Introduction: Translating Ethnicity: Linguistic and Cultural Issues

• Published in: European journal of English studies 2014-09, Vol.18 (3), p.233-241
• Main Authors: Bruti, Silvia, Valdeón, Roberto A., Zanotti, Serenella
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1382-5577; 1744-4233
• DOI: 10.1080/13825577.2014.960743

Ethnicity is a fluid concept whose meaning has been shifting over time, influenced by societal and cultural issues. While the term is commonly used interchangeably with race to indicate biologically and culturally stable identities, recent studies have shown that there is nothing stable and objective about ethnicity and that both ethnicity and race are rather to be regarded as 'cultural constructs promoted, transgressed, defended or reworked in language, discourse and social activity' (Harris and Rampton, 2003: 6). As Stuart Hall argues in his seminal essay 'New Ethnicities' (1989), ethnicity is 'a constructed process rather than a given essence' (Loomba, 1998: 176) and is inescapably contextual: 'The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual' (Hall, 1996: 29). According to Spencer (2014: 58), the association of race with scientific racism and Nazism has led to a preference for ethnicity as a less loaded term; in fact, it is now the only acceptable term for 'otherness' in multicultural societies such as Britain, Canada and Australia. Yet the concept is widely debated, with some calling it a very unstable notion in a 'constant state of formation and reformulation' (Molina, 2006: 247), and others arguing that the concept is relatively stable (Vader, 2001: 261). Adapted from the source document