ABOUT US

DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY (D&I) is a Competitive Reference Research Group ((ED431C 2019/01, Xunta de Galicia) located in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). Coordinated by Laura Lojo-Rodríguez, D&I is integrated into the following research networks:

• English Language, Literature and Identity III (ED431D 2017/17)
• European Research Network for Short Fiction (ENSFR)
• Contrastive Linguistics: Constructional and Functional Approaches (FWO-Flanders)

Endowed with an interdisciplinary scope, D&I brings together researchers working in the fields of English Language, Literature and History-Culture. The group includes senior and junior scholars from the USC, support staff and external collaborators from other universities in Spain as well as from Simon Fraser University, University of Notre Dame, Brown University, University of Sussex, University College London or VU University Amsterdam. The research conducted by the members of the group is funded by the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Galician Regional Government (Xunta de Galicia), the Spanish Government as well as by various European entities.

D&I was founded in 2009 with a two-fold objective: to further interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between discourse and identity, and to foster high quality research through a successful partnership between Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies. The research conducted within the group looks into the relationship between discourse in its multiple manifestations (i.e. linguistic, literary, aesthetic, cultural, semiotic) and the configuration of gender, ethnic, class and cultural identities, taking into account the potential ideologies underlying the discourse-identity correlation. As foregrounded by such approaches as “Critical Discourse Analysis”, “Social Semiotics” or “Cognitive Grammar”, there exists an intimate relationship between:

• “discourse” (< Lat dis-currere), understood as the semiotic (not simply linguistic) processes and systems that intervene in the production and interpretation of speech acts (Van Dijk 1985),

• “identity” (< Lat idem-et-idem), referring both to individual and cultural identity in a given context, as well as to the synergies and antagonisms that might arise between them,

• “ideology”, a concept that we interpret as a systematic body of ideas organised according to a particular viewpoint,

Due to its complexity and broad scope, the critical analysis of the interaction between discourse-identity-ideology needs to be addressed from an interdisciplinary approach, which requires – and at the same time justifies – the collaboration of the different teams working within this research group, to which we should also add the incorporation of the epistemology provided by other disciplines such as psychology, sociology or semiotics. Indeed, the group fosters connections with scholars from other areas who share an interest in the study of discourse and/or identity. Additionally, group members also work in conjunction with a number of scientific and professional societies, scholarly journals, publishing houses and institutions.