This volume sets out to foreground the issues of youth identity in the context of current sociolinguistic and discourse research on identity construction. Based on detailed empirical analyses, the twelve chapters offer examinations of how youth identities from late childhood up to early twenties are locally constructed in text and talk. The settings and types of social organization investigated range from private letters to graffiti, from peer group talk to video clips, from schoolyard to prison. Comparably, a wide range of languages is brought into focus, including Danish, German, Greek, Japanese, and Turkish. Drawing on various discourse analytic paradigms (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis), the contributions examine and question notions with currency in the field, such as young people's linguistic creativity and resistance to mainstream norms. At the same time, they demonstrate the embeddedness of constructions of youth identities in local activities and communities of practice where they interact with other social identities and factors, in particular gender and ethnicity.
1. Discourse constructions of youth identities: Introduction (by
Androutsopoulos, Jannis K.);
2. I. Peer group identities;
3. Linguistic
variation and the construction of social identity in a German-Turkish
setting: A case study of an immigrant youth group in Mannheim, Germany (by
Kallmeyer, Werner);
4. Nicknames and teasing: A case study of a
linguistically and culturally mixed peer-group (by Lytra, Vally);
5. Looking
back when looking ahead: On adolescents' identity management in narrative
practices (by Georgakopoulou, Alexandra);
6. It's not that I really care
about him personally you know: The construction of gender identity in London
teenage talk (by Stenstrom, Anna-Brita);
7. II. Recasting literacy practices;
8. Emotion and youth identities in personal letter writing: An analysis of
pictorial signs and unconventional punctuation (by Kataoka, Kuniyoshi);
9.
Spelling rebellion (by Sebba, Mark);
10. 'Nike Trainers, My One True Love -
Without You I am Nothing': Youth, identity and the language of trainers for
young men in prison (by Wilson, Anita);
11. Constructions of identity in
German hip-hop culture (by Berns, Jan);
12. III. Representations and
positionings;
13. Socio-cultural orientation, urban youth styles and the
spontaneous acquisition of Turkish by non-Turkish adolescents in Germany (by
Auer, Peter);
14. Swedish youth discourse: On performing relevant selves in
interaction (by Norrby, Catrin Elisabeth);
15. The youth and the
gatekeepers: Reproduction and change in language norm and variation (by
Kristiansen, Tore);
16. Mediated experience and youth identities in a
post-traditional order (by Chouliaraki, Lilie);
17. Index
