Chapter 10: Coping with Isolation in Negotiation of Identities:The Role of Language Views

This paper reports on an interview study conducted in Hong Kong in 2005-2006. It sought to shed light on strategies adopted by Hong Kong multilingual professionals to negotiate identity conflicts. In particular, it focuses on the role of constructing language views in coping with a fear of isolation from their in-group, or rejection from the other cultural group with which they wish to form alliances, when crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Following a poststructuralist approach (Butler, 1993; Weedon, 1987), identities in the present paper are viewed as constructed in linguistic interactions. As language is embedded within larger ideological structures and discursive practices, linguistic resources are a form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991; Tabouret-Keller, 1997). Speakers can thus use language as a means of constructing identities in relations of power and socioeconomic and sociopolitical processes.