings. Based on research in Indonesia, this book examines how talk plays an important role in mediating social relations in two urban spaces where linguistic and cultural diversity is the norm and where distinctions between newcomers and old timers changes regularly. How do people who do not share expectations about how they should behave build new expectations through participating in conversation? Starting from a view of language-society dynamics as enregisterment, Zane Goebel uses interactional sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication to explore how language is used in this contact setting to build and present identities, expectations and social relations. It will be welcomed by researchers and students working in the fields of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, the anthropology of migration and Asian studies. Review: 'I highly recommend this work ... documents the interplay between social relations, identity and language use in Central Java, while arguing that conversational participants establish and maintain social relations through the development of SRs and in so doing create identities and define expectations for moral behaviour.' Ellen Rafferty, Asian Studies Review '[This] book offers the reader a window on a corner of the earth where language and identity go hand in hand, a fact further brought into relief by ongoing migration and the resultant readjustments in fashioning individual identities and imagining the social fabric.' Kanavillil Rajagopalan, elanguage.net 'A valuable addition to the body of work that exists on language in Indonesia ... Goebel draws on an extensive and complex body of theoretical work, but his writing style and attention to detail make it possible for a reader with little prior exposure to grasp his main arguments.' William M. Cotter, PhD student, University of Arizona