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The Sociolinguistics of Written Identity

Constructing a Self

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. John S. Schmit

    1. English Department, Augsburg University, Minneapolis, USA

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  • Includes examples from student essays
  • Argues that writers must be allowed to enhance their semantic variation
  • Builds on Bourdieu’s idea of social institutions conferring "distinction"

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Problems and Possibilities with Written Identity

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 1-17

  3. Constructing Written Identity

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 19-41

  4. Written Identity as Cultural Expression

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 43-55

  5. Identity and the Levers of Power

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 57-78

  6. How to Register a Difference

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 79-91

  7. Codes in Composition: Crossing Community Boundaries

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 93-114

  8. Schemas, Frames, and the Shapes of Meaning

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 115-126

  9. Helping Writers Get Results

    • John S. Schmit
    Pages 127-136

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 137-139
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines the ways in which a writer’s presentation of self can achieve or impede access to power. Conversations about written voice and style have traditionally revolved around the aesthetics of stylistic choice. These choices, while they help establish a writer’s presence in a text, too often ignore the needs of written identity as it crosses genres, disciplines, and rhetorical purposes. In contrast to stylistic investigations of a writer’s "voice" and its various components—diction, detail, imagery, syntax, and tone, for example—this book focuses on language variation and the linguistic features of a writer’s presence in a text, as well as the establishment of a writer’s social, cultural, and personal identity in a given text. The author attempts to explain the methods by which writers present themselves to their audiences. This book will be of particular interest to students and teachers of rhetoric and composition studies, as well as writers more broadly. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • English Department, Augsburg University, Minneapolis, USA

    John S. Schmit

About the author

John Schmit is Professor of English at Augsburg University, USA. He earned a PhD in English language/linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and served as an assistant instructor in UT’s renowned composition and rhetorical program. He has since been teaching composition and linguistics in postsecondary settings for the past 35 years. His scholarship has focused primarily on issues of language and composition studies. 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Sociolinguistics of Written Identity

  • Book Subtitle: Constructing a Self

  • Authors: John S. Schmit

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09563-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-09562-7Published: 16 September 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-09563-4Published: 15 September 2022

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 139

  • Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociolinguistics, Literature, general, Philosophy of Mind, Writing Skills

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