Introduction: acts of alterity

Adi Hastings, University of Iowa
Paul Manning, Trent University

Abstract

Many contemporary analyses of language and identity focus on the acts of speakers expressing or voicing some self. Such an approach reductively aligns speakers, performances, voices, and selves. This introductory essay argues that identity has become an unanalyzed first principle of linguistic analysis that has occluded or absorbed other equally important aspects of linguistic practice, including performances of alterity. The essay relativizes performances of identity by placing them along a broader continuum between performances of identity and performances of alterity, focusing concretely on how the notions of voice and exemplary figures lay the ground for a linguistic anthropological analysis of language and difference.