Chris Barker & Dariusz Galasinski, Cultural studies and discourse analysis: A dialogue on language and identity. London: Sage, 2001. Pp. viii, 192. Pb.

Extract

agency, bricolage, deconstructionism, demystification, demythologization, difference, discursively constructed subject positions, duality of structure, essentialism, anti-essentialism, hybridity, ideology, intertextuality

What do these terms from the discipline of cultural studies mean? Do they have any relevance to the study of language and identity? If these are questions you have found yourself pondering, then Cultural studies and discourse analysis (CSDA) is a book you should read. This work is a productive collaboration between a cultural studies scholar (Barker) and a critical discourse analyst (Galasinski) who hope to “forge a useful interdisciplinary dialogue” (1). Although their book is written with the specific aim of showing cultural studies (CS) scholars how critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be used as an analytical tool in investigating identities, for sociolinguists it is also a good introduction to the way identity is theorized in CS. The identities analyzed in the data-based chapters are masculinity (chap. 4), ethnicity and nationality (chap. 5), and masculinity together with ethnicity (chap. 6).