engleski

Reconstructing Linguistic Identities in a Transnational World

Language is, according to Halliday (1978), “social semiotics”, a set of signs in whose usage one can read social relationships. The network of social relationships is always the result of communication interactions among members of the language community. In communication spaces speakers are constantly reconstructing their own identities, both by means of language and within language. For language has not only a communication function but also a symbolic function by which the speaker expresses one of his identities. Language, the mother tongue as the kernel of linguistic identity, is a symbol of the speaker and a means for identifying himself and distinguishing himself from others. But in day-to-day social interaction, each speaker takes on various new identities, those of other social groups with which he temporarily identifies in a transnational world. In Lacan’s (1966) vision, the “contents” of identities are created in the interaction of Us and Others, but what is “ours” and “theirs” need not coincide and most probably never do completely coincide, for if they did, identity would lose its dynamic character. Though the functioning of public communication would require linguistic identities to be constant, so that some become institutionalized with rules and norms to seek at least for a while to preserve the language from large changes (at least in one synchrony), identities can never stand still. Expansion of identities, reconstruction of identities, and identities newly forming are reminiscent of Bilgrami’s (1992) concept of “surplus phenomenology of identity”. However that may be, a multiplicity of identities is a reality. Whether they conflict or run parallel is a question that lacks an unambiguous answer, as this paper emphasizes. What is certain is that the search for identity (-ies) is never-ending and always occurs in relation to the Others. They, the Others, give proof of our authenticity.

linguistic identity, mother tongue, reconstruction of identities, communication interactions, transnational world

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