Introduction: Reimagining language and belonging in the diaspora

• Published in: Lingua 2021-11, Vol.263, p.103157, Article 103157
• Main Authors: Albury, Nathan John, Schluter, Anne Ambler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied linguistics; Belonging; Creativity; Diaspora; Identity; Posthumanism; Posthumanist applied linguistics; Semiotics; Sociolinguistics
• ISSN: 0024-3841; 1872-6135
• DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103157

•Analyses of language, discourse, and semiotics provide insights into diasporic belonging.•A focus on emic perspectives allows for the contextualization of the data within specific settings.•A posthumanist approach contributes to a more agentive, individual-centric view of diaspora.•The diverse, inventive, and dynamic diasporic orientations that emerge in this SI’s papers help to broaden and challenge existing conceptualizations of diaspora. This introductory piece outlines the lens adopted in this special issue, which foregrounds the examination of language and semiotics as a means of revisiting the concept of diaspora. Guided by posthumanist applied linguistics, the papers here envision human experiences as more complex than critical social theory may suggest; moreover, grassroots agency – a focus that may be inadvertently overlooked in work that adopts a solely critical perspective – represents an important area of attention. Such an approach is grounded in the diversity of human realities that emerge from differential interfaces between structures and individuals who, themselves, possess the capacity to recognize these structures and respond to them in unique ways. Together, the diverse pictures of inventive, creative, and, in some cases, dynamic constructions of diasporic identity presented here supplement, broaden, and challenge common conceptualizations of diasporic positionality.