The Language of Belonging

Abstract

Addressing one of the most significant aspects of social life in our time - that of cultural identities and identifications - the authors demonstrate ways in which the language we use in everyday life, in our conversations and narratives, constructs and confirms in a continuing, flexible and context-bound way our sense of who we are, where and to whom we belong - or wish to belong. They offer a theoretical reassessment of how we understand, study and analyse processes of multiple and sometimes self-contradictory identification as reflected through the language of belonging and not belonging.

The theoretical case is exemplified by the discourses of three-generational families on the Polish-German borders. Prompted by photographs to talk about themselves and other social groups, they provide major insights into the complex identities constructed by and for such families as the result of the major political changes in Europe in the 20th century which threw their lives into turmoil and created different and changing socio-political environments for each generation. (Palgrave Macmillan)