Abstract:

The assumption that language and cultural identity can be identify has been questioned with empirical data. However, an exclusive and excessive static and taxonomic concept of socio-cultural identity, a concept that would be vaguely correlated to linguistic variation, understood—at the same time—as a simple juxtaposition of verbal codes still persists. If we conceive socio-cultural identity not only as a historically determinated result, but at the same time as a process under construction and as a consequence of the agents' reactions before new situations, we must direct our research towards the discovering of the function that several varieties fulfill in the dynamic construction of identities. Members of a community must face the question of heteroglossia in daily life and they do it through the management of some codes and voices produced by individuals and social groups. Such codes and voices, built from available verbal resources and through local communicative practices, express particular identities and social positions, revealing speakers' social identifications and exclusions, securities and conflicts, believes and ideologies.

Author: Joan A. Argenter