Book review: BETHAN BENWELL and ELIZABETH STOKOE, Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006, xiii + 314 pp. £16.99 (pbk), ISBN 0—7486—1750—7
Abstract
Jean JacquesWeber Department of English, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg `Discourse and identity' has become an important topic in the social sciences: indeed, two books were published with that title in 2006. One is a collection of articles by leading researchers who explore the topic in a variety of social settings (de Fina, 2006), and the other – which is under review here – is a new textbook providing a useful overview of studies in this area. It introduces the reader to a wide range of approaches (conversation analysis, membership categoriza- tion analysis and ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, performative analysis, narrative analysis, positioning theory, politeness theory) and examines many different discursive contexts (including everyday conversation, institutional talk, narratives, magazine advertisements, spatial locations, online interaction). In this review I focus primarily on the question of whether, or to what extent, it achieves its aims as a student textbook. In Chapter 1, Benwell and Stokoe survey the history and development of identity theorising from the 16th century to postmodernity and identify four basic perspectives in the study of identity: identity as a project of the self; as a product of the social; as an unfinished product of discourse; and