Fighters, Girls and Other Identities

Sociolinguistics in a Martial Arts Club

By (author) Lian Malai Madsen

Publication date:

12 August 2015

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781783093984

This book examines how young people at a martial arts club in an urban setting participate and interact in a recreational social community. The author relates analyses of their interactions to discussions of relevance to the sociology of sports, anthropology and education, ultimately providing an analytically nuanced contribution to the study of contemporary sociolinguistic processes and identity practices. The author explores how the young participants negotiate their place in the social order, create and maintain friendship groups and relate to different social categories using the ecological descriptions provided by linguistic ethnography. The book will appeal to researchers of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, sport sociology, extra-curricular education and anthropology.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Transcription Symbols Used

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Preliminaries

Chapter 2: Sports, Integration and Participation

Chapter 3: Girls, Boys and Interaction

Chapter 4: Youth, Language and Ethnic Categorisation

Chapter 5: School Orientaton in an Out-Of-School Setting

Chapter 6: Perspectives

References

In this highly original and compelling study of contemporary urban youth language in a Copenhagen taekwondo club, Lian Malai Madsen looks beyond ethnic difference to focus on interaction and integration practices within the informal domain of a martial arts club. Malai Madsen shows the importance of understanding community labels themselves – girls and fighters – rather than externally imposed or assumed categories. A very important book that delivers a spinning kick to sociolinguistic studies of language and identity.