Cover not available
Article published In:
Literacies in Contact
Edited by Manuela Böhm and Constanze Weth
[Written Language & Literacy 23:2] 2020
► pp. 180–193

Writing and identity

| University of Duisburg-Essen

This essay explores the relationship between writing and an emblematic notion of our age, identity. It describes the symbolic functions of writing for three planes on which it is instrumentalized as a marker of identity, religion, nation and language. The discussion revolves around scriptures as a means of codifying religion, the practical and symbolic functions of writing for modern nation states, and the question of how writing affects linguistic systems, with regard to individual speakers, communities of speakers, and languages themselves. It thus appraises writing as a culture technique without which god, nation, and self wouldn’t be what nowadays we think they are.

Keywords: writing, identity, godhood, nationhood, languagehood
Article outline
  • 1.Prologue
  • 2.God
  • 3.Nation writ large
  • 4.Languagehood
  • P.S.
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00039.cou
References
Anderson, Benedict R. O’G.
(1991) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. (Revised and extended. ed.) London: Verso.Google Scholar
Assmann, Jan
(1991) Stein und Zeit. Mensch und Gesellschaft im Alten Ägypten. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail
(1981) The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Benso, Silvia
(1989) La conquista di un testo: Il “Requirimento”. Rome: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1991) Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Coulmas, Florian
(2016) Guardians of Language: Twenty voices through history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019) Identity. A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis
(1992) The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack
(1986) The logic of writing and the organization of society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen
(1962) Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hays Gries, Peter
(2005) China’s New Nationalism. Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Heinrich
(1981) Sämtliche Schriften in zwölf Bänden: Schriften 1817–1840. Ed. Klaus Briegleb. Vol. 11. Frankfurt am Main et al.: Ullstein.Google Scholar
Hulle, Dirk & Joseph Leerssen
(2008) Editing the nation’s memory: Textual scholarship and nationbuilding in nineteenth-century Europe. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hume, David
(1889 [1757]) The natural history of religion. Edited with an introduction by John M. Robertson. London: Bradlaugh Bonner.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, John & Anthony D. Smith
(eds.) (1994) Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Illich, Ivan & Barry Sanders
(1988) A B C: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco: North Point Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Mari C.
(2014) Endangered languages and new technologies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamusella, Tomasz
(2012) The global regime of language recognition. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2181: 11–21.Google Scholar
Kim-Renaud, Young-Key
(ed.) (1997) The Korean Alphabet. Its history and structure. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Yutang
(2015 [1935]) Mein Land und mein Volk. Esslingen: Drachenhausverlag.Google Scholar
Lord, Albert B.
(1960) The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Maalouf, Amin
(2012) Les identités meurtrières. Paris: Éditions Grasset.Google Scholar
Moïsi, Dominique
(2009) The Geopolitics of Emotion. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Pallas, Peter Simon
(1786) Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa. St. Petersburg: Johannis Caroli Schnoor.Google Scholar
Renan, Ernest
(1882) Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (Lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, 11 March 1882.) Paris: Calman Lévy. [URL]
Smith, Anthony D.
(2004) Chosen Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tabouret-Keller, Andrée
(1998) Language and identity. In Florian Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Socio-linguistics, 315–326. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taylor, Insup & M. Martin Taylor
(1995) Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Horst, Joop
(2008) Het einde van de standaardtaal. Amsterdam: Meulenhof.Google Scholar