A key theme in assembling this volume was that the relationship between diversity and identity cannot be alienated from the factual distribution of material resources in society. All contributions in the volume – carefully selected and peer reviewed – at least partially react to such critical scenery in order to explore the topics surrounding the modes in which diversity is linguistically articulated by and in discourse. The various studies deal with how individuals draw on linguistic resources to achieve, maintain or challenge representations pertaining to their cultural, social, ethnic, sexual, gender, professional, or institutional identities.
The volume comprises six sections: In the News; In Politics; Constructing Identities; Across Generations and Genders; Ethnicities; and Popularising Ideas. Each section reflects the choice of the various topics through the employment of a variety of methodologies and a variety of theoretical frameworks. As such, this volume is an innovative attempt to challenge the present-day underpinnings of diversity studies.
Maria Cristina Nisco has a PhD in English Linguistics, and is a Research Fellow at the University of Naples L’Orientale. Her current research areas include the language of the press, media studies, and corpus-based discourse analysis, as reflected in her book Framing Agency in the 2011 UK Riots: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of British Newspapers (2015). She has also researched and published on varieties of English, having authored The Routes of English: (Un)Mapping the Language (2010), and translation as intercultural communication.